Chomsky: My Dinner with Hassan
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Just a short post until Chris can give it the full treatment. Last May Noam Chomsky, groundbreaking linguist and veteran lefty, had dinner with Hassan Nasrallah. That’s right, Hassan Nasrallah. Now, we know that Chomsky and Nasrallah are likely to set off some alarm bells, but regardless of how you feel about the two, wouldn’t you like to be a fly on the wall for that conversation? We’ll have Chomsky on for the hour tomorrow.
Noam Chomsky
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Professor of linguistics, MIT
Public intellectual in philosophy, intellectual history, and international affairs
Author, most recently, Failed States: The Abuse of Power and the Assault on Democracy
Thomas Ricks
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Staff Writer, Washington Post
Author, Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq
As you can see, we’ve added Thomas Ricks to the conversation. Here, from Chris’s billboard, a better idea of what we’re going to be talking about.
Noam Chomsky and Tom Ricks could be said to embody two different ways of knowing – the war in Iraq, for example. Chomsky is the Einstein of language theory, not a military strategist. He got to know about Iraq by reading up and thinking hard, before the US invasion: for example, about a major problem in the Shiite majority which, in any kind of Iraqi democracy, would want to align with the Shiite state of Iran. That was “the last thing the US wants,� Chomsky saw in advance, because “Iran is [the US’s] next target,� as now it seems to be. Tom Ricks is a Pentagon reporter who covered the war room and the fighting day-to-day for four years compiling his top-of-the-list best-seller, Fiasco, about a bad war plan, badly executed. With two ways of knowing, two angles of view, one from the briefing room and battlefield, the other from hyper-rational analysis at satellite height, Tom Ricks and Noam Chomsky are next, on OS.
Chris Lydon, Open Source billboard, August 15, 2006
August 14th, 2006 at 6:21 pm
This promises to be a creepy show.
Dining with the Jew hating Nasrallah is like dining with Hitler. But then, Chomsky has been a defender of Holcaust deniers and he probably would have had dinner with Hiter if the Fuhrer had let him sit down at his table.
Disgusting!
August 14th, 2006 at 6:48 pm
I think we can count on this being far more informative than Mike Wallace’s juvenile attempts to goad him on last night’s Sixty Minutes interview.
August 14th, 2006 at 7:00 pm
*Shakes head*
Dear Fiddlesticks,
Your right-wing talking point on Chomsky is factually inaccurate and tip-toes between satirical and simply sad. Chomsky defended his right of Robert Faurisson to be heard–not his views and obviously not his obscene historical narrative. He defended his freedom of speech–you know freedom of speech–it’s one of those silly tenets that underpins a liberal democracy?
I should not have to explain the difference between defending someone’s right to be head and defending someone’s hateful views, but alas not all grade school teacher were as awesome as mine.
August 14th, 2006 at 7:11 pm
Ooooh! Two typos, I wish my teacher would have taught me to proofread as well.
August 14th, 2006 at 7:46 pm
Fiddlesticks is not completely wrong, it was about more than defending Faurisson’s right to free speech. Chomsky allowed Noontide Press, the publishing arm of the revisionist Institute for Historical Review, publication rights for “The Fateful Triangle”, a move that saved the beleaguered publisher and institute.
From revisionists to the Khmer Rouge, to his rousing speech over Radio Hanoi, to this … a lovefest with Nasrallah, Noam Chomsky epitomizes all thats wrong with the academic left.
August 14th, 2006 at 7:49 pm
“Self hating Jew” doesn’t even begin to describe this man.
August 14th, 2006 at 9:37 pm
““Self hating Jewâ€? doesn’t even begin to describe this man.”
Indeed, he is weirder than any one can imagine.
He was asked recently since he hated America so much where in the world he would rather live. He said, in America because of its freedoms and if not here than in Israel because of its freedoms.
Go figure.
Sometime I don’t think he knows what he is saying.
As for the concept of self hating Jews: Alain Finkielkraut the French philosopher said that such Jews don’t hate themeselves they hate other Jews. The point being that it is self hatred indirectly because by attacking other Jews they are inevitably also attacking themselves. They of course don’t realize that hence the pathology.
I don’t think Chomsky is self hating in this sense, he is lost rather in a fog of his theories which are totally impractical and which make him say and believe strange things.
August 15th, 2006 at 1:26 am
Chomsky is a brilliant intellect and I will certainly look forward to hearing his take on Nasrallah.
Amy Goodman interviews Noam Chomsky and Mouin Rabbani (Middle East analyst, contributing editor of Middle East Report) regarding Lenanon and Palestine on Democracy Now!
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/07/14/146258
August 15th, 2006 at 8:20 am
I’ll leave the heaving around of epithets like “self-hating Jew” to others.
The idea of Chomsky being “lost in a fog of his theories” gets it exactly wrong. Chomsky offers linguistic theories but rather few political ones. He proceeds above all as a rationalist (too coldly so for my own taste), adducing factual evidence often from sources readily at hand like major newspapers. How he strings those together into an interpretation is of course fair ground for critique, and I disagree often with his “iron cage” vision of power’s workings. But he is clearly offering the public exercise of reason, rather than arcane academic theorizing, as a model for non-expert citizens to exercise dissent.
The man is above all an unflinching and in many ways solitary critic of the state, its mythologies and the communications regime that enables those. I’ve never understood why even his detractors can’t appreciate his deep grounding in American and Enlightenment democratic rationalism.
Dismissing him as “strange” or “weird” is just American consensus affirmation at its most mindless. Indeed, it’s the thing Chomsky himself aims to unsettle.
August 15th, 2006 at 8:25 am
This should be a nice lovefest.
August 15th, 2006 at 10:22 am
Yes, what a terrible idea. Rather than convene the usual panel of talking heads with scant knowledge of the Middle East to discuss the role of Nasrallah in the region, invite the man — a neighbor, no less — widely considered to be the world’s premier intellectual, who has has not only written many books and countless essays on the area, but who has actually SPOKEN WITH NASRALLAH. What could ROS be thinking?
August 15th, 2006 at 10:36 am
Hey guys, by all means continue to spar, but I’d hate to see this thread become a just a referendum on Chomsky himself. What — short of whether or not he’s a Holocaust denier — would you like to ask him? About Lebanon? About the Middle East?
