Tuesday, March 22, 2005

Is Noam Chomsky an 'Intellectual Moron'?

By Michael K. Smith

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Posted 03/22 | Add a Comment

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  1. To Michael K. Smith:

    I don’t know if the author of this article reads the comments. In case he does, I would like to ask him where does Noam Chomsky referst to Spain as an imperalialist outpost of the US?

    Quote: “ What countries did the United States transform into imperialist outposts?

    Argentina, ...,Spain,...”

    I am just interested as a Spaniard, that’s all.

    Pablo

    Posted by Pablo from Hong Kong  on  03/23  at  01:34 AM

  2. Among the innumerable errors, inanities and howlers this writer perpetrates is a myth that I genuinely thought even Chomsky’s admirers had quietly put away: that $43 million that the US supposedly gave to the Taliban in May 2001.

    As CNN reported at the time: “[Colin] Powell said the U.S. aid is administered by the United Nations and non-governmental organizations, and bypasses the Taliban, ‘who have done little to alleviate the suffering of the Afghan people, and indeed have done much to exacerbate it.’”

    I assume Michael K. Smith will, as intellectual honesty demands, publish a correction of his claim, and extend his reading a little more widely in future beyond Z Magazine and CounterPunch.

    Posted by Oliver Kamm from London  on  03/23  at  10:51 AM

  3. #1 - Spain is listed as a U.S. client state in Chomsky and Ed Herman’s “The Washington Connection and Third World Fascism,” Volume 1.  A footnote explains that Spain is one of three European clients that “underwent significant political change during the 1970s, and are included . . . because they . . . used torture on an administrative basis” for some part of the 1970s

    #2 - We all know what an honest set of people Bush Administration figures are.  Colin Powell’s presentation to the UN the month before the U.S. invasion of Iraq testifies to his capacity for official lying.  On the $43 million that was given to Afghanistan, a wide spectrum of opinion confirms that it did in fact aid the Taliban, from liberals and leftists to the right-wing libertarians at the Cato Institute.

    Oliver Kamm would do better to stop lecturing people on what they should read and deliver on his unsupported claim that the article contains “innumerable errors.”

    Posted by Michael from San Francisco  on  03/23  at  10:46 PM

  4. Oliver Kamm has a Chomsky fetish. He taps out variations on the same diatribe every time he comes across the name.

    Posted by Harry from  on  03/24  at  12:37 AM

  5. I assumed from his article that Smith was callow and ignorant. I’m sorry to say that I was being far too generous. It takes extraordinary incompetence, and a chronic inability to understand how the time-consuming but essential business of checking sources works, to protest lamely that a myth is “confirmed” by the number of people who gullibly repeat it. Those of us who write for serious media go to the original sources, Smith; we don’t just cut-and-paste rumours that we stumble across on the Internet. We check original sources, rather than plagiarise garbled third-hand accounts.

    If Smith had behaved like the serious researcher that he isn’t, he would have discovered that this whole Internet-fuelled myth derives from a claim by Robert Scheer, which in turn was based on a comprehensive distortion of what Secretary of State Powell said in his announcement in May 2001. Powell announced humanitarian aid for Afghanistan to be distributed through international agencies of the UN and NGOs; he explicitly stated that there was NO AID for the Taliban. His exact words were (emphasis added):

    At the direction of President Bush, I am today announcing a package of $43 million in new humanitarian assistance for the people of Afghanistan, including 65,000 tons of wheat, $5 million in complementary food commodities, and $10 million in other livelihood and food security programs within Afghanistan. We also expect to soon announce additional assistance to Afghan refugees....  We distribute our assistance in Afghanistan through international agencies of the United Nations and nongovernmental organizations. We provide our aid to the people of Afghanistan, not to Afghanistan’s warring factions. Our aid bypasses the Taliban, who have done little to alleviate the suffering of the Afghan people, and indeed have done much to exacerbate it.

    I note that Smith is quietly back-pedalling from his original false assertion that “the Bush Administration gave $43 million to the Taliban in 2001” to the much weaker claim that the humanitarian aid (i.e. wheat, food commodities and food security progranmmes) to stave off an impending famine “did in fact aid the Taliban”, but he’s still talking rubbish, and needs to apologise for his dishonesty and incompetence.

