opinions on chomsky

BUT!

Chomsky for the husband list, he is grebt.

I like Chomsky sometimes, but I think his political "realism" becomes blinding at times - he seems to assume nations always do what's "in their interest," as though that were easily definable.

Manufacturing Consent is a classic.

The fact that he is not a major public icon is proof that of one of his main theses is true. The major media don't want you to know about him. Why? Because if too many people listened to Chomsky talking about how huge corporations are running the world and especially the major media, people might begin to question of our so-called "freedom."

Some fundamental truths underlying Chomsky's reasoning are:

1. Our government lies to us
2. Corporations and the government unite to create a ruling elite
3. The two major political parties are identical with regard to most issues that affect us because they're really just two factions of "the business party."
4. The news media do not give a full, balanced picture of political events
5. Even though the United States is called a democracy, most of us are locked out of any meaningful participation in the decision-making process.

Check out his book "Necessary Illusions — Thought Control In Democratic Socieities."

Chomsky's propaganda model explains how the people who OWN the country RULE the country, as they believe is their right:

Filter 1: Money - great wealth, media owned by a few conglomerates, which, like other companies, only exist to make a profit.
Filter 2: Advertising is their primary source of income
Filter 3: Reliance on Information provided by the government, business and "experts" with ties to both
Filter 4: Flak - as a means of disciplining the media (tow the company line, if you want to work)
Filter 5: Anti-(fill in the blank) as a national religion and control mechanism. This used to be Anti-Communism but since the fall of the Soviet Union, it's more likely to be Anti-Terrorism.

The media's position is not to inform the public, but to SELL the public. Chomsky asks, "Why is it that the propaganda system is geared to suppressing any inquiry into the role of corporations in foreign policy?"

"and for next week's book club, we'll be reading The Lovely Bones"

"Sheesh, groupies."

By MARC SANTORA
Published: September 22, 2006

At a news conference after his spirited address to the United Nations on Wednesday, President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela expressed one regret: not having met that icon of the American left, the linguist Noam Chomsky, before his death.

Yesterday, a call to Mr. Chomsky’s house found him very much alive. In fact, he was struggling through “10,000 e-mails” he had received since the remarks by Mr. Chávez, who urged Americans to read one of Mr. Chomsky’s books instead of watching Superman and Batman movies, which he said “make people stupid.”

At 77, Mr. Chomsky has joined the exclusive club of luminaries, like the actor Abe Vigoda and Mark Twain, who were reported dead before their time, only to contradict the reports by continuing to breathe.

“I continue to work and write,” he said, speaking from his house in Lexington, Mass.

Mr. Chávez, while addressing world leaders at the United Nations, flagged “Hegemony or Survival: America’s Quest for Global Dominance,” which Mr. Chomsky published in 2003, as a must-read. Mr. Chomsky said he was glad that Mr. Chávez liked his book, but he would not describe himself as flattered.

“We should look at ourselves through our own eyes and not other people’s eyes,” he said.

Mr. Chomsky said he had taken no offense at Mr. Chávez’s remarks about his being dead. In fact, Mr. Chávez’s promotion of the book propelled it yesterday into Amazon’s top 10 best sellers.

While retired from teaching full time, Mr. Chomsky still goes to his office at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, occasionally lecturing and also working on a new book.

At the United Nations, the remarks by Mr. Chávez on Wednesday set off a firestorm that almost overshadowed the visit by Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, whose country has been under intense global scrutiny for its nuclear ambitions. From the podium of the General Assembly, the Venezuelan leader said he smelled lingering sulfur, left by President Bush, who had spoken there the day before and whom he branded “the devil.”

Mr. Chávez continued mocking Mr. Bush yesterday in Harlem, where he announced the expansion of a program to send cheap Venezuelan oil to poor families in New York. He told a group gathered on the street that the president was an “ex-alcoholic” who had “a lot of hang-ups” and tried to walk “like John Wayne.”

Mr. Chomsky said that he would not choose to use the same harsh oratory, but added that the Venezuelan leader was simply expressing the views of many in the world. And he said Mr. Chávez’s anger was understandable.

“The Bush administration backed a coup to overthrow his government,” he said. “Suppose Venezuela supported a military coup that overthrew the government of the United States? Would we think it was a joke?”

Proving that he was still up for a lively debate, Mr. Chomsky then went on to talk about income inequality in Latin America, the history of the United Nations, Iraq, Iran, Fidel Castro and, finally, the man who so fervently admires him, Mr. Chávez.

“I have been quite interested in his policies,” Mr. Chomsky said. “Personally, I think many of them are quite constructive.” Most important, he said, Mr. Chávez seems to have the overwhelming support of the people in his country. “He has gone through six closely supervised elections,” he said.

So would Mr. Chomsky oblige Mr. Chávez’s wish for a meeting, helping ensure that the South American leader will not have that regret to live with anymore?

“I would be happy to meet him,” Mr. Chomsky said.

But that encounter may have to wait: Mr. Chávez was to return to Venezuela as soon as today.

"There's by now a small industry on the thesis that the administration had something to do with 9-11. I've looked at some of it, and have often been asked. There's a weak thesis that is possible though extremely unlikely in my opinion, and a strong thesis that is close to inconceivable. The weak thesis is that they knew about it and didn't try to stop it. The strong thesis is that they were actually involved. The evidence for either thesis is, in my opinion, based on a failure to understand properly what evidence is. Even in controlled scientific experiments one finds all sorts of unexplained phenomena, strange coincidences, loose ends, apparent contradictions, etc. Read the letters in technical science journals and you'll find plenty of samples. In real world situations, chaos is overwhelming, and these will mount to the sky. That aside, they'd have had to be quite mad to try anything like that. It would have had to involve a large number of people, something would be very likely to leak, pretty quickly, they'd all be lined up before firing squads and the Republican Party would be dead forever. That would have happened whether the plan succeeded or not, and success was at best a long shot; it would have been extremely hard to predict what would happen."

What do you make of that, Dickass?

(as a political guy)

LOL "overwhelming."

The book or the movie? They're very different.

I revered the guy in high school. Out of curiosity, for anyone who would call him classic without qualification (and I realize there's not much of that on this thread): What is your actual opinion of anarcho-syndicalism/libertarian-socialism as a practical political system for global societies? I mean, most academic lefty types I know can't stand (and would be the first to go in) small towns, let alone very small-scale communities where everyone knows everyone and every decision is made by majority opinion/peer pressure. (And that's not even getting into economic or security issues.) Also, do you think the PLO would have made an effective, just, stable, and democratic government in the 80s and 90s?

Classic for bringing attention to the cause of East Timor.

chavez is over-the-top but its a bark/bite thing - he hasnt stopped sending us oil!! its shitty to make moves with casto & abamubenniennijad and i know the 'but they do it too!' argument suxx but honestly - difft from us w/ china?? saudis?? every modern country in the world does this shit. id prefer nobody did, but what can you say. its too bad he mouths off & gets in the news as another crazy pinko commie or whatever while michelle bachelet (who i LOVE) gets virtually no press outside of 'oh a woman president isnt that cute'. my boss at my old job, his wife was venezuealan & from one of the richest families there & she HATED chavez, whined all day 'he iss a COMM-you-nisst!' & how he was making her parents' friends' mansions into homeless shelters & soup kitchens - dont know if this was metaphorical or nude spock conspiracy theory or actually true

* Politically, it was interesting to be in a country not my own where questions of leadership and policy were so central, though in large part this was certainly an accident of timing, visiting as I did between the time of the petitions for a referendum and the actual referendum itself, due on August 15th. Chavez is certainly an astonishingly polarizing figure, and though I abstained from any direct political discussion in favor of observation -- and certainly many citizens are a bit tired of it all as well -- there's little doubt as to the deep-seated emotions on either side. Chavez definitely is playing all his cards as he can in the run-up to the vote -- besides the main 'VOTA NO' campaign and his use of state radio and television for interviews or appearances, of himself or his supporters (more than once I noted great store was placed in speeches from activists or academics from other countries, including the US apparently) are any number of associated campaigns or public testimonials from the various mayors (if that is the best equivalent for alcaldes) of Caracas's many neighborhoods or the governors of the various states. The 'SI' campaigners are no less visible if not in a completely advantageous PR spot, and the vote figures to be extremely close. Chavez certainly emphasizes a leftist approach and aims at a populist image that specifically cultivates poorer voters, while also tying into a general anti-Bush sentiment as well, but there appears to be some question of how much of that latter sentiment is romanticized by either Chavez or his followers. There weren't any street fights or riots or the like that I saw or heard about from others, so the idea that the whole city or country is wracked with turmoil certainly doesn't apply.

I gather that the general atmosphere remains the same, but I'd be happy to be corrected.

http://www.icecreamusa.com/products/images/line/G_NEW.jpg

I just got a call from an MSNBC booker. She wanted to know if I wanted to go on the air to talk about Hugo Chavez. Apparently, he went off on some rant at the UN.

I said, "Why would I? Who cares about Hugo Chavez?"

The booker said, "well, it's all over talk radio and the blogs." Talk radio, of course, being Rush Limbaugh and company. The blogs, of course, being the wingnutosphere, happily promoting the latest Horrible Dictator Who Says Mean Things About Bush (unlike the ones in the Middle East, Uzbekistan, and Pakistan who are our "allies").

I said, "Well, this is a stupid topic. It means nothing. I am focused on things that actually matter to us."

"Is there another liberal blogger who is writing about it?"

"No. We're all focused on important things."

She was incredulous -- "Really?"

"Really. Do you actually think this is important?" I asked, suddenly incredulous myself.

"I don't have time to talk about this," she sniffed.

I'm on the road, so perhaps I had missed some outpouring of pro-Chavez blogging on the left. But a look at my RSS reader doesn't show much of anything, and I've got about 80 blogs on it. The feeds don't always update regularly, so perhaps something was missed.

But really, this is much ado about nothing. So Chavez said mean things about Bush. Bush and his administration has said mean things about Chavez and about lots of other world leaders.

Who gives a shit what Venezuela thinks about the United States? I swear, for a country that goes around invading countries it doesn't like, it sure has a thin skin. Republicans, Democrats, and the media are all freaking out.

Because the president of fucking Venezuela doesn't like Bush.

Sigh...

p.s. Memo to Chuck Rangel -- if you don't like world leaders saying mean things about the United States in your congressional district, then perhaps it's time to move the United Nations somewhere where people aren't such wilting flowers.

So, when Chomsky talks about Chavez as being 'overwhelmingly popular' he's counting this 80% impoverished population as all being pro-Chavez, and then however many of the remaining 20% who support him also. If that's true, that is certainly far more support than any leader in the US or UK could ever hope for. But I don't know whether Chavez actually has total support from the poor he sets himself up as the champion of. It's hard to tell from the results of elections in which so few people voted.