August 15th, 2006 at 10:56 am
Sorry, Brendan… my interest in Chomsky is almost entirely related to transformational-generative grammar, innate language mechanism, etc. I haven’t heard much about thag sort of thing in the past few years, perhaps since machine translation has been, well, unspectacular. But it doesn’t sound like that the sort of thing you want to be talking about tonight,
August 15th, 2006 at 11:06 am
I’d like to ask Chomsky whether he believes that the aim of Hamas, Hezbollah, and others is in truth not the release of prisoners, return to pre-1967 borders, an Arab capital in East Jerusalem, and so on, but is actually the destruction of Israel. In other words, is there any possibility of dialogue and a negotiated settlement in the Middle East, or is this a case where nothing the Israelis could offer would settle the problem? The answer to this question obviously makes all the difference in how one responds.
August 15th, 2006 at 11:08 am
Questions for Chomsky:
-What is the role of the US in the current debacle?
-What could the US do to rectify the situation?
-What are the responsibilities of the Europeans?
-To what extent does he see the war in Lebanon in the terms outlined most recently by Seymour Hersh?
-Who has done what right?
-Who has done what wrong?
-What is to be done? (To coin a phrase.)
August 15th, 2006 at 11:08 am
“Sorry, Brendan… my interest in Chomsky is almost entirely related to transformational-generative grammar, innate language mechanism, etc.”
I lost interest in his linguistic theories when I realized that he can’t explain the plurality of languages in the world. Is view of language is based on a rigid monism which is also at work in his political “theories.”
August 15th, 2006 at 11:10 am
“Questions for Chomsky:
-What is the role of the US in the current debacle?”
I wouldn’t ask him anything since I already know what his answers will be. The guy is nothing if not boringly consisten in his anti-Americanism.
August 15th, 2006 at 11:11 am
Hi, Brendan.
I might like to know how he would position Nasrallah vis-a-vis other resistance/”vanguard” figures he has encountered over the years, whether in Southeast Asia, Central America or the Middle East. Most of these latter were driven by Marxist and/or nationalist ideologies of liberation, and I wonder if it makes a difference that Nasrallah comes more from a position of militant religious affiliation.
Is he best understood as an heir to that tradition of anti-colonial revolt, or does he augur something newer? Hezbollah seems to be playing the role of a classic military-political vanguard quite successfully at the moment—provoking over-response from a stronger foe, levelling the military playing field, winning propaganda victories, polarizing the political landscape of the region. Do the lines of inspiration run more through Arafat or through Khomeini?
August 15th, 2006 at 11:11 am
I would ask Noam his views on the global condition. As we double oil consumption every 20 years, and population every 30 years on a planet with finite and largely dwindling resources, and with a finite atmosphere for absorbing greenhouse gasses, we had better come up with solutions to conflicting ideologies, and competition for those resources, beyond hurling bombs at one another. What may be most important to the survival of civilization are all the issues we don’t talk about while wars are being waged. The phrase ‘equitable distribution’ seems an important but forgotten concept in solving conflicts largely between the most desperate societies and the most privileged.
This is a quote of his from the 1992 documentary film “Manufacturing Consent,
Noam Chomsky and the Mass Media”.
“As long as some specialized class is in a position of authority, it is going to set policy in the special interests that it serves. But the conditions of survival let alone justice, require rational social planning in the interests of the community as a whole, and by now that means the global community.
The question is whether privileged elites should dominate mass communication and should use this power as they tell us they must, namely to impose necessary illusions, to manipulate and deceive the stupid majority and remove them from the public arena. The question in brief is whether democracy and freedom are values to be preserved or threats to be avoided. In this possibly terminal phase of human existence, democracy and freedom are more than values to be treasured. They may well be essential to survival.”
August 15th, 2006 at 11:17 am
“The man is above all an unflinching and in many ways solitary critic of the state, its mythologies and the communications regime that enables those. I’ve never understood why even his detractors can’t appreciate his deep grounding in American and Enlightenment democratic rationalism. ”
Rationalism is not taking a source and twisting it to the point where it bears little if any resemblance to its original point, ala Sam Huntington and George Kennan. Constructing a polemic by carefully selecting information that buttress an argument and ignores anything that might challenge it is dishonest and is itself a form of propaganda.
His analysis is one dimensional and resembles the logic of a child more than that of an MIT professor. Whatever the problem is, wherever it occurs, whoever is doing it, it can all be “pinned� on the United States (or our ZioNazi client state Israel). The Cold War, our fault; Pol Pot, our fault; the repression of political dissidents in Cuba, our fault; the violence perpetrated by the FARC, our fault; Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, our fault; the civil war in Yugoslavia; our fault; the Koran War; our fault … you get the idea.
His detractors don’t respect him or appreciate him because he castigates anyone who disagrees with him as evil. Huntington is a “vile propagandist�, Vaclav Havel is a “morally repugnant Stalinist�, and so on. His black and white portrayal of world is just as one dimensional as any other model he attacks.
August 15th, 2006 at 11:18 am
jdyer says:
Questions for Chomsky:
-What is the role of the US in the current debacle?�
“I wouldn’t ask him anything since I already know what his answers will be. The guy is nothing if not boringly consisten in his anti-Americanism.”
So don’t. But given your animus, why wouldn’t you? Here’s your chance. It’s one thing to stop listening, another to stop asking. Both suggest a desolating prospect for actually learning anything.
August 15th, 2006 at 11:26 am
Since I got off topic, a question: Professor Chomsky, as a Jew, would you consider yourself to be included in Nasrallah’s belief that “If we searched the entire world for a person more cowardly, despicable, weak and feeble in psyche, mind, ideology and religion, we would not find anyone like the Jew. Notice, I do not say the Israeli�?
Another: Professor Chomsky, did you feel that your safety was at risk during you meeting with the leader of an organization that proclaims “It is an open war until the elimination of Israel and until the death of the last Jew on earth�?
August 15th, 2006 at 11:35 am
1st/14: Chomsky isn’t responsible for Nasrullahs calculatedly inflamed rhetoric, but those are legitimate questions. My guess is a double “No.”
August 15th, 2006 at 11:37 am
Joseph Goebbels was Hitler’s chief propagandist. He famously wrote that the Nazis entered into parliament to:
“…arm ourselves with democracy’s weapons. If democracy is foolish enough to give us free railway passes and salaries, that is its problem. It does not concern us. Any way of bringing about the revolution is fine by us.”
and that:
“We are coming neither as friends or neutrals. We come as enemies! As the wolf attacks the sheep, so come we. You are not among your friends any longer! You will not enjoy having us among you!”