    Posted by Oliver Kamm from London  on  03/24  at  03:46 AM

  6. As Smith invites me to kick him again while he’s down, I’ll do as he requests. How many of his grossly ill-informed remarks does he want me to eviscerate? Let’s start with his feeble protest that Chomsky’s record of dishonesty “remains an unproven hypothesis” - which just goes to show that Smith hasn’t even read Chomsky, let alone serious historians. Chomsky’s documented serial dishonesty ranges from the Vietnam War, when the political scientist Samuel Huntington caught him in the act of doctoring source material, to recent campaigning on the Israel/Palestine conflict where Chomsky has advanced his claims of Israeli perfidy by fabricating a supposed quotation from former Israeli Foreign Minister Abba Eban.

    Had enough, Smith, or do you want to persist in the Internet equivalent of soiling yourself in public?

    Posted by Oliver Kamm from  on  03/24  at  03:56 AM

  7. If Colin Powell said something is true, therefore it’s true!  My God, why didn’t I think of that?  It’s brilliant!  Thank you so much, Mr. Kamm!  You are a genius! 

    Thanks as well for your insightful remarks about Noam Chomsky. Doctoring source material and fabricating quotations!  Scandalous!!  U.S. foreign policy crimes pale in comparison to this.  Do you think we can get Chomsky brought to the Hague?

    I’m too shocked to speak more.

    Posted by Michael from San Francisco  on  03/24  at  05:38 AM

  8. I’m afraid it will be transparent to every reader of this site that, in having to retreat to laboured sarcasm in preference to substantiating his original claims, Smith has only signalled that he is incapable of sustaining them. And, again, I’m afraid it’s worse even than that, for he demonstrably still hasn’t checked his claims even against the Internet myth that he gullibly swallowed, let alone against the original source.

    The story of the supposed $43 million gift to the Taliban originated from this column by Robert Scheer in the Los Angeles Times, 22 May 2001. Scheer’s claim was not that Powell was lying when declaring that the aid would bypass the Taliban; it was that Powell had explicitly announced that the money would go to the Taliban. Scheer wrote (emphasis added):

    That’s the message sent with the recent gift of $43 million to the Taliban rulers of Afghanistan, the most virulent anti-American violators of human rights in the world today. The gift, announced last Thursday by Secretary of State Colin Powell...

    As I have demonstrated, Scheer’s account of what Powell said is false.

    Smith, having failed to check a claim that has long been debunked, and having now to face up to this brute fact, has decided to manufacture a different claim that not a single person has ever advanced before him, viz. that Powell gave money to the Taliban while explicitly stating the opposite. Smith gives no evidence for this claim, which is unsurprising because none exists. I won’t compliment Smith by calling him a liar, because that would imply some deviousness on his part; what he’s doing is stupid dishonesty, because it’s so easily exposed as the desperate expedient of a political naif who is unversed in international politics and incapable in the examination of source material.

    But let’s have some sport with the poor bluffer nonetheless. Smith claimed that the US gave a $43 million gift to the Taliban. Faced with the incontrovertible fact that the source for this fantasy misrepresented his source material, Smith now wishes to insinuate that that material was all an official deceit, and that there is a higher truth that only he, Smith, alone in the world, has discerned. So go ahead, Smith: show us - by citing NOT garbled secondary sources who are as incompetent as you, but verifiable, checkable data on financial flows to aid recipients (the OECD compiles such data) - the existence of this $43 million gift to the Taliban. Do it now.

    I’m sorry to have to advise readers that I am able to predict with complete certainty that Smith will duck this challenge, whereupon we may draw our own conclusions about whether to take seriously anything he says on this or any other subject, ever.