I mean much of Latin America is looking to Chavez, and probably much of the rest of the world too. I think the admin. is upset because it's genuinely concerned Chavez could rally people against it. Yeah, it's not like Venezuela's about to stop selling us oil yet, but I wouldn't take it lightly.

Course maybe that's just me wanting to read the speech into my general feeling of Bush's foreign policy coming back to bite him in the ass.

“We should look at ourselves through our own eyes and not other people’s eyes,” he said.

i have mixed feelings about chomsky's writing and advocacy, but i find his failure to ever admit to anything resembling vanity or even self-interest really ridiculous.

-- Butt Dickass (butt.dickas...), September 23rd, 2006. (Dick Butkus)

Course maybe that's just me wanting to read the speech into my general feeling of Bush's foreign policy coming back to bite him in the ass.

More like 100 years of U.S.-Latin American foreign policy. I just wish circumstances were different enough so that the only option available to the poor and middle-class in Latin and South American wasn't a philistine proffering fascist-populist rhetoric.

Chomsky and Herman basically make two points, on my interpretation:

1) the US' role in setting the scene for the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia is unjustly ignored, which I think is a totally fair and important point. The US bombing of Cambodia in 1969 killed tens, possibly hundreds of thousands, and devastated the country.

2) the reports of the extent of the alleged Khmer Rouge genocide are probably greatly overstated. This was wrong, and now reads very distastefully, though I can understand their skepticism at the time.

I think Chomsky has since revised his opinion on 2) but I can't find anything about that just now.

not sure where else to post this, and it's only incidentally about the preposterous apologist chomsky but it is, with only one or two very minor quibbles, a pretty astounding tale:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2010/jan/10/malcolm-caldwell-pol-pot-murder

wed much to the US bombing of cambodia. but he was more sceptical about the mass murder than you suggest.

hmmm. deleted part s.thing to do with chomsky and milo z's defence thereof.

circa 1978 chomsky came to my university as a guest lecturer. 1 week before the lecture somebody wrote on sidewalks all over the campus: "chomsky is coming chomsky is coming" tho even in this 60s-radical college town he was fairly obscure. as a psychology major I wanted to attended his talk cause I'd been exposed to his linguistic theories. surprisingly (to me) he ranted about politics/US abuse of power/corporate control of govt and media. paranoia 101 though some of it was actually true. he hasn't changed his rap in 30 years.

i could never take this guy seriously since the stuff he wrote right after 9/11, he stated that O B-L couldn't have been behind the attacks...RONG NOW STFU NOAM.

His view on 911 was that if O B-L was behind the attacks then the motive was not because "they hate our freedoms" - you know, the official version that was contrived to gain public acceptance of what followed. It was because of a long history of US actions overseas.
Chomsky one week after 9/11/2001

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2010/jan/10/malcolm-caldwell-pol-pot-murder

Yikes, totally misread this and thought it was going to be a jaunty and counterintuitive Malcolm Gladwell piece about how to grow your business in the Internet age by studying Pol Pot's mass murder.

mcoleman,

I am not a Chomsky groupie. I am much too old for that kind of thing. But it seems pretty shallow to me to dismiss him because you think he was RONG about something as unclear as who perpetrated the 9/11 attacks just a week or so afterward. At that same time, if you recall, Bush and Cheney were absolutely certain Saddam Hussein was behind it.

It seems pretty likely to me that you are misremembering what Chomsky wrote, and rather than saying "that O B-L couldn't have been behind the attacks", which would reflect a reckless certainty about unknown facts that Chomsky could not possibly have felt (he is a scientist), it seems far more likely that what he wrote was more on the order of 'here are a variety of facts which suggest O-B-L may not be the culprit, even though the media has already decided it was him, so let's slow down the lynch mob mentality and approach this a bit more dispassionately'.

As for his "ranting" about US policy, I have listened to him speak many times (on the radio) and have never heard him rant. He is extraordinarily calm.

In a subject as complex and morally choppy as politics, no one can always be right. Every side attempts to anchor its position in a clear moral ground and argue that it is doing the right thing, if only because this strengthens their power. Chomsky is an important voice, not always for his conclusions, but because he consistently brings facts to light that throw a harsh cross-light on the self-serving propaganda of those who wield US power. This is A GOOD THING in general.

i don't remember chomsky saying that OBL couldn't have possibly been behind the 9/11 attacks, but this was his initial response:

The September 11 attacks were major atrocities. In terms of number of victims they do not reach the level of many others, for example, Clinton's bombing of the Sudan with no credible pretext, destroying half its pharmaceutical supplies and probably killing tens of thousands of people (no one knows, because the US blocked an inquiry at the UN and no one cares to pursue it). Not to speak of much worse cases, which easily come to mind.

On a factual basis, this statement is objectively true. But it does not jibe with the emotional reaction of most Americans to 9/11, and therefore is instantly relegated to "he hates America" in the minds of those same Americans. Chomsky probably understands this process, but he makes no concessions to it and continues to state what he sees as objectively true.

This is his value, even if it has little practical or political effect. To have a political effect, he would have to become as mendacious as our politicians and to flatter the hell out of people even when he would prefer to mend their ignorance.

"Clinton's bombing of the Sudan with no credible pretext, destroying half its pharmaceutical supplies and probably killing tens of thousands of people"

Wait sorry, how did a factory bombing kill tens of thousands of people?

Among the 'worse cases' cited by Chomsky was a US strike in a central american country (I forget which) that killed around thirty - worse because it involved a greater proportion of its population than 9/11 did the US

On a factual basis, this statement is objectively true. But it does not jibe with the emotional reaction of most Americans to 9/11, and therefore is instantly relegated to "he hates America" in the minds of those same Americans. Chomsky probably understands this process, but he makes no concessions to it and continues to state what he sees as objectively true.

it's objectively true that all sorts of things have killed more people than 9/11, assuming his assumptions about the death toll in the tens of thousands are correct (he gives no evidence).

for example, the srebrenica massacre killed more people than 9/11.

but the point he's making is that osama bin laden was taking revenge on behalf of the benighted people of sudan, who he so notably gave a fuck about, and so when you think about it 9/11 was inevitable.

iirc the broad pretext for the bombing of the sudanese factory was the series of al-quaeda attacks in east africa. the specific pretext for the targetting of said factory was way off, but this context matters a little, doesn't it?

perhaps, though, in one way or another, the africans killed by al quaeda also deserved it.

multi-xpost

Initial reports put the death toll for 9/11 around 5000. By the end of the week the number was being consistently reported as "more than 3000". By the time an official number was settled about a year later, it was more like 2000.

The "tens of thousands" may have been a number put out by the Sudanese government. In the absence of a credible investigation, a lot of numbers get thrown around and they all tend to be self-serving.

IK,

In many ways, a village losing 30 people does have a greater emotional and economic impact within that village than the loss of 2000 in a city of 8 million. Worse is not always measurable by the most obvious measures. Chomsky's major point is still valid, which is that the US kills the innocent, it does so frequently, and in many places around the world on an almost daily basis, with perfect impugnity.

We always have a reason for doing so, and we almost always excuse ourselves from blame. Even when we accept blame, we rarely change our policy in any appreciable way. This does not make OBL blameless, but it does greatly narrow the gap between his presumed villany and the presumed rectitude of the USA.

I must have misread or misremembered that Chomsky quote. it was from his pamphlet titled 9-11 and I can't locate the relevant pages online. I read this in the heat of the moment.

in general there's something about his logic and style of argument that I can't quite identify but find infuriating. ah maybe I should stfu or think before hitting 'submit post'

BTW my new screen name references an old song by jackie lomax -- not american imperialism

I understand the point about emotional impact, but frankly my view is that that doesn't matter one jot when we're talking about 2,970 lives. As I recall, Chomsky's argument didn't even cite emotional impact anyway, nor did it consider the difference between a military strike and indiscriminate terrorism (other than an implied assertion of equivalence) - it only compared casualties as proportion of national population. Which makes him an idiot.

the point he's making is that osama bin laden was taking revenge on behalf of the benighted people of sudan

I cannot recall Chomsky ever showing any inclination to say OBL was doing a good or noble thing, or championing anyone's just cause. It is entirely true that OBL draws his power mainly among those who desire revenge upon the USA, and that if the USA did less damage in the world his base of power would be measurably weaker.

As for the inevitablity of 9/11, it would be foolish to say any such action was inevitable, but it is reasonable to say that the existance of a desire for revenge against the USA was inevitable. That desire continues, more strongly than ever, as a result of our actions in Iraq. OBL and al-Qaida happen to be the most salient point of resistance to the USA and therefore are the greatest beneficiaries of this desire.

Basically, Chomsky just agrees with the CIA, which coined the term "blowback" to describe this same effect.

why would an western-educated middle-class guy like m. atta desire revenge against the US

for example, the srebrenica massacre killed more people than 9/11

a bold assertion to make on a Chomsky thread

what's the over/under on # of posts before this thread gets totally ugly?

I basically agree that it's good to have Chomsky to challenge a lot of the US government/media standard line nonsense that is put out about our foreign policy, but at the same time there's something that gets under my skin about his seeming ability to unmask guile in every US action but general downplaying of it in the actions of opposed parties.

but the point he's making is that osama bin laden was taking revenge on behalf of the benighted people of sudan, who he so notably gave a fuck about, and so when you think about it 9/11 was inevitable.

^^^^^
Bullshit.

what's the over/under on # of posts before this thread gets totally ugly?

chomsky brings that same style of "objective" analysis that statheads bring to baseball

Wait sorry, how did a factory bombing kill tens of thousands of people? - it was a factory which produced pharmaceuticals, so NC is speculating that the amount of people effected by the resulting med shortage (in addition to those killed in the explosion) could have reached such a number.

That seems like it would require fairly detailed knowledge of the exact kinds of products being produced and the availability of replacement supplies.

nothing like judging various tragedies against one another by comparing the number of casualties

utilitarian moral judgment is a terrific way to collate and rank catastrophes

itt rank genocides

nothing like judging various tragedies against one another by comparing the number of casualties

He was writing in the context of "9/11 is the greatest tragedy to have befallen man" being the dominant thought process for a lot of Americans.

nothing like judging various tragedies against one another by comparing the number of casualties

in spirit I'm with you but I can also feel ppl who wanna say "you know, you get all lit up about how all these lives got lost in your neighborhood and can't be bothered to hold accountable the ppl who bomb civilians with your tax money" y'know? comparing tragedies is a non-starter but so is ignoring one while getting excited about the other which is some of chomsky's point

there are ways to acknowledge that the US isnt alone in being the site of horrible tragedy that are constructive, open, and engaging; and then there are ways to do so that come across as absurd bean-counting oneupmanship that loses sight of its own point in a blinding flash of self-righteous point-scoring

btw i am still butthurt about chomsky oft-quoted dismissal of my favorite 1960s french charlatan 'intellectuals' so im not inclined to give him an inch no matter how much similarity our politics might hold

Isn't that (in part) why Hitchens broke with Chomsky and "the left" after 9-11?

xpost

max hates the shit outta some chomsky

for me his ne plus is any soft-soaping of Pol Pot - I mean - U.S. in Vietnam/Cambodia is a shameful horrible chapter there is no question but Pol Pot was a fucking monster of the worst order and anybody who tries to mitigate the horror of Democratic Kampuchea is a big ol' asshole, but still, I mean - one wishes it weren't just the very loudest extremists willing to acknowledge (weak verb there - it's an acknowledgement of something pretty much nobody wants to talk about at all except as an aside, in the context of his remark, so it's closer to "report") that we visit horrible tragedies on people all the time, but it kinda is, a lotta the time

milo and aimless, if chomsky isn't saying 9/11 is revenge for the sudanese factory bombing, why is it his point of comparison? what otherwise is his point? why not bring up some other atrocity. realize chomsky has signed petitions on behalf of holoocaut deniers, but still!