(see translation in
http://www.calvin.edu/academic/cas/gpa/angrif06.htm)
The diabolical nature of the Nazi party is little different from the ideology that generates statements such as:
“We will use your democracy to destroy your democracy.”
Sheikh Omar Bakri Mohammed, London, June, 2000
Hizbullah, Hamas, the Taliban, Al-Qaida, they’re aptly called Islamo-Fascists. I would never dream of living under the rule of the Klu Klux Klan any more than under Stalin, Pol-Pot or the lunatic father and son team of the Kims. Why are we so timid in fighting the Islamo-Fascists?
You only have to listen attently to someone like Buthaina Shaaban–Syria’s version of Joseph Goebbels–to understand that their interpretation of compromise is a dystopic future for each and every one of us.
I do believe that the way to fight hateful dogmas is to expose and to bring them to the light of day (think apartheid).
To my very own personal grief, Chomsky has been ineffectual in fighting the enemies of freedom today.
The world is facing unprecedented danger as petro-dollars are making it easier for nuclear weapons to fall in the hands of crazies like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Things are not improved the least when ‘me-first’ incompetents like Cheney and Rumsfeld are still around anywhere near the gears of power.
Yes, let’s talk with Nasrallah, but let’s make sure he tells us everything he wants to happen to his people and to the rest of the world.
August 15th, 2006 at 11:43 am
“So don’t. But given your animus, why wouldn’t you? Here’s your chance. It’s one thing to stop listening, another to stop asking. Both suggest a desolating prospect for actually learning anything.”
I have read enough many books by Chomsky to know how he repsonds to anyone who disagrees with his premises.
If any one else is interested in asking him something I would suggest they ask him:
1) why he seems to speak up so often for people like the late unlamented Milosevich, Nasrallah, Pol Pot, etc.
2) what is it about his views that they are so often quoted on neo-Nazi, Holocaust denier, and other ultra right wing websites?
August 15th, 2006 at 11:43 am
I second cpaynter. Chomsky a global citizen, for better or worse (what’s your carbon footprint, Noam?), who has been looking at the world critically longer than I suspect most of us here have been alive. Let’s hear what he has to say about it, beyond Nasrallah & co.
August 15th, 2006 at 11:46 am
hurley Says:
“1st/14: Chomsky isn’t responsible for Nasrullahs calculatedly inflamed rhetoric, but those are legitimate questions. My guess is a double “No.”
How do you know that Nasrallah’s is using “inflamed rhetoric” and isn’t articulating a deep seated belief about Jews being evil?
And why do you answer for Chomsky?
August 15th, 2006 at 11:48 am
I would like to ask Chomsky if he thought Hizbollah was justified in killing the US Marines during the early 80’s. I wonder if he asked Nasrullah that question?
August 15th, 2006 at 11:52 am
btw: here another interview with someone who had met Hizbollas leaders:
“Middle East
Understanding Hezbollah’s Leadership and Mission
Fresh Air from WHYY, July 19, 2006 · A few years ago, writer Jeffrey Goldberg spoke with Hezbollah leaders for a 2002 article in called “In the Party of God: Are Terrorists in Lebanon Preparing for a Larger War?” Goldberg will help us understand the background of the current unrest in Lebanon. Goldberg serves as Washington correspondent for The New Yorker.”
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5567843
August 15th, 2006 at 11:57 am
jdyer says:
“I have read enough many books by Chomsky to know how he repsonds to anyone who disagrees with his premises.”
-Which books? What passages are you referring to?
“If any one else is interested in asking him something I would suggest they ask him:”
It’s not a matter of “any one” else, but you: what would you like to ask him?
“1) why he seems to speak up so often for people like the late unlamented Milosevich, Nasrallah, Pol Pot, etc.
2) what is it about his views that they are so often quoted on neo-Nazi, Holocaust denier, and other ultra right wing websites?”
Again, both legitimate questions in the context of this forum. However, again, I’d like to know what exactly you’re referring to? For example, where, at least before tonight’s program, which presumably at this hour none of us has heard, has he spoken in defence of Nasrallah? I’d like to know about it. Help me out.
As for the second question, I suppose it has to do with the right-wing’s tendency to twist things to their own purposes, not that the rest of us are blameless on that score. Was it Emerson, Once a particular point is taken, all history can be made to prove it…
August 15th, 2006 at 12:10 pm
jdyer says:
How do you know that Nasrallah’s is using “inflamed rhetoric� and isn’t articulating a deep seated belief about Jews being evil?
Good point, and “inflamed rhetoric” is a bit of a cliché, no? I don’t know, but I suspect that if his hatred of Jews was all that has been suggested, he really would have had Chomsky for dinner, scrawny old bird that he is. But the race card common to politicos time and space over. He may very well be, and I would even say I suspect he is, programmatically against Jews, but before drawing conclusions, why not listen, ears cocked for fresh information, to someone who has actually spoken to him? Nasrallah now reckoned the most popular figure in the Middle East. Hark, goddamnit! Listen and learn.
August 15th, 2006 at 12:13 pm
“1st/14: Chomsky isn’t responsible for Nasrullah’s calculatedly inflamed rhetoric, but those are legitimate questions. My guess is a double “No.�
Chomsky never answers a question with a simple “yes� or a “no�, it makes it too easy to tie him down to something later. He always answers a question in a way that allows him with an out for something he said.
But a few more questions:
1. Professor Chomsky, was the United States government, or elements within it, behind the attacks of 9/11?
2. Professor Chomsky, considering the power of propaganda, did you consider the possibility that a meeting with Nasrullah’s would be used to advance or soften Hezbollah’s image and message in the West?
3. Professor Chomsky, if you had a meeting with George W Bush, would you physically embrace him as you did Hassan Nasrallah?
4. Professor Chomsky, to the best of your knowledge were your parents or any of your ancestors “apes and pigs� as your host Hassan Nasrallah believes all Jew’s are descended from? (sorry I could not resist)
“As for the second question, I suppose it has to do with the right-wing’s tendency to twist things to their own purposes, not that the rest of us are blameless on that score.�
Chomsky did allow Noontide Press, the publishing arm of the revisionist Institute for Historical Review, publication rights for “The Fateful Triangle�, a move that saved the beleaguered publisher and institute.