    Posted by Oliver Kamm from London  on  03/24  at  07:31 AM

  9. I’m afraid it will also be clear to every reader of this site that Smith is entirely incapable of sustaining either his original claim that Chomsky’s dishonesty is “an unproven hypothesis”. Hence his manufacture for a second time of a completely different claim from the one he started with, hoping that no one will be so impolite as to point to the wreckage of his original claims. Well, that’s tough, I’m afraid, Smith, because I don’t regard flattery of a political ignoramus as part of my brief.

    I also dispute Smith’s revised claim that Chomsky’s dishonesty doesn’t matter in comparison with “US foreign policy crimes”, but that’s not the point at issue because it’s not the claim that Smith originally made. Smith -plainly having read neither Chomsky nor his critics, and being unable to tell the difference between political polemicists and serious historians - asserted (I quote again, because Smith is so eager to back-pedal once more) that Chomsky’s dishonesty is “an unproven hypothesis”. No it isn’t: I’ve just demonstrated that he doctors his source material and fabricates quotations. Case closed. As Smith can’t refute this point, he would be well-advised to cease digging himself even deeper into the chasm where he now sits.

    Posted by Oliver Kamm from London  on  03/24  at  07:47 AM

  10. Thanks Michael,

    You really went to dive to find that information ; ). Pity is just a footnote, because coming from Chomsky is almost everything I need to be certain is true. Since the first book I read from him, I have been checking many of its sources and it never fails. Indeed, I have more reasons to doubt about anyone rather than Chomsky. Trying to find mistakes about Chomsky’s wrtings while so many famous liars abound everywhere it is like continue the search of WMD in Iraq while rogue states like Israel go ballistics.

    Keep it up,
    Pablo

    Posted by Pablo from Hong Kong  on  03/24  at  08:01 AM

  11. With Oliver Kamm, read one screed and you’ve read them all. He’s got a kind of fan club because he’s perfect, in his own special way. He’d make a good character for a John Waters film.

    Posted by Harry from  on  03/24  at  02:20 PM

  12. I note with complacency and without surprise that Smith, as forecast, has ducked the challenge to substantiate his false and ignorant claims. Would he now like me to expose the rest of the gross errors he perpetrates in a brief article (I counted more than 20 in addition to the two I have already disposed of, so it will take some time to cover them all), or shall we just draw a discreet veil over the self-inflicted disaster of his venture into Chomskian criticism?

    Posted by Oliver Kamm from London  on  03/24  at  02:30 PM

  13. Nice debunking of the Chomsky hatchet job.  These little imps who try to discredit Chomsky’s work—in addition to failing miserably on every occasion—resemble lap dogs barking at the heals of men.  What is it Swift said about dunces getting together?

    Posted by Frost from Canada  on  03/24  at  11:33 PM

  14. It’s always interesting to read an actual attempt at contradicting something Chomsky actually has said.  If there is any of that, or any point at all, embedded in the so-called “criticisms” I read above, I can’t locate it.

    I advise instead you learn from mainstream intellectuals and choose to just pretend Chomsky doesn’t exist.  It’s a lot easier, and does not involve the serious risk that your audience might read something Chomsky has actually written, which couldn’t possibly help your cause as I understand it.

    Posted by Mike from United States  on  03/25  at  01:03 AM

  15. If you have trouble locating “any point at all” in my destruction of your false and ignorant claims, then I’m obviously being too polite and, to my regret, will have to be more direct.

    I understand that you describe yourself as a “dissident historian”. A dissident historian, judging by your own case, is evidently someone who writes about historical matters without either competence in the field, or familiarity with the way scholars work (i.e. checking claims against primary sources), or any academic qualifications whatsoever in history. Your article contains howler after howler, gross misconception after comprehensive demonstration of incapability in the field. I have demonstrated this with regard to your claim of the mythical $43 million donation to the Taliban, a story that has long been debunked and that you failed to check. Having been refuted on that subject beyond hope of redemption, you did what bluffers generally do when they’re caught out, and shifted your ground to another claim completely while pretending you weren’t. On being challenged to demonstrate that second claim with data, you have - as I predicted you would - ducked the challenge. You are, in short, a dishonest incompetent who is as much of a historian as I am a neurological surgeon.