It is entirely true that OBL draws his power mainly among those who desire revenge upon the USA, and that if the USA did less damage in the world his base of power would be measurably weaker.

i think this analysis, though clearly not entirely untrue, is US-centric and a bit naive -- the aims of jihadis are quite openly not limited to kicking back at the US, unless "the extension of the caliphate" is now an anti-US strategy leftists want to give credence to.

but surprised by max's reaction -- those french dudes were pretty stoopid when it came to dictators too, mao in particular, though foucault diversified into extolling the virtues of the iranian revolution iirc.

His point of comparison is the loss of life. It's pretty clear if you just, like, read his statement, which mentions the Sudan only once and al-Qaeda/bin Laden not at all.

Again, he's writing in the atmosphere that immediately followed 9/11, which held that it was the worst event in human history. Some may find Chomsky's coldness distasteful, but what he's saying remains true - the loss of life from 9/11 is minor compared even to the number of civilians the US kills in any given year.

He brings up the Sudan bombing because it was, at that time, the most recent (and costly in terms of human life) fuck-up on the part of the US military in fighting terrorism.

the problem with chomsky isn't so much what he says as how he says it. for a guy who sees it as his job to awaken the rest of us to the mendaciousness of u.s. foreign policy (i.e., being an "important voice"), he sure is awful at talking to people who don't already agree with everything he says.

Again, he's writing in the atmosphere that immediately followed 9/11, which held that it was the worst event in human history.

i really don't remember anyone actually saying this. to be honest i don't think americans can be blamed for being more upset about the sudden, violent murder of 3,000 random americans than the theoretical aftermath of a misguided bombing which apparently killed one person.

The trouble with Chomsky is that he is a philosopher, and insists on talking to ordinary folks like a philosopher. He/we are completely useless at talking to anyone other than other philosophers. (plus, he's a linguist, and we're the most socially inept of all philosophers).

But yeah, the disdain for him in some circles far outweighs his position. He seems to have joined Guevara in that group of people whom centrists/rightists/libertarians have developed this weird knee-jerk fury about - possibly because so many of their generation unthinkingly admire them? I sympathise, but people need some perspective.

there's something that gets under my skin about his seeming ability to unmask guile in every US action but general downplaying of it in the actions of opposed parties.

this angers me too. many leftists do this. i suppose maybe i've done it too, though probably not recently. it's all over robert wyatt's wonderful albums unfortunately. it implies a certain naivete, maybe a willed naivete that increases the contrast, so to speak, and makes the world appear more black and white.

chomsky's form of rhetoric, which i agree is often not the most persuasive in a practical sense, does not strike me as particularly "philosophical." the way he wraps his arguments in the supposed objectivity of comparative statistics and so on is just too transparent, too obviously rhetorical. i think a political philosopher--at least, an anglo-american one--would be a bit embarrassed by it for better or worse. chomsky has more in common with the continental intellectuals he disparages than may appear at first glance.

i don't dislike the guy at all, but there are many sources of information and opinion and analysis on the political topics he favors that are more informed and interesting and nuanced.

does chomsky make libs/right-wingers furious? isn't he sort of obscure to most of them? i admit i'm far from a good source on this.

Hmm, I don't know actually. He seems to - but I base all my knowledge of US politics on discussion pages from Wikipedia.

Robert Barsky's Chomsky bio ("A Life Of Dissent") is worth reading, probably more so than any of Chomsky's own writing post-9/11. I found it interesting that Chomsky's first work at MIT (the machine translation work adapted into automated intelligence gathering) was indirectly funded by the CIA and OSI. Always wondered how much that bugged him since.

In the post-9/11 haze, I was bothered more by the Chomsky-philes who were waiting for him to Make A Statement as if it was Moses himself. The people who are into him now remind me a lot of people who are into Ayn Rand - sucks, because I still rate a lot of his work, especially Rethinking Camelot (essential reading for anyone who believes that JFK was going to save us all)

but surprised by max's reaction -- those french dudes were pretty stoopid when it came to dictators too, mao in particular, though foucault diversified into extolling the virtues of the iranian revolution iirc.

no apologo but depends on which french dudes were talking about. but yeah pretty despicable, though id argue foucaults defense of the iranian revolution is and was somewhat more complicated that youre crediting it--and interestingly enough foucault is the only one of those thinkers whom chomsky would give the time of day

no apologo but depends on which french dudes were talking about. but yeah pretty despicable, though id argue foucaults defense of the iranian revolution is and was somewhat more complicated that youre crediting it--and interestingly enough foucault is the only one of those thinkers whom chomsky would give the time of day

I don't apologize for or minimize the monstrousness of the Great Leap Forward or the Cultural Revolution & think if there were a Hell Mao would belong there, to be clear on that from the outset, but I also think just putting him into the "dictator" bin is no less oversimplifying things than the sort of stuff that Chomsky's getting called out for

i don't, in a pithy mesg board post anyway. he was an unorthodox dictator, insofar as his "big idea" was empowering the people to "bombard the headquarters", aka kill the fuck out of each other. but still.

his seeming ability to unmask guile in every US action but general downplaying of it in the actions of opposed parties.

Maybe because Americans are enveloped by exposure to a multitrillion-dollar media that already covers the actions of opposed parties, real and imagined, 24/7.

(when there isn't a Balloon Boy or a dead bimbo heiress to obsess over)

there's something that gets under my skin about his seeming ability to unmask guile in every US action but general downplaying of it in the actions of opposed parties.

this doesn't seem unreasonable, at leas @ first glance, given that the dominance and the scope and size of the us empire esp after the soviet union.

i broadly agree w/Chomsky on a lot of things, but he grates still. don't care for his writing and how his books seem to outnumber any other radical/left/anarchist/etc writers 10 to 1 at any bookstore.

"Oliver Stone interviewed me about playing a talking head. This, comrades, is one of the few strengths of capitalism."

http://mostlywater.org/system/files/images/chavez+chomsky+book.jpg

btw it's 'been posted elsewhere, but the Chomsky-WFB Jr debate from '68 is a masterpiece of controlled fury:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYlMEVTa-PI

the chomsky foucualt debate is up on youtube too--its OK but not particularly revealing if yr fairly familiar w/ the two guys, but it is hilarious to know that foucault was paid with a block of hash, and they tried to make him wear a bright orange wig

there's something that gets under my skin about his seeming ability to unmask guile in every US action but general downplaying of it in the actions of opposed parties.

this doesn't seem unreasonable, at leas @ first glance, given that the dominance and the scope and size of the us empire esp after the soviet union.

― I'M CHIEF KAMANAWANALEA (WE'RE THE ROYAL MACADAMIA ... (artdamages), Monday, 11 January 2010 16:16 (2 hours ago)

But I'm a little wary of going easy on an aspiring repressive empire just because it opposes the dominant repressive empire.

combatting myopia with more myopia is not really a winning strategy afaic

but Chomsky speaks principally to Americans/Westerners to possibly change America

(as dim as that prospect is)

I have Chomsky's book on 9-11, its pretty cogent imho

chomsky has it out for america on something of a personal level. he reminds me more of his right-wing equivalents than anything else - 'the american government' to chomsky is 'liberals' to ann coulter. obv chomsky is a million times smarter and I agree with him much of the time, but when someone crosses the event horizon and has political beliefs on a personal level instead of an intellectual level, they're really not worth listening to, no matter how smart/informed they are.

when someone crosses the event horizon and has political beliefs on a personal level instead of an intellectual level,

This sounds like "levelheaded" horseshit in denial of the best human instincts.

'the best human instincts' = 'imna vote for whoever I'd rather have a beer with'

yeah, that sounds like Chomsky

more like the disappointed Obama voters

I'm so glad we have our own mini-chomsky to entertain us

*lifts pinkie to mouth*

when someone crosses the event horizon and has political beliefs on a personal level instead of an intellectual level,

Yeah sorry I don't really know what you mean by this. Sounds like nonsense.

i dont think its really fair to call chomskys reaction "personal" given the coldly rational "what percentage of a countrys pop. died in this given attack" calculus of tragedy he posits

I mean what I said two sentences earlier? 'chomsky has it out for america on something of a personal level.'

What do you mean that he "has it out for america on something of a personal level"? Did America kick him in the back?

yes! that's exactly what he makes it seem like!

chomsky sill mad america stole his girl

american government picked on him in hs and now he's gonna show em

michael savage would actually be a better comparison than ann coulter for what I mean w/ 'has it out on a personal level'

but Savage is a rather blatant opportunist w/no deeply held principles...

I mean witness Savage's transformation from former Beatnik homeopathic medicine peddler to strident right-wing loudmouth, its pretty clear he's just going wherever the money is

the right-wing loudmouth part comes out of personal bitterness for the beatnik years = it's a personal thing

ah, ok that makes sense

not sure what Chomsky has against America personally, he seems to have done allright

he reminds me more of his right-wing equivalents than anything else

yeah its like atheists. they don't realize that atheism is their religion!

