Why Noam Chomsky...

[Colder Hands]

CH,

Don't generalize.

u are most correct, thx for calling me out. post edited

[Guest Raidne]

I think one of his more constant themes is that we evaluate non-Western powers unequally generally, just for being not Western. Contrary to the, yes, propaganda, Chomsky is not a Khmer Rouge supporter - he tried to make the case that the US exaggerated casualties to justify our involvement, based on US intelligence sources. Now that people have been to grave sites, it's likely he was wrong, but that instance of error is less pernicious than the deliberate underreporting of civilian casualties in Iraq.

Of course he does. He's a lawyer. But he recognizes that he makes controversial arguments, and defends them as such. He doesn't, like Chomsky, hide behind a pretense of intellectual objectivity.

Shit, I use my JD to hide behind a pretense of intellectual objectivity all the time. :) In philosophy, I didn't believe in intellectual objectivity, so it's kind of a non sequitur.

To Kouran - I would say, without more, that you put forth a legal argument and not a moral one, and one based on the victors writing the laws, at that.

[Colder Hands]

I think one of his more constant themes is that we evaluate non-Western powers unequally generally, just for being not Western. Contrary to the, yes, propaganda, Chomsky is not a Khmer Rouge supporter - he tried to make the case that the US exaggerated casualties to justify our involvement, based on US intelligence sources. Now that people have been to grave sites, it's likely he was wrong, but that instance of error is less pernicious than the deliberate underreporting of civilian casualties in Iraq.

so he may be right on the amount of civilian deaths in iraq so we should forgive all his wrongs of the past? or being correct once means he is credible? other sources i trust have reported the civilian death tolls and coverage there of. i will go with them over chomsky, who again is pouncing on something that appeals to his base and supports his past propaganda.

the worst part of this, is that the validation of the iraq totals will give his supports fire power to say "see!" and "he was right about xyz too! just can't prove it yet!"

[Guest Raidne]

To clarify, I'm saying that Chomsky was likely wrong about the casualties in Cambodia, but there is nothing beyond baseless questioning of his motives to suggest that he was a supporter or found the events anything less than utterly tragic. It was a regular ol' error in calculation.

[Colder Hands]

To clarify, I'm saying that Chomsky was likely wrong about the casualties in Cambodia, but there is nothing beyond baseless questioning of his motives to suggest that he was a supporter or found the events anything less than utterly tragic. It was a regular ol' error in calculation.

go back and listen to his interviews, he sure does not sound very broken up about it or to think it was tragic. in fact he sounds quite the opposite, nuch like he does with the holocaust

[Guest Raidne]

I don't evaluate philosopher types for Bill Clinton like abilities to publicly emote convincingly.

You realize the whole things stems from the fact that he used the reporting of that event as an example of US propaganda? It's not like he has an axe to grind about the Khmer Rouge.

And tell me, what does he sound like about the holocaust. That is definitely something we should be sure to consider, but I'll let you get out the capitalist propaganda before I get into it so everyone knows what we're talking about.

[Colder Hands]

I don't evaluate philosopher types for Bill Clinton like abilities to publicly emote convincingly.

You realize the whole things stems from the fact that he used the reporting of that event as an example of US propaganda? It's not like he has an axe to grind about the Khmer Rouge.

And tell me, what does he sound like about the holocaust. That is definitely something we should be sure to consider, but I'll let you get out the capitalist propaganda before I get into it so everyone knows what we're talking about.

yes, and you do realize that his mis-use of facts to support his alleged US propaganda whistle blowing is one of the main issues i have with him.

my bad for the holocaust reference, i said in my main post i would not get into that and then i brought it up. i retract that. i am not opening that can of worms on the boards. i will do so in PM or over a beer at a BWB meet up though ;)

[GSP]

"Raidne the fact that GWB was acting with the backing of the duly elected representatives of his nation whereas OBL was acting outside of any apparatus of a nation state puts the lie to his concept of GWB being a war criminal."

So, it's not a war crime if it's done with the backing of duly elected representatives? That's hogshit. It is the action that determines war criminality. Whether or not it was done in accordance with the aggressing nations domestic laws is an entirely different matter. If Hitler's actions had have been done in accordance with the governing principles in Germany at the time (were they, I don't know?) they still would have been war crimes. If what GWB did had the full backing of all relevent elected officials and was univerally cheered on by every U.S. citizen, that has absolutely no bearing on whether or not such actions were war crimes.