    Trying to divert attention from this debacle, you asked for an instance of a further error, whereupon I provided you with one - your ignorant claim, born of having read neither Chomsky nor any reputable historian, that Chomsky’s dishonesty is an “unproven hypothesis”. On having that howler eviscerated, you switched your claim once more to something else completely - the astonishing assertion, which, supposing you really were a historian, would have you sacked immediately from any post you held - that fabricating quotations and doctoring source material is no big deal. Your conduct and your historical ignorance are an insult to your readers and a humiliation to yourself. I thus ask you once more, do you want your score of additional statements of falsehood, incompetence, ignorance and negligence exposed to public view, or would you prefer to retire terminally hurt? Consider your answer carefully, because I shall certainly comply with it.

    Posted by Oliver Kamm from London  on  03/25  at  09:09 AM

  16. The parody Kamm is much more entertaining than the real one, who apprarently takes himself seriously.

    Herod was, as any international economist would agree, a tremendous success as a King, expanding his domain from Palestine to parts of Jordan, Lebanon and Syria. Many commentators have anachronistically described this as imperialism, without realising that borders were in those days rather more fluid than our modern nation-states. Aside from that, he was threatened from without by terrorists and within by intolerant revolutionists describing themselves as the People’s Front of Judea (an anti-semitic and totalitarian organisation whose politics were corrosively anti-Roman). Faced with this, he had little choice but to acquire territory in which he could seek out what were then known as ‘evil-doers’, while pursuing more rigorous security policies in the homeland.

    That’s good stuff. The real Kamm flings tar babies sincerely.

    Posted by Harry from  on  03/25  at  01:11 PM

  17. I’m not the author of this article, so I won’t try to speak for him.  Frankly however I’m still having trouble finding a link between a minor discrepancy over US aid to the Taliban and the works of Noam Chomsky.  That said, having read the original article, and being well-versed in Chomsky’s writings myself, I think your statement that Smith has “read neither Chomsky nor any reputable historian” is simply absurd.

    I still don’t see your point, and indeed you seem far more interested in winning an argument, the parameters of which continue to elude me.

    Posted by Mike from United States  on  03/25  at  01:43 PM

  18. The issue is not a “minor discrepancy [sic!] over US aid to the Taliban”: the claimed aid to the Taliban never took place at all. Smith’s remark is a straight falsehood that has been debunked many times; Smith, being ill-read and credulous, repeated it without so much as a critical thought ever crossing his mind. What was even more breathtakingly stupid was that, on having his falsehood pointed out, Smith tried to brazen it out by insisting he was right all along - without, of course, citing any evidence whatsoever. I have asked Smith to provide data supporting his claim, and understandably, he has gone AWOL ever since. What is obviously absurd is the supposition that Smith is familiar with the work of reputable historians when he has already shown he literally doesn’t know the first thing about how historians work. Historians don’t retail any old rumour they stumble across on the Internet that accords with their political prejudices; they check claims, especially ones that would be convenient for their hypotheses, against primary sources.

    Smith additionally has shown his remoteness from any familiarity with the work of reputable historians by his astounding denial that fabricating source material is scandalous - a position that would get any real historian instantly sacked from his post and ostracised from his profession.

    Finally, Smith has shown his incompetence as an expounder of Chomsky by his ignorant assertion that Chomsky’s dishonesty is “an unproven hypothesis”, when of course it’s a fact that no person who has read Chomsky properly could possibly deny. I have already demonstrated it with two instances, at the start of Chomsky’s career as a political polemicist and two years ago respectively, of his doctoring and fabricating source material.

    There are innumerable other gross errors (I count well over 20 of them) in Smith’s brief and ignorant piece, from his inability to render Chomsky’s arguments correctly, through his own outright fabrications, to his comprehensive lack of familiarity with the notion of how to test propositions in the social sciences. Though Smith has wisely decided to duck out of the discussion rather than be held accountable for the nonsense he’s written, he has only to request the elucidation he plainly and urgently requires.

    Posted by Oliver Kamm from London  on  03/25  at  06:36 PM

  19. Mr. Kamm,
    I understand you don’t like Chomsky.  (I don’t really care for him either.) But have you ever considered that you’re wasting your time coming to this website and trying to argue the point.  You’re wasting your time and getting yourself worked up for nothing.  No one here will agree with you. 