But I'm a little wary of going easy on an aspiring repressive empire just because it opposes the dominant repressive empire.
― pithfork (Hurting 2), Monday, January 11, 2010 6:40 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

good point. where would the people of afganistan be now if we had not bombed the shit out of gone easy on them?

they would probably be dirt poor and worried about being beheaded for watching television

he reminds me more of his right-wing equivalents than anything else

yeah its like atheists. they don't realize that atheism is their religion!

haha sarcastic or no, loud and angry atheists are actually a pretty good comparison point

I mean, the liberal democrats aren't going to tell the average American, "Yeah, you're being shafted because of the policies that we've established over the years that we're maintaining now." That's not going to be an answer. And they're not getting answers from the left. So, there's an internal coherence and logic to what they get from Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, and the rest of these guys. And they sound very convincing, they're very self-confident, and they have an answer to everything—a crazy answer, but it's an answer. And it's our fault if that goes on. So one thing to be done is don't ridicule these people, join them, and talk about their real grievances and give them a sensible answer, like, "Take over your factories."

http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticle/23178

For example, in a democracy the day when you pay your taxes, April 15, would be a day of celebration, because you're getting together to provide resources for the programs you decided on. In the United States, it's a day of mourning because this alien force—the government—is coming to rob you of your hard-earned money.

haha omg

a friend of mine on another board's login in name is "nom chompsky" which i always thought was awesome

clearly, Noam is going to join you folks who will be crashing the teabag convention with same-sex kiss-ins.

what's omg, iatee? Seems in line with the popular perception vs O W Holmes' "Taxes buy me civilization."

im working on something clever w/william appleman williams for an upcoming display name xpost

pretty sure people don't 'celebrate' paying taxes in basically every country in the world. they might resent it less than your average american, but cmon.

me, i'll be especially thankful this year knowing my taxes helped save the economy

^^^hooray Turtles fans that song is the jam

For example, in a democracy the day when you pay your taxes, April 15, would be a day of celebration, because you're getting together to provide resources for the programs you decided on. In the United States, it's a day of mourning because this alien force—the government—is coming to rob you of your hard-earned money.

what the fuck. for a guy who's whole MO is based on unpopular dissent, he seems to place a huge premium on unanimity rather than democracy, per se. "programs you decided on?" what society does he think he's looking at, this one?

he said "in a democracy," you might note, so he's clearly not talking about this big shell game.

there will never ever be a point of 100% agreement on the scope, activities or funding mechanism of this government by 100% of its citizens (or any other country, of its). if that's the standard to meet to be called a "democracy," i dunno what kind of productive critique can really be made toward it; it becomes essentially a relgious question. but i'm not the one writing the books...

yes, 100%, 100%, that's clearly what he meant, shit bye

a friend of mine on another board's login in name is "nom chompsky" which i always thought was awesome

curses!

yes, 100%, 100%, that's clearly what he meant, shit bye

― Rage, Resentment, Spleen (Dr Morbius), Monday, January 11, 2010 2:20 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark

well, what did he mean, then?

i can kind of, barely, imagine a kind of government that some amount of americans would hold a celebration for on tax day, but i'm pretty sure it wouldn't look like the one chomsky would ask for

i can't imagine it but it would definitely have free keg beer

also explosions

You're battling a strawman. He's not suggesting 100% conformity - only that in a democracy, government would not be seen as the evil other come to rob you.

ok, so what happens when you are in the minority, and your taxes are being taken to do stuff you dont want, what is government then

the strawman, or straw-state -- popular celebrations of tax day -- is exactly what chomsky is using to show that the US gov't is oppressive of its own people. since we don't have x, the US gov't must be y.

i don't think that's a satisfiable condition, since basically any taxing authority will always be seen as at least a pain in the ass by a real human being

chomsky is probably for democracy in other spheres than the political too, and i guess at a certain level of utopian thought, everyone will agree and there will be no conflict. so within that state-of-affairs, i can see raising taxes as a joyous, life-affirming process.

for example, on the planet pandora, the na'avi treat tax day much as they treat weddings and births

well, right, but that's my problem with chomsky as a political critic. if the grounds of all your thinking is, "first, at some point, everyone will agree," you aren't really talking about anything real anymore.

no one will ever agree on anything. now, having accepted that, try to build a government. that's the problem democracy has been built to solve. (or don't! since chomsky is an anarchist, or so i thought). societies are shot through with disagreements. like, barely reconcilable ones. government has to be made to somehow navigate them, or adjudicate them, or keep them from spilling over into violence, or fix them in time.

this isn't to say that all the shit chomsky has called out over the years -- i mean, i didn't live thru the vietnam war, i can't even imagine -- didn't need doing. but it seems to me that there was a pretty huge constituency for killing communists on the other side of the globe. THAT'S the problem, not what the people in government did to satisfy that desire.

xp

Bless you, Morbius and Milo, for engaging in this.

Grabbed On Power and Ideology off the shelf and literally opened to this page (from a lecture in Managua, 1986):

QUESTION: We feel that through what you say and write you are our friend but at the same time you talk about North American imperialism and Russian imperialism in the same breath. I ask you how you can use the same arguments as reactionaries such as Octavio Paz, Vargas Llosa, etc.

ANSWER: .... One of the truths about the world is that there are two superpowers, one a huge power which happens to have its boot on your neck, another, a smaller power which happens to have its boot on other people's necks. In fact these two superpowers have a form of tacit cooperation in controlling much of the world.

My own concern is primarily the terror and violence carried out by my own state, for two reasons. For one thing, because it happens to be the larger component of international violence. But also for a much more important reason than that; namely, I can do something about it. So even if the U.S. was responsible for 2 percent of the violence in the world instead of the majority of it, it would be that 2 percent I would be primarily responsible for. And that is a simple ethical judgment. That is, the ethical value of one's actions depends on their anticipated and predictable consequences. It is very easy to denounce the atrocities of someone else. That has about as much ethical value as denouncing atrocities that took place in the 18th century.

Thanks for the Buckley debate link!

It is very easy to denounce the atrocities of someone else. That has about as much ethical value as denouncing atrocities that took place in the 18th century.

ridiculous statement. sucks for people in darfur!

chomsky - soft on the slave trade

ridiculous statement

Maybe not so much as you think. Denouncing the atrocities in Darfur is immensely easy to do, if you are nowhere near the place and completely uninvolved in it. I could denounce it right now, here on the internet, then cut and paste my denunciation a few dozen times to demonstrate the point.

actually I'd be willing to denounce the atrocities in Darfur even if I were really close to them and really involved in them

He goes on to say:

The point is that the useful and significant political actions are those that have consequences for human beings. And those are overwhelmingly the actions which you have some way of influencing and controlling, which means for me, American actions. But I am also involved in protesting Soviet imperialism, and also explaining its roots in Soviet society.

So, for instance, we have more responsibility for Somalia than for Darfur, as he suggested a couple years ago:

http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticleNew.asp?xfile=data/opinion/2007/December/opinion_December88.xml§ion=opinion&col=

Chomsky responds (to Andrew Anthony's original piece). The last paragraph is amazing.

it's kind of wood-for-the-trees who-cited-what stuff. hitchens wrote at length about chomsky-on-cambodia (and, i think, about chomsky's weird support for a holocaust denier) twenty years ago.

The only reason to waste even a moment on such a performance is that it encapsulates so well the common technique of apologetics for the crimes for which one shares responsibility. It would not do to deny the crimes outright; that exposes them to view and undermines pretensions of liberal ideals. The first and most crucial principle is therefore to evade our own crimes. Next, vilify the messenger, to ensure that unwanted history is forgotten. And finally, vilify those who dare to refute charges against official enemies, thus preserving the right to posture heroically about their real or alleged crimes without concern for such impediments as fact and uncertainty. Add a few appropriate rhetorical touches and the concoction is ready to serve, a tasty morsel in some circles.

on a point of order it is difficult to indict a british newspaper/journalist for the crimes of the USAF. is the writer "evading" said crimes by mentioning them? (as opposed to denying them.) that seems to be what chomsky is saying. not sure which messenger is even being vilified. the piece acknowledged that the US bombing massively destablized cambodia. but caldwell wasn't saying that: he was saying pol pot was bringing about a communsit utopia. he wasn't lamenting the fact that US intervention had precipitated a barbaric regime, but writing apologetics for same.

as for refuting charges against official enemies -- woah. did he just? d-d-d-damn.

It's an archetypical example of Chomsky's style and I think a mistake to engage with it on its own terms, so determined is he to change the subject. What's missing is his original review, but as he doesn't really seek to defend himself on that basis I think it's fair to assume he was an apologist there too.

What I found really amazing about that para was that I kept having to check which of the two articles I was reading, just to see who exactly was accusing whom.

it's funny - going over Chomsky's remarks carefully, I can't find much I'd really call apologetic for Democratic Kampuchea/Khmer Rouge - but at the same time, it leaves that impression with me; I come away feeling like he's minimizing what happened between 1975-1979. At the same time, his project, as he suggests, is to ask what preceded "the horrors that followed"- what created or contributed to the conditions, and then, I think, to ask whether it isn't a little ripe for the complicit to parade their horror over things that couldn't have happened without their help. That seems fair. In my opinion Pol Pot could not have taken power without U.S. interference in Vietnam, and that's hardly a controversial position - so the deaths of many Cambodians in the bombing campaigns (whose extent was minimized by the US) and in the four years of starvation & state brutality that followed can fairly be ascribed in part to both US actions & inactions. To focus on how US "interests" in southeast Asia create, in whole or part, the opportunity for a Pol Pot to come on the scene does not necessarily mean that Chomsky's sympathetic to the Khmer Rouge, and demanding that he condemn them before explaining them is kinda "why isnt Obama wearing a flag pin?" style

imo

the four years of starvation & state brutality that followed can fairly be ascribed in part to both US actions & inactions.

no-one would deny that the KR came to power in the wake of the US bombardment. but this seems a little excessive. hard to say why. but the KR leadership seemed to have a clear grasp of what they were doing. the japanese victims of US bombing did not decide to murder everyone who wore glasses. KR policies made the starvation worse because they operated out of pure ideology. (so -- "in part" yes. chomsky is saying more than "in part". at the end of his letter chomsky actually casts doubt on the crimes of pol pot's regime, as he did in the 1970s when he tried to undermine the testimony of refugees. that's f'd up.)

but then, which US inactions? the thing becomes complicated by questions like that -- take the principled chomskyian position that the US should not have been in SE asia, period. criticize their "inactions" and you get into difficult territory.

to ask whether it isn't a little ripe for the complicit to parade their horror over things that couldn't have happened without their help.

idk im british (as was the writer), so don't feel complicit in the killing fields. the article was about the real complicity of a british writer in the KR regime. he actively supported it, and lent his academic credibility to it, in respected newspapers, etc. that is morally much worse (or really more pitiable) than writing an article about the episode, which i think does illuminate something about a certain kind of high-iq moron.

no-one would deny that the KR came to power in the wake of the US bombardment.

right, by "actions" I mean only without the bombings, Pol Pot would not have been able to come to power. who can say what would have happened: four years of war with Vietnam? China/the Soviets taking sides in that conflict; worse things than the era of Pol Pot? hard to imagine. but I'm convinced that the Khmer Rouge could not have come to power without the bombings. I haven't read Vickery, who I guess is a Marxist historian with some interesting readings on this, but Kiernan et al seem to think that the US intervention in the region made Democratic Kampuchea possible, and the accounts of the bombardment & the political climate in Cambodia at the time make that explanation sound convincing to me.

at the end of his letter chomsky actually casts doubt on the crimes of pol pot's regime, as he did in the 1970s when he tried to undermine the testimony of refugees. that's f'd up.