August 15th, 2006 at 12:27 pm
Hurley,
I dont have the time to hunt up Chosmky’s books as for his being quoted on neo-Nazi websites here is an example:
http://www.zundelsite.org/english/reviews/bookrev.002.html
There views are too disgusting for me to want to spend much time with these sites, however, if you have the stomach for it look up other neo-Nazi and Holocaust denying sites and see how many of them quote Chomsky?
August 15th, 2006 at 12:28 pm
1st/14 says:
Chomsky did allow Noontide Press, the publishing arm of the revisionist Institute for Historical Review, publication rights for “The Fateful Triangle�, a move that saved the beleaguered publisher and institute.
I’m unfamiliar with the Noontide Press. I read The Fateful Triangle under the South Boston imprint, whose name escapes me. I’m curious about these Noontide Press people, however. Who are they, and why do you suppose Chomsky allowed them to reprint his work? My guess would be a simple if stark — that’s what often gets him into trouble — view of free expression. Seems like the gist of another good question. Why not have him on for another hour to answer them all…? Another neocon howling in pain. But why not? Have at him.
As for Chomsky’s skill as a debater, you’re right.
August 15th, 2006 at 12:29 pm
“Good point, and “inflamed rhetoricâ€? is a bit of a cliché, no? I don’t know, but I suspect that if his hatred of Jews was all that has been suggested, he really would have had Chomsky for dinner, scrawny old bird that he is.”
and Nazi leaders met with anti-Nazis and even with Jews, when it was in their interest, hurley!
The guy is a bigot, but he is not a fool.
August 15th, 2006 at 12:38 pm
jdyer says:
“There views are too disgusting for me to want to spend much time with these sites, however, if you have the stomach for it look up other neo-Nazi and Holocaust denying sites and see how many of them quote Chomsky?”
I haven’t, but I thank you for yours, and for doing it in my stead. I take you at your word, but remind you of “guilt by association.”
As for having to “hunt up” Chomsky’s books, my presumption was that you had read them, otherwise why — how? — would you comment on them?
August 15th, 2006 at 12:46 pm
Hurley: He is a fantastic debater, impossible to back into a corner. I listened to him debate several people, and he has an uncanny ability to answer any question posed to him, no matter how loaded it may be, to make his case appear as strong as possible. I am not saying that there is any substance in his responses aside from a bunch of gobbledygook, but his responses always leave him an out.
Noontide has website, go check it out if you like. I should have been more specific, he gave the publication rights for the French edition of “The Fateful Triangle� to Noontide.
August 15th, 2006 at 1:05 pm
jdywer asks:
“Why do you answer for Chomsky?”
I wish I could say “I wouldn’t presume,” but in a way I did. To the extent that I did, well just contemplate all the formerly self-evident notions of evidence, free-speech, not to mention simple fair play. For the second time in a matter of days, someone has been slandered on this site as a “Jew hater,” without any evidence — not a word, not a line — being adduced in support of the accusation, just a sort of crabwalk into the shadows when these accusations were called into queston. Why not call him a paedophile into the bargain? By all means, bring the raging anti-semites to heel, but with evidence and reasoned and informed argument. Otherwise your conclusions are worthless and the “anti-semites” therebye free to perform their own crabwalk into their own lurid shadows. There are several serious things at play here. Why not treat them that way?
August 15th, 2006 at 2:10 pm
“I haven’t, but I thank you for yours, and for doing it in my stead. I take you at your word, but remind you of “guilt by association.â€?”
Come on, Hurley, it’s not giult by association. It’s meant to pose the question why is it that Neo nazis are more comfortable quoting Chomsky than say Jefferson?
“As for having to “hunt upâ€? Chomsky’s books, my presumption was that you had read them, otherwise why — how? — would you comment on them?”
Isn’t this casting doubt by faint praise?
I have been reading Chomsky, Hurley for many year. It’s his linguistic theory that got me interested in his work. As I said above I found his linguistics problematic.
I find his political critic, more than problematic, I think it is detrimental to democracy.
August 15th, 2006 at 3:18 pm
Questions for Chomsky:
Do you see the anti-semetic rhetoric of figures like Nasrallah and Ahmadinejad only as a response to Zionist rhetoric? Isreali military action? Something else?
If Hezbollah embeds itself in Lebanese civilian communities, how might Israel defend itself from their attacks without killing hundreds of civilians and potentially creating scores more recruits for Hezbollah?
Similarly, if Hizbollah is being supplied by Syria, how could Israel cut off supply lines without destroying critical infrastructure and potentially setting off a humanitarian disaster?
Do you think our past support for dictators like Saddam Hussein is necessarily a reason for the world’s only superpower not to intervene militarily on behalf of oppressed populations around the world? Is there a way we could do this without destroying a country?
Was there an alternative to force in Iraq? What might have been the best way to overthrow Saddam and empower the people?
How do you think the U.S. and the international community can best encourage democracy and human rights in the Middle East and elsewhere in the world?
How could the U.N. be reformed to be more effective in confronting international humanitarian disasters and threats to international peace (outside of those posed by the U.S.)?
Can’t wait to listen to the show!
August 15th, 2006 at 3:20 pm
Ooops. Sorry for the typos and misspellings on my last post!
August 15th, 2006 at 3:33 pm
Calling Chomsky a supporter of holocaust deniers is so remarkably misinformed it is hard to know where to start.
I find it laughable that _he_ would be labeled a bigot, while at the same time all his beliefs are shut-down by broad-stroke painting of “self-hating Jew”. Is this high school?
Then again, it is entirely consistent with wanting to know who was embrasing whom, rather than asking some truely interesting questions…
August 15th, 2006 at 4:10 pm
jdyer says:
“Come on, Hurley, it’s not giult by association. It’s meant to pose the question why is it that Neo nazis are more comfortable quoting Chomsky than say Jefferson?”
Again, “what ” is meant to pose the question? What are you on about? So many things are set in motion by your line of argument, why not bring some of them to rest? What’s your answer to the question you pose? It’s an interesting one, but answer it with some sort of evidence other than inuendo. To begin with, Chomsky likely to be cited because no one reads Jefferson anymore. And he’s also the boogeyman, so I’m lead to believe, of many right-wing blogs…Furthermore, the very form of the question cancells any meaningful response. How about this, “Why is it that neo-Nazis are more comfortable quoting Alice Duer Miller than say Betty Crocker?” Mind your P’s and Q’s and maybe some understanding will emerge.