    Articles in Press Action are often deliberately inflammatory.  (See Mickey Z, Kurt Nimmo) That’s their style.  It’s tempting to jump in and call them all idiots.  When they’re offensive, you want to offend them back.  It’s a waste of time.

    I don’t agree with 98% of what gets posted on this web page.  Still, I come back every now and then just to see what the opposition is saying.  It’s instructive.  And sometimes someone will say something interesting. 

    Don’t get mad.  Leave them alone.  Spend your efforts on something more productive.

    Posted by me from my office  on  04/13  at  12:12 AM

  20. Chomsky is neither an informed nor an honest source, but that wasn’t the point I was making here. I was observing that this piece contains numerous gross factual errors, and suggesting that the author either substantiate his claims or correct them. He has done neither, and readers will thus know better than to take him seriously in any further contributions to this site or anywhere else.

    Posted by Oliver Kamm from London  on  04/13  at  02:57 AM

  21. Mr. Kamm,
    You’re absolutely right:  you came up with facts and logic and Michael K responded with rather stupid sarcasm (comment 7).  And then everyone agreed with him and called you an idiot with a Chomsky fetish.  That’s what you can expect when you argue here.  If you keep it up long enough, some of them may start sending you hate mail.  I am speaking from experience here. 

    There are plenty of reasons why Chomsky’s political views are not taken seriously in academia:  altering original source materials, making up quotes, citing his own work in the footnotes.  Sometimes he cites other works that cite his own articles.  And aside from that, his views are generally rejected in their own right.  But there’s no point showing up at Chomsky’s fan club to argue the point.

    Posted by me from my room  on  04/13  at  07:17 AM

  22. Not for nothing, but… one of the nicest things that I ever did for myself was make the decision to evaluate a man’s ideas without succumbing to the temptation of drawing a commensurate conclusion about the presenter of those ideas.  Ideas never belong to anyone.  They are merely embraced by us for the duration that they are embraced by us.  I find it interesting that our evaluation of a man’s ideas is often accompanied by our need to identify those ideas with the man who is embracing them.  What is driving our need to identify a man’s ideas with the man anyway?  Is that what we do for ourselves, and, therefore, do for others?  If it is, then perhaps we need to take a good look at why we feel the need to identify our ideas with ourselves.

    Posted by Nader Rider from  on  04/15  at  01:06 PM

  23. I try to keep an open mind.  I almost never agree with what anyone here thinks, but I come back from time to time anyhow.  It’s not healthy to only read people who present a viewpoint you agree with. 

    In fact, I think that’s a major problem with many of the authors on this page.  They seem well read, but only in a very narrow spectrum of leftist materials.  For example, there’s lots of Israel bashing, but I haven’t seen anyone with any significant understanding of Orthodox Judaism.  Apparently none have ever read any significant portion of the Talmud.  I’ll bet none have read anything by Begin or Meir Kahane.  They should slog through Berel Wein’s Jewish history lectures.  Maybe a biography of Jabotinsky.  Likewise on other subjects, the authors seem very limited in their reading.  Nothing but fringe left wing material.

    As another example, I have several times seen people on this page claim that GE is using its media holdings to inflame hatred and cause wars so they can sell more military equipment.  But the authors seem to lack even basic business sense to determine if this is a rational business strategy for GE.  It isn’t.  GE’s military sales are a very, very small portion of its overall business.  GE’s largest division is its financial services and insurance business, which is taking a beating.  I’m sure they would like nothing better than to end all this ugly violence so they can get back to making money.

    Posted by me from my room  on  04/18  at  09:37 PM

  24. OK, let me try once more to state the salient point. It is plainly true that the author of this piece has read little in the fields of history and politics. He is also gullible to swallow any old rumour he stumbles across on the Internet. But these are not the points I am making. I am pointing out merely that Smith wrote an ill-informed polemic including numerous and gross factual errors, and that he should either substantiate his claims or retract them. His refusal to do either is more pitiable than disgraceful (after all, few are likely to treat him as an informed, let alone authoritative, source), but that doesn’t absolve him of responsibility for his own published comments.