yeah there can be no doubt of this

(that that line is fucking contemptible, I mean - it's like, I don't think a person has to get all flag-pin about saying "before I say anything else, let me say that I denounce Pol Pot and Democratic Kampuchea" but any hint of "we don't know the full truth about DK" - yes we fucking do, because the jailers at Tuol Sleng kept meticulous records of what they were doing, and casting any doubt on the work historians have done to describe that period is pretty loathsome)

the Khmer Rouge could not have come to power without the bombings.

i do agree with this!

i just don't get why the KR were *such* evil mfs, is all. and the article was about a guy who was actively in favour of them.

similar with the taliban after the russian invasion, though without the parisian education (?).

im being naive, to a point. "if you destablize a country, evil bastards will rise to the top," is a very old conservative view we wouldn't want to believe, in some ways, but we have to.

i just don't get why the KR were *such* evil mfs, is all.

this is the $20,000 question obviously - I think the fact that food was so scarce during the period (for a number of reasons, most of them tragic & insane) plays into it a lot. threat of starvation + ill-understood ideology + fear of the next guy doing worse by you = recipe for disaster

("ill-understood" btw because ill-formed. Pot was a brilliant student, evidently, but his ideology is confused and confusing, and many of the cadres were conscripted from the countryside without any prior exposure to political thinking - essentially, this was arming a bunch of people, abruptly indoctrinating them, and giving them weapons)

ugh can't form good sentences this afternoon - "rounding up a bunch of people, abruptly indoctrinating them, and giving them weapons"

and creating a system wherein any executioner could become a victim at any moment if they didn't convince their superiors they were appropriately ruthless

Andrew Anthony responded a few hours ago in the #2 comment directly below Chomsky's letter.

no-one would deny that the KR came to power in the wake of the US bombardment.

I wouldn't be so sure of this. And while I broadly agree with you Hitchens is possibly the worst witness for any recent cause/argument, an is really best ignored.

hitchens wrote at length about chomsky-on-cambodia (and, i think, about chomsky's weird support for a holocaust denier) twenty years ago.

The Hitchens essay you mean was a defense of Chomsky on both counts. But why let that slow you down?

well strike me down. the hitch's essay was my first encounter with the two controversies. i think i must have read the evidence he provides (which is ample) and then disagreed with his conclusions.

flicking through it again, he scores some points against chomsky's accusers, some of whom went too far. at that point, hitchens (a trotskyist of course) was concerned to unpick ideological complicity in the US war-machine above other concerns. (in the same essay he declares undying loyalty to the long-term idiot alexander cockburn.)

chomsky was and is an evasive writer and the people who attacked him certainly read between the lines. i think his left-wing followers actually do the same: the objective, empirical style he uses is bunk. (hitchens says the exact opposite of this: his chomsky is totally upfront. well, he isn't now; that line upthread about how it is only possible to criticize one's "own side" is complete crap.)

anyway, reading it again, hitchens is not able to protect chomsky from the charges made by william shawcross, i.e. that chomsky claimed that democratic kampuchea was the victim of a smear campaign. chomsky's attitude in the late 1970s seems pretty close to that of the french leftists who sought to downplay revelations about the gulag on grounds that they could be mobilized by the anti-communists. as if he (and they) had no axe of their own to grind.

hitchens also embarrasses himself on the faurisson question -- faurisson, the holocaust denier and probable neo-nazi whom chomsky called "a sort of relatively apolitical liberal."

im not surprised my memory of reading it the first time is what it is. can't imagine the later hitchens defending outright lies on "voltairean" grounds.

"Only possible to criticize one's own side" - except Chomsky never said that. He said his concern is primarily with his side. That's an enormous gap between those two statements, and Chomsky critics would appear less unreasonable if they didn't rely so heavily on not just twisting his words but making them up entirely. You've now done it twice in this thread and both times could have looked a dozen posts up to read what he actually wrote/said.

xpost: True, Hitchens has used libel laws against liars who smear him (threatening to sue Kissinger, who used the h_________ d_____ phrase you keep repeating), while Chomsky is against libel laws on same free-speech grounds you dismiss. But Hitchens stands by that old defense.

on THE same

"Only possible to criticize one's own side" - except Chomsky never said that. He said his concern is primarily with his side. That's an enormous gap between those two statements, and Chomsky critics would appear less unreasonable if they didn't rely so heavily on not just twisting his words but making them up entirely. You've now done it twice in this thread and both times could have looked a dozen posts up to read what he actually wrote/said.

― smashing aspirant (milo z), Monday, January 18, 2010 3:01 PM (38 minutes ago) Bookmark

i've pretty much spelled out that im reading between the lines, which for anyone who isn't an aspie, is standard operating procedure.

so chomsky said his concern was "primarily" with the US -- yes. but then he *also* said:

"It is very easy to denounce the atrocities of someone else. That has about as much ethical value as denouncing atrocities that took place in the 18th century."

so, no, i don't think i've caricatured him too much. it's not like he writes about the crimes of others overmuch (israel excepted).

pete, i think faurisson is a holocaust denier, no need to google-proof it. the issue of free speech is a bit more complicated than you're implying -- any road, if you're cool with chomsky's endorsement of faurisson, that's entirely up to you.

"Reading between the lines": I do not think that phrase means what you think it means.

I defend your right to say everything you just said /= an endorsement of everything you just said. I wasn't Google-proofing anything, but trying to make a point about the innuendo you're using, which you're now extending to me, and is ridiculous. I'm just curious where all this is going: that Chomsky, a Jewish anti-Communist opponent of violence since before most of us were born is actually a Nazi, Khmer Rouge sympathizer, and terrorist cheerleader in one?

The thing I notice about even attacks on Chomsky that I take seriously is that they never get around to their deeper and more troubling point of contention, which is about the nature of American/Western/Northern power in the world and its moral implications. Or they gloss that point.

"Reading between the lines"

I'm not all that up on my Alice in Wonderland quotes, so I will merely wave in the direction of whichever character said something to the effect that 'words mean exactly what I want them to mean.' Taking words to mean what you imagine they ought to mean is what you are calling "reading between the lines".

Although misunderstanding and misreading are both common enough in human communication, they are not SOP. And once it is pointed out to you that you are misunderstanding the plain meaning of words, and you persist in your cours, it becomes willful pigheadedness. This is only SOP among the thick.

i'm not accusing you of holocaust denial. but i'm also not using that phrase as innuendo, and it isn't ridiculous. faurisson was a holocaust denier, and chomsky went out of his way to defend him, in the process misrepresenting him as a disinterested liberal truth-seeker. if chomsky had said, "this guy is a liar and apologist for nazism, but i will defend him, because i believe in free speech" -- that would be something. instead he got into some weird faux-naive groove and said faurisson was a legit authority and not an anti-semite. there are millions of cranks out there who want to publish outright lies, but chomsky very publically supported this one. (side issue, but i don't think you can defend libel on free speech grounds.)

so i wouldn't describe him as a nazi or a terrorist cheerleader (no idea where you get that from) -- KR sympathizer, well, he flirted with that. read what he wrote about caldwell after his death. in the letter published yesterday he hinted that maybe they were victims western propaganda.

The thing I notice about even attacks on Chomsky that I take seriously is that they never get around to their deeper and more troubling point of contention, which is about the nature of American/Western/Northern power in the world and its moral implications. Or they gloss that point.

... give an example. i'm not sure why, when attacking chomsky for downplaying serbian atrocities, 'deeper and more troubling' questions always have to intercede.

xpost

chomsky: My own concern is primarily the terror and violence carried out by my own state... It is very easy to denounce the atrocities of someone else. That has about as much ethical value as denouncing atrocities that took place in the 18th century.

me: that line upthread about how it is only possible to criticize one's "own side"

is this really a significant misreading? next to chomsky's usual practice -- i.e., when new york and washington are attacked, to bring up the US's bombing of a factory to put it in helpful context -- i think it's fair, but you're free to disagree.

is this really a significant misreading?

yes.

In order to read it in your way, it becomes necessary to disregard that the meaning of "atrocities" contains an explicit criticism of "the other side", and to conflate expressing a personal choice with defining an impossibility.

Otoh, you claim your misreading is justified because it is somehow illegitimate for anyone to compare an air attack on New York and Washington with an air attack on Sudan. Why should that be illegitimate? Sudanese are just as human as New Yorkers.

If this line of argument reflects the quality of your thinking, you really need to be more self-critical.

well, i don't think it's a misreading -- your first points are just pedantic, ok in print but really, here? -- and i think the point about him crassly saying "what about...?" on 9/12 does further substantiate it. i've already said why i think he brought up sudan rather than srebrenica -- of course, reading between the lines again. probably nothing to it. (i don't think that after atrocities committed elsewhere he's said anything similar, has he? of course, it's not illegitimate (i never said it was), just telling.

Gee, does "pedantic" now mean "wrong"?

In order to read it in your way, it becomes necessary to disregard that the meaning of "atrocities" contains an explicit criticism of "the other side", and to conflate expressing a personal choice with defining an impossibility.

but to get into it, i used the word "impossible" instead of "ethically almost entirely without value" because i was doing it from memory. so it is not impossible to criticize the atrocities of "others" (im british so feel odd about this -- i guess im not under the obligation to criticize the bombing of cambodia). no, it is not impossible, just about as useful as criticizing something from centuries ago.

i'm glad that chomsky acknowledges that other countries do commit atrocities -- serbia springs to mind. but again, why criticize them? may as well criticize pre-revolutionary france.

. faurisson was a holocaust denier, and chomsky went out of his way to defend him

so it is not impossible to criticize the atrocities of "others" (im british so feel odd about this -- i guess im not under the obligation to criticize the bombing of cambodia). no, it is not impossible, just about as useful as criticizing something from centuries ago.

There has never been an American politician or reporter who lost his job because he attacked Milosevic. It's easy to make that criticism, because it's essentially meaningless. Whereas bringing up the US's actions in Cambodia or Nicaragua or Chile (etc. etc. etc.) gets you marginalized.

As I said earlier re: the Sudan reference, he's writing in an atmosphere where even the most progressive Americans (by and large) consider an American life more valuable than the life of an African or a Honduran or whatever. They may not do so consciously, but they do.

As far as I can determine, he is a relatively apolitical liberal of some sort.

...

I see no antisemitic implications in denial of the existence of gas chambers, or even denial of the Holocaust. Nor would there be antisemitic implications, per se, in the claim that the Holocaust (whether one believes it took place or not) is being exploited, viciously so, by apologists for Israeli repression and violence. I see no hint of antisemitic implications in Faurisson's work.

o_O

i used the word "impossible" instead of "ethically almost entirely without value" because i was doing it from memory.

This is a step in the right direction, in that it at least implies that your memory was incorrect. This is probably as close as you will come to saying that your original statement was wrong, and those who have sought to correct you were justified in doing so.