August 15th, 2006 at 4:13 pm
“I find it laughable that _he_ would be labeled a bigot, while at the same time all his beliefs are shut-down by broad-stroke painting of “self-hating Jewâ€?. Is this high school?”
You can laugh all you want to, oolitic.
After you finish, please explain why Chomsky spent his time defending Milosovich, Pol Pot and other despicable dictators.
As for his being a supporter of Holocaust deniers, he did write a forward for Faurrison’s Holocaust denial book. Make of that what you will.
btw: you do sound like a high school teacher yourself, or pobably a Lycee teacher.
“Then again, it is entirely consistent with wanting to know who was embrasing whom, rather than asking some truely interesting questions… ”
Here is a “truely” interesting question: why is it that Chomsky supporters feel more comfortable praising the man than dealing with his ideas and his writings?
August 15th, 2006 at 4:20 pm
I doubt any one will, but I’d like to ask him why he signed a letter accusing Israel of provoking the kidnapping of it soldier by Hamas after it had arrested some terror suspects in Gaza?
The letter said that the kidnapping which happened the day after was a direct result of its arrest. Yet I read somehwere that it usually takes weeks of planning on the part of a terror group to mount an operation not to mention the time it took to dig the tunnel.
August 15th, 2006 at 4:24 pm
A question was asked in Santa Fe of Robert Fisk when he was touring with his latest book, and that was, “Do you have any hope?” His answer was in the negative (and when we see his city now—Beirut—we can understand.) I’d like to ask Chomsky the same thing…Have you any hope? For the world, for America, for the oppressed and downtrodden? Obviously, my question is leading, for I haven’t any. But from the world’s leading intellectual, I would love to hear his take on the way things stand now, today.
August 15th, 2006 at 4:28 pm
Hurley,
“Again, “what â€? is meant to pose the question?”
Gove me a break, Hurley. This isn’t a critical theory seminar on the semiotics of close reading.
It’s a straight forward question. Chomsky knows how to answer a question, methinks.
“What’s your answer to the question you pose? It’s an interesting one, but answer it with some sort of evidence other than inuendo.sic”
Let Chomsky answer it, buster; and learn to spell.
August 15th, 2006 at 4:31 pm
Here is another view of Beirut than that of the masochist Fisk:
http://www.menapress.com/search.php?query=&topic=67
By Michael Béhé in Beirut
“The politicians, journalists and intellectuals of Lebanon have, of late, been experiencing the shock of their lives. They knew full well that Hezbollah had created an independent state in our country, a state including all the ministers and parallel institutions, duplicating those of Lebanon. What they did not know – and are discovering with this war, and what has petrified them with surprise and terror – is the extent of this phagocytosis….”
you guys have your predictable sources. Try reading articles by people who have a different point of view from yours, Nabobnico.
August 15th, 2006 at 4:32 pm
Here is another link to the same article if the above link doesn’t work:
http://www.menapress.com/article.php?sid=1479
August 15th, 2006 at 4:39 pm
I don’t think of Professor Chomsky as being an apologist at all. I think the charge is infantile. He examines, granted from the safety of his ivory tower, the world and what he sees in it. What he does is find the connections behind things, the why to the recent war in israel. An obvious and immediate answer would be the Hezbollah rockets? So then why hezbollah? Why the phenomen of Nasrallah? Why the divide? He keeps taking things back in the way others only claim to, examining the reason for things being, for situations existing. An exxample is his alleged defense of Pol Pot. In fact what he writes is,
“There is a doctrine to be established: we must focus solely on the (horrendous) crimes of Pol Pot, thus providing a retrospective justification for (mostly unstudied) US crimes, and an ideological basis for further “humanitarian intervention” in the future — the Pol Pot atrocities were explicitly used to justify US intervention in Central America in the ’80s, leaving hundreds of thousands of corpses and endless destruction. In the interests of ideological reconstruction and laying the basis for future crimes, facts are simply irrelevant, and anyone who tries to suggest otherwise is targeted by a virulent stream of abuse. That runs pretty much across the spectrum, an instructive phenomenon. But one consequence is that no one can give a serious answer to the question you raise, because it is about US crimes.”
He wants to understand Pol Pot, now history, in order to understand the actions of the governement. When we didn’t catch Osama or Mullah Omar in Afghanistan, the reason for our invassion was changed to “liberating the people.” This was just an excuse conjured up to distract the people and comfort the war widows. The same is being used now in Iraq; our reason lately is “Democracy on the move, see?” and it is because we found no WMD…
In his Hegemony or Survival (pg. 22, Holt, 2003) he asks “Why were the 1990’s considered ‘the decade of humanitarian intervention’ and not the 1970’s?” He then describes the two cases since WW2 that resulted in a liberation of the people by brute force; the first is East Pakistan by India, and the second is Cambodia by Vietnam. He asks why these are not recogniozed. “The idea is unthinkable, and the resaons seem clear. The real examples of intervention that terminated huge atrocities were carried out by the wrong people.” In both cases of intervention, the US was opposed and even went so far as to offer direct support for the Khmer Rouge. This hardly seems a stance of an apologist and in fact even indicts the supporters of the KR.
August 15th, 2006 at 4:41 pm
This to Hurley
Let Chomsky answer it, buster; and learn to spell.
and this to me
you guys have your predictable sources. Try reading articles by people who have a different point of view from yours, Nabobnico.
Brendan, can we get a break from this guy so we can have a decent conversation?
August 15th, 2006 at 4:41 pm
Let’s sling some more MUD on Chomsky to completely detract from Israel’s humiliating failure in its latest criminal war against Lebanon. And let’s also completely forget that Hezbollah wouldn’t have been here had it NOT been for another stupid misadventure by Israel 28 years ago. Lets talk about 1559 but completely ignore 242… C’mon! Lets!!
Oh, and Chomsky?….Holocaust denier.. blah blah blah pohlpot.. blah blah nazi… blah denier.. blah blah grunt grunt. bad man.. hitler.. hitler.. huff puff.. holocaust denier.. denier denier.. denier..denyyyerrrrrrrrrr!!!!!…
terrrrorrr.. terrrorrr… iran… missils syria.. missiles.. terrors self hating… selff… anti-semit.. oh-wait.. terror attacks on soldiers.. blah blah saddam.. torror toerrrrrorreerrr
Question for Noam:
Can Israel really survive another hundred years with it cranking up the violence on its neighbours like it does every half decade? Let us also assume that Uncle Sam does help it liquidate Iran or Syria befor the Republic implodes on itself. Looks like America’s got one more war left in her before the Martial Law is declared.