    Posted by Oliver Kamm from London  on  04/19  at  09:17 AM

  25. I have read Oliver’s critiques on his website, and I have to say that in my opinion he is making mountains out of molehills. The first critique where he condemns Noam’s mischaracterization of Huntington’s writing, reminds me of a person who has been told that there is an elephant in the room, the room has been destroyed because of the rampage of the elephant, yet the person who has just been told the rampage was caused by the elephant standing next to him, then ignores the elephant and chooses to criticize the improper description of what just happened. The elephant is of no consequence to that person, he simply looks for faults in the person who has told him of what the elephant has done.

    The second critique based on misuse of something Eban said about equating Anti Zionism and Anti Semitism, seems to me to be about as inflammatory as a wet napkin.

    In both cases the overall message and intent of Chomsky is overlooked and replaced by an attempt to discredit his overall thesis by trying to sully his reputation as an accurate promoter of facts.

    While it may be true that Noam is not a perfect person devoid on all faults, all to human, like most us, the demagogic polemic directed against him by Oliver is very weak in that it chooses style over substance, pettiness over importance.

    In fact Oliver makes it clear that his main problem with Noam is that he believes Noam’s goal and essential raison d’ etre is to equate America with Nazis.

    By making such a claim it is apparent from the outset that for all of the bellicose harping about people not reading Chomsky, not knowing what Chomsky really says, Oliver hs let us all know of his own prejudicial views.

    For anyone to read Chomsky and to then desrcibe that Noam’s purpose is to demonize unfairly “America”, is indicative of one of three possible mentalities attached to that person.

    That person is uneducated and did not understand fully what was read.

    That person was blinded by prejudice of some type.

    That person has an agenda of some type.

    Chomsky clearly outlines a political history of power in the 20th century which is based on actual events and agendas of actual people. If those people control the American government and then use that control in an exploitative, cold blooded, vicious, cruel, racist, hegemonic style, then to call a spade a spade is nothing short of honesty.
    cont.

    Posted by gangster_of_love from california  on  05/09  at  07:02 PM

  26. continued from above


    But if a person is either ignorant or prejudiced, or comes with an agenda in their critique, then their world view will reflect that. If they are ignorant of the real world political process and accept only the mass media portrayal of “reality” then their ignorance may impell them to view Noam as “Anti-America”. If a person is prejudiced in some way, say a racist, a religious ideologue, a corporate shill, an elitist, etc, then they also may see Noam to be a person who is “Anti-America”. If they have an agenda then it doesn’t really matter what Noam writes, the critic simply has an agenda to pursue and will attempt a variety of methods in order to realize the goal of the agenda.

    People who are not ignorant nor prejudicial in their worldview, but who accept the truth, regardless of what that truth may be, will not see Noam as “Anti-America”. Rather he will be seen as a “realist”, “grounded”, “not swayed by emotional attachments” etc.

    Those people who have as their goal a disrepudiation of Chomsky do so out of ideological motivation. They always, and I mean always, are exposed for this by their insistence that Chomsky is “Anti-America” or “Anti-Israel”, instead of simply anti American governmental policies or anti Israel government policies. There is a big difference between being anti America and Anti American governemtn policy. This common demagogic subterfuge is the sign of a politically or economically motivated ideological agenda. Those persons have a political propaganda goal, and that is to humanize and undemonize the American political/financial leadership. In effect they want to whitewash the atrocities and general savagery and misuse of power by those in positions of politicial power by attempting to “shoot the messenger”.

    They mistakenly believe that if they can create mistrust in the loudest “establishment” critics, that will then parlay into some kind of retreat from the ideology those critics espouse. Which takes me back to the elephant in the room.

    No matter how much you complain about the messengers, the elephant is standing there in everyone’s plain view. Your mission will be unsuccessfull as long as the obvious...is obvious.