Acting on the concept of 'pre emptive war', especially against a nation that has no will or even ability to actually threaten the pre empting nation could quite possibly be a 'Crime of Aggression' imho. And the war crime "aggression" is often described as the greatest war crime, because it is the war crime which starts and makes possible all other. Doesn't fuckin matter that the actions were rubber stamped by a democratic government. Democracies can get in on war crime too.

[Former Lord of Winterfell]

To clarify, I'm saying that Chomsky was likely wrong about the casualties in Cambodia, but there is nothing beyond baseless questioning of his motives to suggest that he was a supporter or found the events anything less than utterly tragic. It was a regular ol' error in calculation.

What effort did Chomsky make to verify his claims about Cambodia before accusing the U.S. (and most of the rest of the world) of lying about it?

[Guest Raidne]

First, so we're clear, Chomsky on Chomsky on the Holocaust:

I described the Holocaust years ago as the most fantastic outburst of insanity in human history, so much so that if we even agree to discuss the matter we demean ourselves. Those statements and numerous others like them are in print, but they're basically irrelevant because you have to understand that this is part of a Stalinist-style technique to silence critics of the holy state and therefore the truth is entirely irrelevant, you just tell as many lies as you can and hope that some of the mud will stick. It's a standard technique used by the Stalinist parties, by the Nazis and by these guys.

What effort did Chomsky make to verify his claims about Cambodia before accusing the U.S. (and most of the rest of the world) of lying about it?

And for this question...

What I wrote was, and I don't have any apologies for it because it was accurate, I took the position that Pol Pot was a brutal monster, from the beginning was carrying out hideous atrocities, but the West, for propaganda purposes, was creating and inventing immense fabrications for its own political goals and not out of interest for the people of Cambodia. And my colleague and I with whom I wrote all this stuff simply ran through the list of fanatic lies that were being told and we took the most credible sources, which happened to be US intelligence, who knew more than anyone else. And we said US intelligence is probably accurate. In retrospect, that turns out to be correct, US intelligence was probably accurate. I think we were the only ones who quoted it. The fabrications were fabrications and should be eliminated. In fact, we also discussed, and I noticed nobody ever talks about this, we discussed fabrications against the US. For example a standard claim in the major works was that the US bombings had killed 600,000 people in 1973. We looked at the data and decided it was probably 200,000. So we said let's tell the truth about it. It's a crime, but it's not like anything you said. It's interesting that nobody ever objects to that. When we criticize fabrications about US crimes, that's fine, when we criticize and in fact expose much worse fabrications about some official enemy, that's horrible, it becomes apologetics.

This is in wiki, as is Christopher Hitchens defense of Chomsky.

[Guest Raidne]

Just to be clear, the data he gives in that quote is likely very, very wrong. Right now, we're looking at something like 1.25 million people executed, according to estimates from mass graves.

[Brienne the Beauty]

Noam Chomsky seems to have taken a truth (that not everything the USA does is good just because it is the USA that does it) but then completely invalidated his point by taking it to the opposite extreme (Everything the USA does is bad, just because it is the USA that does it.)

He seems to be the left wing equivalent of Ayn Rand, but with such a high IQ that people still respect him. The older I get, the less I like anarchists, left or right. We can improve society without throwing it away.

[Colder Hands]

Just to be clear, the data he gives in that quote is likely very, very wrong. Right now, we're looking at something like 1.25 million people executed, according to estimates from mass graves.

here is a full article on his views on it from a very hard hitting journalist fluff

i've never heard him speak with remorse for the dead and he has always used the holocaust as a tool to further his own name. again he just uses it as a tool to attack the US and he uses it to diminish points of state by Israel.

he has also purposely been grey about his views so he makes press and then can go back and say "my view has always been clear and in print"

he, again, is a hack in this regard.

i'd give him the benefit of the doubt and blame media for wrongly portraying but it has happened often enough it is odd. granted chomsky is always careful not to stray too far from the path so it can't be covered by the old "i am just scolding those who wrongfully use the holocaust and my own views are in print" crap.

i am well read on his views and ideas, i thank you for pointing them out though so that you might silence any negative feedback one might have toward him.

i look at his pattern of work and media exploits since the vietnam war and it is an endless cycle of using tragedy and mis-documented facts to cause awareness to ideas he has for no regard for truth in many instances. basically if he finds one person who agrees with him he'll say something and claim it to be a thought vastly held by many in xyz.

he again just uses the holocaust as a tool to scold the US and say we didn't act to save jews and that as soon as we no longer like what israel is selling we'll turn on them and basically make life for jews in the US miserable.

he has no respect for the holocaust and he uses it the same way he scolds so many others for using it.

but i guess that is what i'd expect from someone who is a hypocrite on about every level

[Former Lord of Winterfell]

Chomsky is quite adept at selectively citing his own record to make it say whatever he wants after the fact. Here is an extremely fair takedown of Chomsky's various writings on Cambodia.

http://www.mekong.net/cambodia/chomsky.htm

And it's what makes me despise the guy so thoroughly. He is very clearly aware of the uses of language and the impressions and ideas transmitted by language. So he writes articles that deliberately convey an extremely clear theme, but if later challenged, he'll point to various weasel words contained in his writing to argue that he really didn't say what he's accused of saying. That carefully-crafted use of language enables him to make outrageous argument, then later claim that he said nothing outrageous.