August 15th, 2006 at 4:51 pm
Nabobnico,
“I don’t think of Professor Chomsky as being an apologist at all. I think the charge is infantile. He examines, granted from the safety of his ivory tower, the world and what he sees in it. What he does is find the connections behind things, the why to the recent war in israel. An obvious and immediate answer would be the Hezbollah rockets? So then why hezbollah? Why the phenomen of Nasrallah? Why the divide? He keeps taking things back in the way others only claim to, examining the reason for things being, for situations existing. An exxample is his alleged defense of Pol Pot. In fact what he writes is,”
This is both too sophisticated and too naive (infantile–to use your expression).
btw: when quoting Chomsky it’s very important that you provide a reference. When and where he said something is important since he often backtracks and claims that he didn’t say what is attributed to him.
Yes, Chomsky likes to look for root causes and he always come up with one root cause: the USA.
“What he does is find the connections behind things,…”
So do paranoiacs.
The analysis you attribute to him about the Lebanon war is pretty superficial.
“Why the phenomen of Nasrallah?” Nasrallah is not a phenomen (a nice French term) nor is he a phenomenon. He is a doctrinaire antisemite who accepted Khomeinis doctrine about evil Jews. To call him a phenomen is like calling Hitler a phenomen.
If you want to understand Nasrallah study the history of Islam, the Shiites, and the history of antisemitism in the Arab world. Then study the Arab Israeli conflict. (You will also need to study his persnonal history, but that is another matter) All of these phenomena have a bearing on who Nasrallah is.
August 15th, 2006 at 4:53 pm
“Brendan, can we get a break from this guy so we can have a decent conversation?”
This is a personal attack and threat by Nabobnico.
Well, Nabobnico did you read the article by M. Behe?
August 15th, 2006 at 4:58 pm
Oh for pity sake.
Just ask him what they had for dinner.
August 15th, 2006 at 4:58 pm
LninYo (Lenin Yo)
“Let’s sling some more MUD on Chomsky to completely detract from Israel’s humiliating failure in its latest criminal war against Lebanon. And let’s also completely forget that Hezbollah wouldn’t have been here had it NOT been for another stupid misadventure by Israel 28 years ago. Lets talk about 1559 but completely ignore 242… C’mon! Lets!!”
yrs, let’s talk about 242 and the way the Arab States ignored it for years. Let’s talk about 242 and the way the PLO kept resorting to criminal acts of violence rather than sit down to negotiate a final end to the conflict as 242 demanded.
And let’s not mention Hizb’allah’s criminal attacks on Israeli civilians.
Yes, let’s have another antisemitic discussion about how Israel is at fault for wanting to defend itself from religious totalitarians.
Let’s do it, Lenin!
August 15th, 2006 at 4:59 pm
Hi all.
Nice, pithy sparring, plus a real trove of questions here. Now that we’ve lined up another dance partner, though, how does that change the shape of the conversation? Does anyone have a question for Tom Ricks?
August 15th, 2006 at 4:59 pm
“Just ask him what they had for dinner.”
and was it kosher?
August 15th, 2006 at 5:13 pm
This interesting reading by a man who accompanied NC on his trip to Lebanon…
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=22&ItemID=10568
August 15th, 2006 at 5:15 pm
nabobinico says:
This to Hurley
Let Chomsky answer it, buster; and learn to spell.
Buster? How wonderfully quaint, and I don’t mean in Alberto Gonzales’s sense of the word. Or do I? Well, you told me. I stand corrected. Run your spell-check over the forum and you’ll have no end of fun. As for “letting Chomsky answer it,” whatever “it” is, my point was just that. Let him speak. Interesting that in the same message you should call for Brendan to censor me, in the interests of a “decent conversation.” Well done. I couldn’t have made the point clearer myself.
August 15th, 2006 at 5:21 pm
No, no, no, Hurley…you don’t understand. I’m sorry for the misunderstanding. My fault entirely and I realized after I posted I shouldn’t have used your name. I quoted JDyer writing that to you, and then something he wrote to me. I am tired of JDyer’s constant harangue and I was asking Brendan if couldn’t we get this guy to tone down his rhetoric a little…
Again, I apologise and I shouldn’t have cut and pasted your name without checking first.
August 15th, 2006 at 5:21 pm
Apologies to nabobnico and jdywer for confusing their messages.
August 15th, 2006 at 5:22 pm
hurley, your last message is confused.
nabobnico wanted to censor me, not you.
You wrote as if you thought he and I were the same poster.
August 15th, 2006 at 5:23 pm
I read the link to M. Behe and found it more nonsense. It wasn’t journalism nor even rhetoric…more a screaming screed. I found Michael Young’s piece in the Times Magazine much more interesting. Try it. You’ll like it.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/04/magazine/04lebanon.html?ex=1155787200&en=6a9e8a1cf76ee7f4&ei=5070
He would be great for a show.
August 15th, 2006 at 5:23 pm
A full round of apologies, then! Accepted, given…
August 15th, 2006 at 5:23 pm
“Apologies to nabobnico and jdywer for confusing their messages.”
jdyer accepts your apologies, but I am not sure about, jdwyer. he or she may a little harder to please.
August 15th, 2006 at 5:24 pm
Look, kids, don’t make me turn the car around and take EVERYONE’S ice cream away. The rules of engagement are pretty straightforward and easy to understand: engage the argument, not the motivation. That means don’t cal anyone an antisemite, and don’t call anyone a mindless Fox drone. This doesn’t mean don’t argue — argument, is, after all, the point of this thread — it just means argue and show respect for each other at the same time. These things — argument and respect — are not mutually exclusive.
As for asking me for a ruling, I’m reading the threads, I promise; I’ll jump in if I see a foul. Don’t work the ref.
Carry on.
August 15th, 2006 at 5:29 pm
“I read the link to M. Behe and found it more nonsense.”
Typical. The guy is a Lebanese intellectual not a reporter.
He wrote about his own experiences and about a reality he has to live with day in and day out.
Most people here, including me, though I have been speaking to people in Israel who were in the line of fire, didn’t experience the war the way that Behe did. To call his passionate views “nonsense” is pretty arrogant.