    Posted by gangster_of_love from california  on  05/09  at  07:12 PM

  27. Now we’re getting somewhere. The most recent pseudonyomous contributor does not even attempt to deny my documented demonstration that Chomsky fabricates his source material: he just maintains it’s a trifling matter - pettiness over substance - because he personally happens to agree with Chomsky’s political opinions. In this, he follows Smith, who genuinely can’t see what is scandalous about fabricating source material so long as the author’s heart is in the right place (and who has wisely decided to give up trying to justify the ignorant and fallacius claims he originally advanced).

    Nothing more needs to be said. Case closed, and vindicated.

    Posted by Oliver Kamm from London  on  05/13  at  06:23 AM

  28. I think you are arguing against a straw man in your description of what I wrote. I did not say that Chomsky fabricated anything, he may have given a wrong impression about a quote, he did not fabricate the quotes. Point being, both examples prove what? That Chomsky is not infallible? Big surprise.

    If a lawyer misrepresents something a murderer said, say a murderer said “I only killed 10 people, maybe 11, not more then 15”, and then a lawyer in court say that the man admitted to 15 murders, in an attempt to bring that killer to justice so that the community is safe from a murderer, why do some people want to attempt to then use that minor flaw as a pretext to invalidate the case against the murderer?

    So when I say that your points are cosmetic and superficial, that is because they serve the purposes of the criminals. Chomsky attempts to serve justice, while you seek to discredit a person who seeks to protect us from criminals.

    Which flaw of human nature is of a more serious type?

    Why not work for the same cause if you feel your harangues are based on the integrity Chomsky lacks?

    The demagogic hacks who feel that they have as their duty (or maybe they get paid) to try and deflect criticism towards the ruling class by fault finding and nitpicking the critics of the ruling class, are completely wasting their time. Chomsky or any other critic of the abuses made by the power elites are listened to and respected not because of some blind faith in them or a type of hero worship. It is because those critics give out information. So it doesn’t matter what minor faults you find if you search through their compendium of writings, they are not believed because they are seen as beyond defect. They are believed because they present data, facts, figures, and they clearly have the interests of the average person at heart.

    Whereas the faultfinders, the corporate state apologists, they have another agenda which is not in the interests of the average people. That is obvious to everyone. The only ones you are fooling are other fools.

    Posted by gangster_of_love from california love  on  05/13  at  06:33 PM

  29. “[H]e did not fabricate the quotes...”

    Indeed, I thought you’d panic on having your position stated directly. And in that case you’ll have no difficulty citing a verifiable source for the ‘quotation’ that Chomsky gives in Chronicles of Dissent, p. 38: “people like Abba Eban, a Labor dove ... have explicitly stated that the task of Israeli agitprop is to make it clear that any criticism of Israel is either anti-Semitism or the position of self-hating Jews.”

    Note that this is, according to Chomsky, an ‘explicit’ statement, rather than one requiring his customary imaginative exegesis. So go right ahead: I want a proper citation for this remark supposedly made by Abba Eban. No need to rush - sometime later today would be fine. The rest of us will sit back and enjoy the performance.

    Posted by Oliver Kamm from London  on  05/16  at  02:51 AM

  30. You are the one who has written that Chomsky fabricated quotes and that I had agreed with that. I simply pointed out that I didn’t write that. So in fact you fabricated a quote by your own standards.

    The quote you refer to is not fabricating a quote, it is a comment on a quote.

    There is a difference.

    Eban said (from your own website):

    There is no difference whatever between anti-Semitism and the denial of Israel’s statehood. Classical anti-Semitism denies the equal right of Jews as citizens within society. Anti-Zionism denies the equal rights of the Jewish people its lawful sovereignty within the community of nations. The common principle in the two cases is discrimination.

    And also:

    One of the chief tasks of any dialogue with the Gentile world is to prove that the distinction between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism is not a distinction at all.

    Now your contention is that when Chomsky wrote this:

    “people like Abba Eban, a Labor dove ... have explicitly stated that the task of Israeli agitprop is to make it clear that any criticism of Israel is either anti-Semitism or the position of self-hating Jews.”