Presumably, you believe that Chomsky is wrongheaded, and that his words and actions make this plain to anyone who (like yourself) appreciates them at their face value. So, it shouldn't be hard to base your argument on what he did say, rather than fetching new words to replace his, or raising ideas that were in his mind, but unstated, and supplying motives that cannot be substantiated. I'm sure you would appreciate being extended the same courtesy.

if chomsky really believes that it is "ethically valueless" to criticize the atrocities of other countries, it's a bit ironic that he gave amnesty international's annual lecture last year. did he tell them that they've been wasting their time?

i always get him mixed up with anna chlumsky.

Um, Amnesty Intenational is kind of international, you see. Which would seem to say that it doesn't have an "own country" it must confine its criticisms to.

Aimless I'm kinda on your side but you are being hella condescending

^^^ a criticism that is ethically almost entirely without value

It is easy to have negative emotional reactions to Chomsky. This has practical repercussions for his agenda, since he is presumably trying to persuade people and emotions are deeply involved in that. I just get pissed off at people who do not understand the degree to which their conclusions are based in emotion and their understanding of him is not based in his words or ideas but in their emotional reactions to his manner.

I get pissed off, not because I think people should not be emotional. It's that I think they should have better self-knowledge and self-awareness. They should be able to uncloud their minds long enough to actually make out what he is saying. Then, if they still choose to follow their feelings, at least they are aware of their motives.

I get pissed off, because this nearly universal self-ignorance is the primary reason human society is so screwed up and most people are so unhappy. And there is no good excuse for it. Everyone can examine their own mental processes. Everyone can penetrate their own motives. All it takes is attention and a modest amount of courage and honesty.

It especially pisses me off when the self-blind, the reactionary and the self-satisfied are clearly intelligent enough to engage in sophisticated rhetoric.

I cannot help that this pisses me off. I apologize for any rudeness I have engaged in as a result of allowing this irritation to override my desire to be courteous.

Um, Amnesty Intenational is kind of international, you see. Which would seem to say that it doesn't have an "own country" it must confine its criticisms to.

― Aimless, Monday, January 18, 2010 7:47 PM (51 minutes ago) Bookmark

spelling it out: amnesty was founded and still operates as a letter writing campaign which tries to shame despots into releasing political prisoners. the people doing the writing are generally not from the country in question, because it isn't wise to send a dictator a list of internal political opponents. this is why it's an object lesson in the ethical value of critizing abuses by other countries, because in many cases the criticism can't be done internally.

the results speak for themselves: within eight years, amnesty claimed 2,000 prisoners of conscience had been released. i dunno how many thousands they've reached now. imo it's pretty moving to see international solidarity in action like that.

so why has chomsky got himself in a position where he is casting aspersions on the ethical value of work like this? there's no need for him to have argued himself into that corner - it is possible to criticize atrocities whoever perpetrates them. but chomsky doesn't, or he changes the subject back to the usa's crimes.

spelling it out:

Thank you. So much better than shooting from the lip. Amnesty Int'l's work is certainly worthwhile, and has ethical value. And as a case in point it disproves Chomsky's contention that such denunciations have "about as much ethical value as denouncing atrocities that took place in the 18th century."

Which all goes to prove that at the time Chomsky made this statement, he was not taking all the facts into account, and that he overstated his case.

However, it does not prove that Chomsky had bad motives for saying this, or a hidden agenda, or was defending those who perpetrate atrocities.

it is possible to criticize atrocities whoever perpetrates them. but chomsky doesn't, or he changes the subject back to the usa's crimes.

Hmmm. I severely doubt the first part of this statement is true -- that Chomsky does not criticize any atrocities apart from those committed by the USA. Even you seem to doubt its truth, considering the second half of your own statement: "or he changes the subject..."

If I go out and find some bona-fide Chomsky quote that criticizes another government's abuses would it change your view of him at all? It would seem to me not, but I am only guessing about that.

As for his criticizing the USA's crimes, I wish to god someone would explain to me why this is so terribly objectionable, especially if Amnesty Int'l doing it for other countries is such an excellent thing. Are not crimes crimes, regardless?

hav we mentioned that back in the day he was a hottie???

still is imo

did i just say that

yeah i think so too but i wdnt here if it wasnt like solidarity

Picked up the Essential Chomsky recently to get more of a feel for the range of his writing, especially the earlier linguistics stuff. I knew what I thought of him as a thinker but didn't realise what a bad writer he was - zero zip or energy, pedantic rather than polemical. Once you get the gist there's very little incentive to keep reading. I suppose it's testament to the force of his ideas that he could be so influential despite such leaden prose. Second this:

he sure is awful at talking to people who don't already agree with everything he says.

― (The Other) J.D. (J.D.), Monday, January 11, 2010 8:21 AM (1 year ago) Bookmark

It's good to read something like his Watergate response, though, and be reminded that so much of what we know think of as a generic left-wing reading of US foreign policy once felt fresh and heretical. Not too much soft-soaping of anti-American dictators in this collection fortunately.

i remember paul berman's 'terror and liberalism' had a big effect on me in the mid-'00s, and he has an interesting discussion of chomsky. basically he criticizes him for reducing everything to materialist concerns and being incapable of seeing beyond his economic determinism.

the berman book didn't really hold up for me on a recent reread -- lots of poor logic and lazy argument thinly disguised by an engaging style -- but he sums up my problem with chomsky pretty well. and yeah, his writing is a real slog. it's no accident that his most popular books are transcripts of his interviews and lectures.

even his take on watergate kind of speaks to his weakness as a political analyst -- chomsky measures everything by the standard of an unrealized anarchist paradise. i've never heard him cite any event in american history as a positive development.

zero zip or energy

applies also to his speaking style

i remember paul berman's 'terror and liberalism' had a big effect on me in the mid-'00s

J.D, we have so many similar interests.

I like the point about focussing on "materialist concerns". Compared to other writers on topics like Kosovo or post-9/11, Chomsky has no apparent interest in how people behave and make decisions. Because he always expects the worst of western govts he ignores all the times when things could have been different if certain personalities hadn't held sway. For me the fact that Blair had to beg and bully Clinton to act in Kosovo - whether or not you're pro or anti - is essential to understanding that incident but Chomsky always comes back to the same assumed macro agenda and skips the details. It also means his analysis lacks curiosity because [heavy sigh] what do you expect? America always does this. Maybe this is what bleeds the energy from his writing - instead of being energised by events, he comes across as a weary schoolteacher forced to make the same points in lesson after lesson, year after year, never surprised.

^^^^^^^

But the strangest attack on Chomsky is the insinuation that he has changed nothing. Aside from the metrics demonstrating that he has more reach and influence than virtually any public intellectual in the world, some of which Edemariam cites, I'd say that there is no living political writer who has more radically changed how more people think in more parts of the world about political issues than he. If you accept the premise (as I do) that the key to political change is to convince people of pervasive injustice and the need to act, then it's virtually laughable to depict him as inconsequential. Washington power-brokers and their media courtiers do not discuss him, and he does not make frequent (or any) appearances on US cable news outlets, but outside of those narrow and insular corridors - meaning around the world - few if any political thinkers are as well-known, influential or admired (to its credit, the Guardian, like some US liberal outlets, does periodically publish Chomsky's essays).

Like any person with a significant political platform, Chomsky is fair game for all sorts of criticisms. Like anyone else, he should be subjected to intense critical and adversarial scrutiny. Even admirers should listen to his (and everyone else's) pronouncements with a critical ear. Like anyone who makes prolific political arguments over the course of many years, he's made mistakes.

But what is at play here is this destructive dynamic that the more one dissents from political orthodoxies, the more personalized, style-focused and substance-free the attacks become. That's because once someone becomes sufficiently critical of establishment pieties, the goal is not merely to dispute their claims but to silence them. That's accomplished by demonizing the person on personality and style grounds to the point where huge numbers of people decide that nothing they say should even be considered, let alone accepted. It's a sorry and anti-intellectual tactic, to be sure, but a brutally effective one.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/mar/23/noam-chomsky-guardian-personality

Good interview on Radio 3's Night Waves this week.

i was really into chomsky in high school

the piece on the cuban missile crisis was one of the best things he's done in years.

link?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/oct/15/cuban-missile-crisis-russian-roulette

i want to know how can anyone read that and still be comforted by MAD

Eric Alterman's book on lying slays the Kennedys for turning the Jupiter missile swap into an example of American machismo triumphant; it poisoned the national security establishment for years, leading it to believe that staring down the Russkies will make'em blink.

otm, tho jfk does deserve some credit for not turning down khrushchev's offer and just bombing the missile sites, like all his advisers (including rfk) wanted.

despite his flaws chomsky's still worth reading when you're a grown-up, unlike (say) howard zinn.

i still like chomsky, watch youtubes, etc., but i was p reactionary in high school so i didn't really have the phase. i'm prob in the phase now. greenwald piece otm i think, especially about how it's mainstream liberals who are the most vicious and condescending re chomsky (and anyone Unserious); the right can't tell the difference between him and obama and mao so why would they bother.

mainstream liberals are naturally vicious and condescending, as much as Tea Partiers.

i agree with the piece in the sense that describing chomsky's tone as anything other than deadly dull is hilariously off the money.

so one time i ended up going to a chomsky talk and he ended up focusing on the militarization of space and i have this enduring image of him like dr. evil from austin powers talking about building a giant "laser" on the "moon".

despite his flaws chomsky's still worth reading when you're a grown-up, unlike (say) howard zinn.

― (The Other) J.D. (J.D.), Saturday, March 23, 2013 5:24 PM (6 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

aw man the world is a poorer place since zinn died

Edamariam (and MacFarquhar's) assessment of Chomsky's style is otm. Withering sarcasm being one of Greenwald's trademarks too - his "summarising" paragraph after the Edamariam quote is a masterpiece of disingenuousness. But I admire his chasing down of the "self-hating Jew" quote - that's not the kind of charge that should be quoted out of context.

"In one case, a reported decision to assemble a nuclear torpedo for battle readiness was aborted at the last minute by Second Captain Vasili Archipov, who may have saved the world from nuclear disaster. There is little doubt what the US reaction would have been had the torpedo been fired"

little doubt huh

There is little doubt what the US reaction would have been had the torpedo been fired

incineration of US citizens?

lol matt i'll give u credit for consistency

Matt apparently has no clear conception of US military thinking at the height of the cold war. Better dead than red was not just a catchy slogan to them, and if 150 million americans had to die to defeat the USSR, that was a price they were altogether willing to pay. Their bigger fear was that the reds would get the jump on us and deliver a massive first strike before we could retaliate with our entire arsenal and blow the USSR into radioactive molecular fragments. The joint chiefs were almost indistinguishable from Dr. Strangelove characters.

I have more than a little doubt about what the response would have been to one crazy submarine captain, not acting on orders, deciding to nuke some American destroyers. Nuclear holocaust is not exactly the only outcome.