[Galactus]

It does, from my experience with basically every psychology student I've ever met the vast majority of Freud's ideas have been rejected.

He's more studied as a philosophy and as a historical figure in psychology rather than a psychologist.

Depends. I saw an interesting study that basically pointed out that academicians have very little use for Freud, but clinical psychologists tends to appreciate him more (if not exactly agree with him on everything) probably because a lot of his stuff deals with psychological defence mechanisms, which is something that clincial psychologists have to deal with more than academicians.

[DrownedCrow]

I thought modern psychology pretty much disregards Freudian psychoanalysis as pseudoscience.

Yes, that was the idea. He is considered extremely influential even though his ideas were bullshit.

[Guest Raidne]

CH, are you saying it's somehow dishonest debating to quote Chomsky in a thread about Chomsky? I would personally like to read some of this deliberately provocatively ambiguous stuff, but I went looking for it and can't find anything.

[Colder Hands]

CH, are you saying it's somehow dishonest debating to quote Chomsky in a thread about Chomsky? I would personally like to read some of this deliberately provocatively ambiguous stuff, but I went looking for it and can't find anything.

i'm saying i was not going to address it but in PM if you liked and then you posted it anyway in attempts to strike first perhaps

anyway, you must have looked really hard in that like 30 minutes

being at work i can drudge up links at moments notice, especially to things that date back so many years, but i can recall from the top of my head that cuny college had a collection of these. perhaps try there if you have free time.

i also seem to recall a big uproar over the signing of some french petition in the late 70s, which later chomsky dismissed as saying he felt it was something different he signed and of course he didn't feel that way.

it is amazing how many times in reply to interview follow up on these things he says he was misquoted or people only used half what he said. poor guy is always abused. and yet he practices the same use of language when supporting his views.

tom jennings had some nice articles on the above as well, you can try googling him with chomsky's name if you have time.

FLoW also pointed out a source that sites this type of behavior. though a different topic, certainly consistent with chomsky's style

alas soon i must leave until Monday night. i do hope this thread is still around when i get back. i love your attempts to pick out one piece of a pie to argue the quality of the whole. perhaps hen you look at the whole pie you'll see how rotten he is.

i also admire the lawyer in you trying to lay the burden of proof on others, but i have a hard time believing you were unable to come up with anything on his grey holocaust back ground. i will be sure to supply that come monday night on my return. i regret i could not do so sooner so that you'd have some weekend reading.

i am starting to understand your 18k posts though. you slipping in one shooters and offering no contrary proof to support anything you say and then posting one site that states chomsky's view on something when the whole of the issue is how he uses his ability with language to propitiate an image and then cover his own ass by saying his views are in print and clear. one day you'll see he is slim...

[Guest Raidne]

FYI, the linked article is the same one I linked. Ha.

[Colder Hands]

FYI, the linked article is the same one I linked. Ha.

didn't look at yours, i just knew of one that was complete puppet fluff to attempt to discount your fluff

how nice they proved to be the same

while i am gone how about you find articles that show he does not invest in everything he preaches against

or that he didn't mean to support collateral damage by Lebanon while condemning it for the US any chance he gets

his pattern of behavior and work is something that makes me ill, but these two main things above are major issues i have with him. the rest you'll always be able to find articles by chomsky discounting whatever he was claimed to say or is accused of because that is how he operates.

he uses his command of language to set up situations that gain attention, then he can compound the attention by righting what he "meant" and points to previous printed words by him. and by doing this he also gets to poke fun at his nay-sayers and claim they always try to make him look bad and yet he always comes out on top.

maybe i will put down in print i like poop. and then i'll go around telling everyone how great vomit is. and make some casual references to poop to allude that vomit might be bad but is better than poop, then i will go back and say WAAAIT i never said poop was that, because here is how i feel about poop! it is clear because it is written!

just like the wire taught us, always follow the money. and chomsky's investments tell us he is a fraud or at least he choses to seek profit over ideals