August 15th, 2006 at 5:32 pm
Here is a link to another interesting piece on Lebanon by a French intellectual published in the NY Times Sunday magazine:
Questions For . . .
Bernard-Henri Lévy
Published: August 11, 2006
“Bernard-Henri Lévy, a French philosopher and writer, is the author, most recently, of “American Vertigo: Traveling America in the Footsteps of Tocqueville” and an essay in The Times Magazine about Israel and Lebanon. He recently answered readers’ questions about the current state of the Mideast conflict.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/11/magazine/11levy-questions.html?_r=1&8dpc&oref=slogin
August 15th, 2006 at 5:34 pm
“don’t cal anyone an antisemite, and don’t call anyone a mindless”
You mean I can’t call Nasrallah an antisemite, or anyone else how makes anti-Jewish comments? I don’t think Nasrallah is mindless though, he is a mindful in the sense that he knows what he is about, but he is definitely an antisemite.
August 15th, 2006 at 5:36 pm
Here is Levi’s earlier article on the conflict:
“Pondering, Discussing, Traveling Amid and Defending the Inevitable War”
By BERNARD-HENRI LÉVY
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/06/magazine/06israel.html?ex=1155787200&en=f456b918c01c1a76&ei=5070
August 15th, 2006 at 5:39 pm
JDyer, You write that M. Behe is an intellectual, not a jouranlist, as though to justify his nonsense; in a brief search however I found the “inteliiegnt design” Behe who was refered to as an intelectual. Your Behe however is just a journalist, and a screeching one at that.
August 15th, 2006 at 5:43 pm
Apologies for the imprecision. Please feel free to call David Duke or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad an antisemite. Try to avoid calling nabobnico or anyone else posting to this thread an antisemite. Try, in general, to imagine you’re talking to a kind, rational person who happens to disagree with you. Happens all the time.
August 15th, 2006 at 5:43 pm
From the New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, 3rd Edition, 2003
Semitic
(suh-MIT-ik) A descriptive term for several peoples of the Middle East and their descendants, including Jews and Arabs (see Arab-Israeli conflict).
From Wikipedia—touch to cite I know.
Hassan Nasrallah was born the eldest of nine children in East Beirut on August 31, 1960. His father, Abdul Karim, was a vegetable vendor from Bassouriyeh (Al Bazuriyah), a small village near the city of Tyre in South Lebanon.
Tough nuts for Nasrallah eh?
August 15th, 2006 at 5:56 pm
“JDyer, You write that M. Behe is an intellectual, not a jouranlist, as though to justify his nonsense;”
Nonesense to you, not to me.
I find Mr. Fisk’s reporting nonsensical on many levels.
You tomato, I tomato,….
August 15th, 2006 at 6:01 pm
Hey guys, check out this just in from Chris’s billboard, a better idea of what we’re going to talk about.
I read a lot in these threads about how we can and can’t know things. At the risk of getting all metaphysical, these two men “know” things in very different ways; whose approach should we trust? Why? Anyone read “Fiasco”? Got a response to it? Is Ricks, an outsider himself as a journalist, albeit one with careful and deep sourcing in the Pentagon, a credible witness?
August 15th, 2006 at 6:04 pm
“From the New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, 3rd Edition, 2003″
So what, Nabobnico.
Semitic as a term was originally used in linguistics in the 19C.
“Semite
Person speaking one of a group of related languages, presumably derived from a common language, Semitic (see Semitic languages). The term came to include Arabs, Akkadians, Canaanites, some Ethiopians, and Aramaean tribes including Hebrews. Semitic tribes migrated from the Arabian Peninsula, beginning c. 2500 BC, to the Mediterranean coast, Mesopotamia, and the Nile River delta. In Phoenicia, they became seafarers. In Mesopotamia, they blended with the civilization of Sumer. The Hebrews settled at last with other Semites in Palestine.”
http://www.answers.com/topic/semite
Semite as a racial designation came later, and the term anti Semite was introduces in late 19C Vienna and was used by people who called themselves the enemies of the Jews.
After WW2 people stopped calling themselves anti-Semites because of the obvious association with Nazism.
At this time antisemites started to claim that the Arabs were semites and that they didn’t hate the Arabs hence they couldn’t be antisemites.
This is of course nonsense. Antisemitism means a person who hates Jews and Nasrallah is an antisemite. There are some Jews who also, for whatever reason, hate Jews, and they too are antisemites. (You find the same phenomenon among members of other minorities–people who hate their own brethren—and among women. There is a substantial psychological literaure that deals with this issue.)
August 15th, 2006 at 6:06 pm
“Noam Chomsky and Tom Ricks could be said to embody two different ways of knowing … Chomsky is the Einstein of language theory,…”
Oh please, I beg to differ.
His is the phlogiston theory of language.
August 15th, 2006 at 6:06 pm
@Jdyer: LninYo as in el-Ninio as in little boy as in spanish.. though I must admit “Lenin” is a nice touch as well
also criticism of Israeli crimes is NOT anti-semitism regardless of how loud you shout and try to link the two. Finklestien is antisemitic. Chomsky is antisemitic. Lerner is Antisemitic. Get a hold of yourself my friend. and calm down.
And if we’re talking about criminal attacks on civilians, lets talk about terrorist activities by the thugs and assasins of Irgun, and their terrorist bombing of King David hotel.. etc. etc.
But I digress. So lets get back to asking Mr. Chomsky questions.
August 15th, 2006 at 6:10 pm
Or one can say that Chomsky is the Trifkin Lysenko of modern science.
August 15th, 2006 at 6:17 pm
LninYo Says:
“also criticism of Israeli crimes is NOT anti-semitism”
This begs the question that Israel did commit crimes. Make the charge, come up with specifics and prove them.
” regardless of how loud you shout and try to link the two.”
and regardles of how loud you shout that doesn’t make it true.
“Finklestien is antisemitic.”
Yes, he is.
“Chomsky is antisemitic.”
Chomsky is anti American and sees Israel as an ally of America which is why he hates that country, though he said he wouldn’t mind living there. The man is a bit ctrange, methinks.
“Lerner is Antisemitic. Get a hold of yourself my friend. and calm down.”
Lerner is just an editor of a lefitst magazine and a self ordained Rabbi.
His literary editor, By THANE ROSENBAUM btw, recently admited that he was wrong about his criticisms of Israel and wrote and op ed piece in the Wall Street Journal about called “Red State Jews.”