Your doubt exists. This is now established beyond doubt.

Whether the captain acted with orders or not would not have been known to the US government and there was no established mechanism for communicating with the Soviet government in a timely way to find out. The detonation of a nuclear weapon against a US target would certainly have been taken both as an act of war and as the start of a nuclear attack. Doctrine at the time said that instantaneous retaliation was the only possible path to 'victory'. The president's failure to retaliate could easily have led to insubordination somewhere in the chain of command.

challompsky

Doctrine at the time said that instantaneous retaliation was the only possible path to 'victory'. The president's failure to retaliate could easily have led to insubordination somewhere in the chain of command.

― Aimless, Sunday, March 24, 2013 8:45 PM (13 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

on what targets would the US choose to retaliate? How many? Complete nuclear annihilation is what Chomsky implies.

yes, that was the policy, scholar.

when the stakes are that high it's hard to predict what human beings will do, no matter what their policy is

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

http://www.dailypaul.com/260261/the-ron-paul-of-a-nuclear-imminent-ussr-vasili-arkhipov

when the stakes are that high it's hard to predict what human beings will do, no matter what their policy is

― Matt Armstrong, Sunday, March 24, 2013 4:10 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Ummm....

"Restraint! Why are you so concerned with saving their lives? The whole idea is to kill the bastards! At the end of the war, if there are two Americans and one Russian, we win!" --Thomas Power, commander in chief of the Strategic Air Command from 1957 to 1964, speaking to William Kaufmann of the RAND Corporation in 1960, cited by Fred Kaplan, The Wizards of Armageddon

Yeah, it's not at all inconceivable that a first strike would have given LeMay all he needed to override the Kennedys. And that would have been complete nuclear annihilation.

I'm not saying it's inconceivable

correct. you are saying you have doubts, however poorly grounded they are in historic fact. i can't say i blame you for wanting to think that people are smarter than to blow up the world. but we're speaking cold war military commanders here, not people who think as you do.

I have more than a little doubt about what the response would have been to one crazy submarine captain, not acting on orders, deciding to nuke some American destroyers. Nuclear holocaust is not exactly the only outcome.

i don't think it's so much that the u.s. would have responded to the nuking of some destroyers by bombing the soviet union as that it would have made an already tense situation 100 times tenser and made it much more difficult for kennedy to find a face-saving alternative to bombing the missile sites. which means the ball's in khrushchev's court and he's no less surrounded by warmongering hard-liners than kennedy is. so, yeah, i think it's definitely got horrifically catastrophic consequences, tho chomsky's wrong to frame it as if "the US reaction" were the only thing happening.

no ready knowledge of what caused the attack + political pressure + a decade of focus from executive branch down on "massive retaliation" as the only guarantee of american security + the political symbolism of Nukes Having Been Fired = j.d. otm re "face-saving alternatives" to bombing the sites. bombers would be shot at and maybe down, as a u2 already had been; any progression to an invasion would probably have ended up involving tactical nukes; once that happened i think the options would have been gone. so yeah, the path out gets rly rly narrow once someone's actually fired a nuke.

that said idk if khrushchev would ever have fired a first strike. he seemed to think it couldn't happen. plenty around him, yeah, did not feel this way; but he was (then) more securely autocratic than kennedy, who was extremely politically vulnerable + all jittered up along with the rest of the country by the bluster khrushchev thought was safe. i think the chances of war were rly high but it seems like it would have gone from soviet nukes fired locally in cuba to a major u.s. first strike + soviet retaliation.

or not "safe" but yknow, a psychological bargaining-chip counter to american nuclear superiority + encirclement. which is obv a p irresponsible way to behave.

i can't say i blame you for wanting to think that people are smarter than to blow up the world. but we're speaking cold war military commanders here, not people who think as you do.

Matt, is this true? I mean, does your general skepticism about the possibilities of nuclear use (assuming that your skepticism re Iran/NK is linked to your skepticism here re US/USSR) come from your own feelings about rational/intelligent behavior, or does it stem from elsewhere?

Rewatching bits of Thirteen Days, I'd forgotten what a pussy the film's Kennedycentric pov makes of "Adlai."

http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/15917-noam-chomsky-smoke-and-mirrors-or-civil-liberties-under-president-obama

https://twitter.com/zizek_ebooks/status/327527647330582529

http://andrewgelman.com/2013/04/19/chomsky-chomsky-chomsky-chomsky-furiously/

Note controversial photo choice.

i thought this was pretty otm:

dawkins has become like chomsky where there's two types of conversations you can have about the dude and unfortunately the one you're more likely to have is by far the less interesting
― balls, Tuesday, April 23, 2013 7:19 AM (4 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

except that link suggests that if i were more educated about the contemporary state of linguistics i might feel like both conversations are uninteresting

who better to hear from than a statistician

I knew someone who worked in a bookstore and someone came in asking if they had anything by Norm Champsky once. I would like to think Norm is a friend of Dick Dorkins.

http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/15917-noam-chomsky-smoke-and-mirrors-or-civil-liberties-under-president-obama

― (The Other) J.D. (J.D.), Thursday, April 25, 2013 5:04 PM

Good read -- thanks.

Mainly posted that link to see if anyone noticed the picture of teh RONG Noam.

I did. Funny comments about it.

alfred otm, the truth-out article is worth a read

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jun/04/us-disaster-race-noam-chomsky

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, who died recently and was the object of mockery, insult, and hatred throughout the Western world, attended a session of the U.N. General Assembly a few years ago where he elicited all sorts of ridicule for calling George W. Bush a devil. He also gave a speech there that was quite interesting. Of course, Venezuela is a major oil producer. Oil is practically their whole gross domestic product. In that speech, he warned of the dangers of the overuse of fossil fuels and urged producer and consumer countries to get together and try to work out ways to reduce fossil fuel use. That was pretty amazing on the part of an oil producer. You know, he was part Indian, of indigenous background. Unlike the funny things he did, this aspect of his actions at the U.N. was never even reported.

So, at one extreme you have indigenous, tribal societies trying to stem the race to disaster. At the other extreme, the richest, most powerful societies in world history, like the United States and Canada, are racing full-speed ahead to destroy the environment as quickly as possible. Unlike Ecuador, and indigenous societies throughout the world, they want to extract every drop of hydrocarbons from the ground with all possible speed.

this might be the stupidest thing I've ever seen chomsksy write

i felt the same way but then i kept reading and got to this part

Take the case of Iran, which is considered in the West – not in the Arab world, not in Asia – the gravest threat to world peace. It's a Western obsession, and it's interesting to look into the reasons for it, but I'll put that aside here. Is there a way to deal with the supposed gravest threat to world peace? Actually there are quite a few. One way, a pretty sensible one, was proposed a couple of months ago at a meeting of the non-aligned countries in Tehran. In fact, they were just reiterating a proposal that's been around for decades, pressed particularly by Egypt, and has been approved by the U.N. General Assembly.

The proposal is to move toward establishing a nuclear-weapons-free zone in the region. That wouldn't be the answer to everything, but it would be a pretty significant step forward. And there were ways to proceed. Under U.N. auspices, there was to be an international conference in Finland last December to try to implement plans to move toward this. What happened?

You won't read about it in the newspapers because it wasn't reported – only in specialist journals. In early November, Iran agreed to attend the meeting. A couple of days later Obama cancelled the meeting, saying the time wasn't right. The European Parliament issued a statement calling for it to continue, as did the Arab states. Nothing resulted. So we'll move toward ever-harsher sanctions against the Iranian population – it doesn't hurt the regime – and maybe war. Who knows what will happen?

his "i'm the only person who knows that kennedy's decisions during the cuban missile crisis were heavily influenced by domestic political concerns, seriously, look it up, you won't find it anywhere" thing is getting annoying

Obama has also made speeches about reducing dependence on fossil fuels. His administration has even backed solar companies. Chavez's speech is meaningless. And the noble environmentalist savage stuff is just

yeah that whole line of argument is almost aggressively dishonest it's like he's not even trying

people in the west hate this oil dictator but believe or not he made a speech about the environment once -> ps he has some indigenous blood -> "So, at one extreme you have indigenous, tribal societies trying to stem the race to disaster. "

"part indian"

lol. poor chomsky lapsing into self-parody in his old age. i don't think the part that mordy posted is that stupid though. there should be other ways of "dealing" with iran besides sanctions, which are really brutal toward the iranian people to say the least.

Chomsky hates Barack Obama, but he has made many major speeches about overuse of fossil fuels. You know, he was part African, his father came from Africa. So on the one hand you have African societies trying to stem the race to disaster, on the other hand you have indigenous, tribal societies like Canada racing full-speed ahead to destroy the environment as quickly as possible.

lol

but that's always been my problem with Chomsky - he's pretty sharp as an analyst of US policy, but he puts rosy glasses on whenever he looks at "the other side." He acts like only the US applies realpolitik but not other countries.

I mean he's not always perfect on the US either -- he kind of ascribes to a fallacy that if things turn out a certain way then the US must have intended things that way, i.e. that things always go according to the US's plan. But at least he is an intelligent counter to the bullshitty exceptionalist views of American foreign policy that you see in most media.

that is the big problem with his rhetorical approach. i guess he is uncomfortable saying that "everyone is terrible" as it would make things seem hopeless, and obscure what he feels is the special degree of culpability the US has for basically all destructive global phenomena because of its massive power and influence.

well it sucks that he is uncomfortable talking about a world where yes venezuela and iran might not always have pure motives but this is not just supposed to be a game where we try to figure out 'who really is the worst country, ever'

he was a big deal to me in high school/early college. increasingly though i think he sees his role as a polemicist more than a fair-minded analyst of global politics. i think he is like howard zinn, in that he is more interested in portraying a perspective obscured by the mainstream media than he is in portraying an accurate perspective.

lol. poor chomsky lapsing into self-parody in his old age. i don't think the part that mordy posted is that stupid though. there should be other ways of "dealing" with iran besides sanctions, which are really brutal toward the iranian people to say the least.

it's deeply stupid bc it pretends as though the UN and the US have gone immediately into sanctions and not negotiated or met w/ Iranian leaders at all, when in fact they have met numerous times and sanctions became popular specifically as a response to Iranian unwillingness to curtail their program. in chomsky fantasy land though everyone wants to do the right thing, it's just that the great satan won't let them.

you people know fuck all about chavez and the politics of latin america.

but that's always been my problem with Chomsky - he's pretty sharp as an analyst of US policy, but he puts rosy glasses on whenever he looks at "the other side." He acts like only the US applies realpolitik but not other countries.