    You wrote:

    The statement Chomsky attributes to Eban is found nowhere in these books. Eban writes nothing – literally nothing – that is even remotely comparable to the assertion that criticism of Israeli policies is tantamount to antisemitism. Nothing he says can be legitimately - or even tenuously - interpreted this way.

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

    Clearly Eban has said that Anti-Zionism is Anti-Semetism. These points of contention are nitpicking. The context and message or intent of Chomsky was making is ignored while you go off on a semantic head hunting expedition seeking to add his head to your trophy wall.

    If Anti-Zionism is Anti-Semetism, then anyone who criticizes the Zionist agenda (ethnic favoritism by law in israel) must be anti-semetic. Since Israel government policy is zionist, then one can conclude that if you criticize Israel (the government) then that should be seen as anti-semetism.

    The whole point of the matter is to show that there are policies or people who promote the ideology that criticism of Israeli government policy is equivalent to anti-semetism in an attempt to cower media away from criticizing Israeli policy outside of Israel. In effect Eban simply makes a veiled threat i.e:

    If you criticize Israel policy we will paint you as an anti-semite. Of course this only works outside of Israel. The American media is cowered, but the Israeli left media is not. You will find more criticism in the Israeli media towards Israeli government policy and it’s leaders then you will find in American media.

    So while Chomsky was making a point, you choose to find some semantic fault and jump all over it as if you’ve discovered the holy grail. Better luck next time.

    Posted by gangster_of_love from standing in a shaft of light  on  05/16  at  08:10 PM

  31. Another thing on your website you promote Tony Blair as a good candidate for the American presidency, better then Clinton or Bush. One thing mentioned was Blair’s idea of sending ground troops into the Balkans against Clinton’s wishes, and Blair’s doctrine of helping Africans out of poverty.

    Surely you jest?

    As anyone who knows anything about the Balkans knows, the Nato and U.S invasion and occupation was a sham, a war crime on a massive scale, aided and abetted by a compliant media propaganda machine. See:

    http://emperors-clothes.com/yugo.htm

    Africa is even a bigger joke. Since Blair has been in power there have been numerous humanitarian disasters in Africa, where was Blair?

    You say Blair supports the neo liberal democratization scheme for the world. Yet he cozies up with people like the leader of Uzbekistan. See:

    http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1072313,00.html

    Blair, like Bush, is nothing more then an errand boy for the world financial mafia. (The “criminal” mafia runs it’s various organizations on fear and reward. If you do what they say, you get rewarded, if you don’t you get punished. The world financial mafia (yer owners of the largest oil companies and largest banks) rules the world through it’s control over the worlds largest militaries and intelligence agencies and police forces. If you go along with their laws, you may be alright, even promoted to a position of so called power (Blair, Bush etc) if you don’t then they will seek to punish you. They are playing at being God over everyone else. Homey don’t play dat, iffen you catch me drift guvnor.)

    http://groups.msn.com/EarthComesAlive/

    Posted by gangster_of_love from terrapin station  on  05/16  at  08:30 PM

  32. I predicted with complete certainty that my interlocutor would duck the challenge, but even so I didn’t expect he would offer so risible a riposte as this. It will not have been lost on anyone reading this that the answer he has given to the question of where Eban made the “explicit statement” that Chomsky attributes to him is - if I may offer a succinct and exact paraphrase - “dunno: haven’t a clue: so I’ll make something up”.

    The word is not ‘anti-semetism’ but antisemitism. Eban’s argument is not that criticism of Israeli policies is antisemitic, but that denial of Israel’s statehood is antisemitic. These are not the same things, and the feeble rationalisation offered by the previous and understandably pseudonyomous contributor is in any case not available to him because Chomsky describes Eban’s alleged statement as an EXPLICIT STATEMENT. No such explicit statement was ever made by Eban; Chomsky is a liar; his acolytes are, as demonstrated in this forum, strikingly uncritical and ill-read.

    I offer no comment on the political opinions of my interlocutor, for obvious reasons.

    Posted by Oliver Kamm from London  on  05/17  at  03:53 AM
    33. Commenting is not available in this weblog entry. {/if}

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