― i don't even have an internet (Hurting 2), Wednesday, June 5, 2013 9:59 AM (9 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

ding ding ding (he's hardly alone in this though)

i agree with a lot that he has written, of course

but he seems like one awfully haughty, awfully humorless dude. would hate to be at a wedding w/ him at my table

he was a big deal to me in high school/early college. increasingly though i think he sees his role as a polemicist more than a fair-minded analyst of global politics. i think he is like howard zinn, in that he is more interested in portraying a perspective obscured by the mainstream media than he is in portraying an accurate perspective.

― the strange and important sound of the synthesizer (Treeship)

this.

i would agree w/ treeship (tho i never want to read another word of zinn, ugh) except i get the sense that a lot of chomsky's readers aren't really interested in getting different perspectives, they're just taking all their cues from him and no one else. chomsky's benevolent-alien-looking-down-on-earth perspective is interesting and valuable in a lot of ways, but it's also not quite enough.

in a way i agree with him that it's wrong to frame JFK as the hero of cuban missile crisis when it's more like everyone's guilty (and khrushchev, as implicated in stalin's crimes as anyone, turns out to sort of be the only plausible hero). but it's not really fair or constructive to write (as chomsky does) as if the whole incident took place in a vacuum and there hadn't already been a cold war for 15 years and JFK weren't being pushed by everyone in his cabinet to tell the soviets to go to hell -- it wasn't just about him 'maintaining his macho image.'

I sort of feel that a lot of what Chomsky says is vulnerable to degrading into conspiracy theories. Not that he is a conspiracy theorist, but having got hold of his ideas, it is very easy to turn into someone who, at parties for example, talks about how the meeja is evil, yeah, and America is evil, yeah?

I get the impression that a lot of people itt think they were stuck in this stage when they were younger.

otm all of that. he was literally the least macho person in the room. khrushchev probably the most likeable person involved but on the other hand you can see some of the reasons he was removed in two years. he got what he wanted but he had to keep it a secret and meanwhile he freaked everybody out. xp

(xp to me) Not that you couldn't say that about, you know, any writer - but some seem particularly vulnerable to it?

http://thecable.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2013/08/13/after_multiple_denials_cia_admits_to_snooping_on_noam_chomsky

wow, i missed chomsky referring to hugo chavez as a representative of an 'indigenous, tribal society.' yeesh.

http://inthesetimes.com/article/15702/obama_doctrine_exceptionalism_isolationism/

well we should organize a big field trip to see this one

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d9c4xJEP6eI

that looks fun, i'm down http://i44.tinypic.com/j8cx3b.png

http://critical-theory.com/nfl-player-quits-because-know-noam-chomsky/?utm_source=feedly

from the ap story:

Moffitt majored in sociology at Wisconsin and said his world view was really shaped over the last couple of years when he began studying the writings of the Dalai Lama and Noam Chomsky.

He hopes to become a public figure in philosophy and politics.

Moffitt said he’s looking forward to speaking his mind on the radio and in podcasts he’s going to produce.

Gondry film whizzes by in 88 minutes, lotsa surprises. Wonderful.

is it mostly about his language stuff?

i mean language/learning stuff i guess

i can't wait to see it! he's not even my favorite linguist but i am looking forward to brainy ideas + goofy/twee animation

rip

Don't say "rip" unless you mean it

yes, language/learning/linguistics is a big part of it, from reading his father's scholarly work on old Hebrew texts at age ten onward. But other things too.

also about Gondry's language stuff, being misunderstood by Noam and others etc

ooooh yes
must see

If you spell-check Comiskey Park on Word, the first suggestion is Chomsky.

http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/the-limits-of-discourse

wow don't ever answer any of this tool's emails

rofl Sam Harris

LOL can't believe he let that guy troll him for that long. Nearly every sentence from Sam Harris is soaked in aggressive accusations.

Before engaging on this topic, I’d like to encourage you to approach this exchange as though we were planning to publish it.

^ gonna try this line on all interlocutors henceforth to encourage them to have the proper frame of mind

The idea of publishing personal correspondence is pretty weird, a strange form of exhibitionism – whatever the content. Personally, I can’t imagine doing it. However, if you want to do it, I won’t object.

Haaaa

I assume Harris was planning to publish all along? If it wound up being a real discussion, he'd have managed to force the debate he wanted. If not, then it's a "cautionary tale."

I heard Harris on a podcast recently and he's a truly terrible 'moral philosopher' or whatever he's trying to pass himself off as. Awful analogies, constantly begs the question.

yeah jmm - transparently planning, i would say

presumably a rational person would only do that if they were confident it would only score them points with an audience they already had in their pocket, for sticking it to the aloof outmoded authoritah or whatever

I found Harris' approach fairly magnanimous, really.

lol sam harris, what a buffoon. so he basically emails noam to remind him of the accusations sammy boy has written about him, yet expects to be given the benefit of the doubt. can't believe noam took his sheep-act for so long

lol at Sam Harris, with his undergrad philosophy major mind circa 1980 encased in amber

Asked whether he anticipated any major changes in U.S. foreign policy under a new administration, Chomsky predicted a succeeding Democratic administration would likely carry on President Obama’s policy of relying on “primarily the drone global assassination campaign,” which he described as breaking “new records in international terrorism,” but had this even more dire prediction about a Republican as commander-in-chief:

The situation with a Republican administration is much less clear. The party has drifted far off the spectrum of parliamentary politics. If the pronouncements of the current crop of candidates can be taken seriously, the world could be facing deep trouble. Take, for example, the nuclear deal with Iran. Not only are they unanimously opposed to it but they are competing on how quickly to bomb Iran. It’s a very strange moment in American political history, and in a state with awesome powers of destruction, that should cause not a little concern.

http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/33519-the-empire-of-chaos-an-interview-with-noam-chomsky

I don't think there was anything in Requiem for the American Dream that wasn't in the other two Chomsky documentaries I've seen, but a good introduction/summation (supposedly his last lengthy interview for a film).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zI_Ik7OppEI

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2016/06/09/a-case-against-america/

Chomsky’s book is not an objective account of the past. It is a polemic designed to awaken Americans from complacency. America, in his view, must be reined in, and he makes the case with verve and self-confident assertion, even if factual details are sometimes selective or scarce.

Yet Who Rules the World? is also an infuriating book because it is so partisan that it leaves the reader convinced not of his insights but of the need to hear the other side. It doesn’t help that the book is a collection of previously published essays with no effort to trim the repetitive points that pop up in chapter after chapter. Nor was much attempt made to update earlier chapters in light of later events. The Iranian nuclear accord and the Paris climate deal are mentioned only toward the end of the book, even though the issues of Iran’s nuclear program and climate change appear in earlier chapters.

At times Chomsky’s book suffers from simple sloppiness. For example, he reports that “the Obama administration considered reviving military commissions” on Guantánamo when in fact these commissions have been operating there for most of President Barack Obama’s eight years in office. And in certain places it is simply confused, as when Chomsky quotes from a review by Jessica Mathews in these pages and implies that she subscribes to the view that America advances “universal principles” rather than “national interests,” when in fact she was criticizing that perspective as part of her negative review of a book by Bret Stephens.*

Quelle surprise

He's getting old (87) and should probably retire from the world of heated polemics, which is a bit too strenuous a playing field for someone of his advanced age. But I see he is still capable of infuriating people, so maybe he still serves a purpose after all.

it's unfortunate he's so sloppy because he makes some interesting observations

http://www.theonion.com/article/exhausted-noam-chomsky-just-going-to-try-and-enjoy-17404

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2016/may/20/noam-chomsky-on-donald-trump-almost-a-death-knell-for-the-human-species

On November 8, the most powerful country in world history, which will set its stamp on what comes next, had an election. The outcome placed total control of the government -- executive, Congress, the Supreme Court -- in the hands of the Republican Party, which has become the most dangerous organization in world history.

Apart from the last phrase, all of this is uncontroversial. The last phrase may seem outlandish, even outrageous. But is it? The facts suggest otherwise. The Party is dedicated to racing as rapidly as possible to destruction of organized human life. There is no historical precedent for such a stand....

It is hard to find words to capture the fact that humans are facing the most important question in their history -- whether organized human life will survive in anything like the form we know -- and are answering it by accelerating the race to disaster....

One of the difficulties in raising public concern over the very severe threats of global warming is that 40 percent of the US population does not see why it is a problem, since Christ is returning in a few decades. About the same percentage believe that the world was created a few thousand years ago. If science conflicts with the Bible, so much the worse for science. It would be hard to find an analogue in other societies.

The Democratic Party abandoned any real concern for working people by the 1970s, and they have therefore been drawn to the ranks of their bitter class enemies, who at least pretend to speak their language -- Reagan's folksy style of making little jokes while eating jelly beans, George W. Bush's carefully cultivated image of a regular guy you could meet in a bar who loved to cut brush on the ranch in 100-degree heat and his probably faked mispronunciations (it's unlikely that he talked like that at Yale), and now Trump, who gives voice to people with legitimate grievances -- people who have lost not just jobs, but also a sense of personal self-worth -- and who rails against the government that they perceive as having undermined their lives (not without reason)....

For many years, I have been writing and speaking about the danger of the rise of an honest and charismatic ideologue in the United States, someone who could exploit the fear and anger that has long been boiling in much of the society, and who could direct it away from the actual agents of malaise to vulnerable targets. That could indeed lead to what sociologist Bertram Gross called "friendly fascism" in a perceptive study 35 years ago. But that requires an honest ideologue, a Hitler type, not someone whose only detectable ideology is Me. The dangers, however, have been real for many years, perhaps even more so in the light of the forces that Trump has unleashed.

http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/38360-trump-in-the-white-house-an-interview-with-noam-chomsky

'legitimate grievances' smdh

he just means workers being smashed in the face for 40 years, as someone (Greenwald?) put it. If you think he's trying to excuse Trump voting, read again.

‘I am opposed to any appearance in Israel that is used for nationalistic or other propaganda purposes to cover up its occupation and denial of Palestinian human rights. I’ve been involved in activities to hold Israel accountable for its international law violations since before the BDS movement took shape. While I have some tactical differences with the BDS movement, I strongly support the actions and continue to participate in them.’

‘The oft repeated idea that Israel is a “vibrant democracy” is an absurd one. Unless the qualification is purely symbolic, there can be no “democratic Jewish (Christian, Muslim, white) state”. In the case of Israel, the “Jewishness” is very far from symbolic. There is no need to repeat here what I’ve written in the past, documenting extensively Israel’s discriminatory practices.’

https://artistsforpalestine.org.uk/2017/10/12/chomsky-clarifies-position-on-the-cultural-boycott-of-israel/

well of course

"Manufacturing Consent was severely criticized as having soft-pedaled evidence of genocide in Cambodia, Rwanda and, during the Bosnia war, Srebrenica."

The problem with this statement is that Manufacturing Consent was published in 1988—years before the 1994 Rwandan genocide or the 1995 Srebrenica massacre.

http://fair.org/home/nyts-obit-for-ed-herman-requires-a-correction/