Look it up and calm down.
August 15th, 2006 at 6:34 pm
Let’s get serious guys. We are at war. People-especially women and children -are getting killed. The middle east is aflame. Let talk about Iraq!
August 15th, 2006 at 6:38 pm
Chomsky doesn’t know Russian. Why is he talking about Pravda as if he had first hadn knowledge of what was written there?
August 15th, 2006 at 6:39 pm
Yes, about Iraq, Chomsky said that we should do what the Iraqi people want then he points to polls in the US.
How typical.
August 15th, 2006 at 6:50 pm
The US intended to destroy Iraq, from the outset. There is one important subject missing here: Oil. Perle and other neocons were thrown out not because their Iraq policy was unsuccessfuly, but because they wanted to pump Iraq dry to control the cartel.
The fact is that Iraq’s oil wealth is enormous, much larger than their OPEC allocation based on disclosed reserves, has been kept off the market for eighty years since a US-UK agreement, and will continue to be, by an outcome in which Iraq collapses into civil war. If there is any stable outcome, Iraq will resume pumping, probably at maximum capacity, and oil prices will collapse; oil consumption will surge.
August 15th, 2006 at 7:02 pm
@jyder: He said he read some translations. talk about hearing what you want to hear. Want to witness Israeli crimes? there is this thing called CNN ?? or FOX.. I hear they’re quite fair and balanced. Give them a try.
@douchebags: And thanks a lot for intimidating the ROS crew by crying antisemitism at the drop of a hat. Anyone who dares to oppose Israel is antisemitic. Now we won’t know what Chomski and Nasralla had for lunch.
August 15th, 2006 at 7:17 pm
“@jyder: He said he read some translations. talk about hearing what you want to hear.”
Hey el nino, I know what he said, he talked about reading Pravda articles then he corrected himself.
“Want to witness Israeli crimes?”
This is so dumb it doesn’t merit a reply.
What you see on TV is a country trying to defend itself against Hizb’allah Lebanese crimes.
August 15th, 2006 at 7:18 pm
“The US intended to destroy Iraq, from the outset. There is one important subject missing here: Oil. Perle and other neocons were thrown out not because their Iraq policy was unsuccessfuly, but because they wanted to pump Iraq dry to control the cartel.”
Watch out another Chomskyite on board!
August 15th, 2006 at 8:19 pm
I am curious as to Mr. Chomsky’s view on why so many Americans are reticent to see their country’s actions in the Middle East- not to mention much of the world- as imperialist in nature.
August 15th, 2006 at 8:30 pm
The entire episode and nothing from the board? WTF? Was Chris afraid to riffle some feathers?
August 15th, 2006 at 9:00 pm
“This is so dumb it doesn’t merit a reply.”
right you are.. start calling people names and start shouting real hard and call everyone an anti-semite.. well.. hysterics will only take you so far.
plus its just boring.
bring something to the table, rather than being imbecilic and trying to act like Daniel Pipes’ shock troops. You cannot intimidate everyone with your shouting. Stop acting like Hezbollah.
August 15th, 2006 at 9:46 pm
Yeah, stop acting like Hezbollah! I mean, are you tring to get a face to face lovefest with Chomsky?
August 15th, 2006 at 10:04 pm
To Chris and the ROS staff, thankyou for providing the grounds for that reasoned conversation. I felt truly engaged.
August 15th, 2006 at 10:04 pm
Chomsky and Holocost denial - freedom of speech defender?
http://oliverkamm.typepad.com/blog/2004/11/chomsky_and_hol.html
August 15th, 2006 at 10:05 pm
Thrilling, rich with content, and a joy to listen to. The chomsky, ricks commentary was without doubt one of the more intelligent appraisals of the middle east conflicts that I have heard or read. Once again congradulations. How can I obtain a repeat of the program, or perhaps a transcript?
Dr. Tom Golden
August 15th, 2006 at 10:09 pm
I too like the idea of oil as a unifying root cause of the conflict in Iraq. It would be good to have both Ricks and Chomsky comment.
August 15th, 2006 at 11:09 pm
1st/14th, “Yeah, stop acting like Hezbollah! I mean, are you tring to get a face to face lovefest with Chomsky?”
LninYo isn’t worth a reply. He is just emoting, 1st/14th.
August 15th, 2006 at 11:13 pm
Ricks was very good, Chomsky was a disgrace up to his usual tricks.
Nothing he said could be backed up with solid evidence.
The worst of it was that he writes and speaks about Iran, Arabs, etc as if they were not actors with their own agenda. To him they are like children merely reacting to imperialist intervention.
It’s also the way racists view the “natives.”
August 15th, 2006 at 11:14 pm
“I too like the idea of oil as a unifying root cause of the conflict in Iraq.
The “root cause” is in Chomsky’s mind.
August 16th, 2006 at 12:18 am
This was Chomsky at his best. Usually he comes through as not having had his coffee today. But here Tom Ricks and Chris Lydon gave him plenty of stimulation.
Great perfomance by Chris, Tom, and especially Noam. Chomsky was at his best in the last half of the show, including Palestine/Israel.
August 16th, 2006 at 1:10 am
Great Show! Thanks.
August 16th, 2006 at 2:18 am
[…] count and the rise of the Shiite majority in Iraq and the Israel/Hezbollah War — on Open Source.
[…]
August 16th, 2006 at 3:35 am
When I first saw that Tom Ricks would be the hour’s second guest, my expectations sank. Not from any dislike of Ricks, but because I felt he deserved a whole show as the featured guest. Moreover, I couldn’t imagine how Ricks would mesh with Chomsky. How, I worried, would a journalist so accustomed to the US military and its concomitant worldview converse with a analyst like Chomsky, who is nothing if not notorious for his role as an American dissenter?
Well, I’m happy to be wrong. This show was terrific. I was surprised, even while sensing their differing lenses at work, at how civilly the two guests interacted. It was a wonderful example for us ROS bloggers, in our attempts to make our conversations broadly appealing and welcoming.
Case in point:
“Brendan, can we get a break from this guy so we can have a decent conversation?�
nabobnico, Aug 15th at 4:41 PM.
Good Gaia, do I ever have to agree. I’ve resisted this thread (and, increasingly, several others over the past few days) precisely from my growing disgust of the snide incivility poisoning the conversation.
Look, jdyer often (but not invariably) offers content I agree with. Her/His opinions on the true nature of Islamism jibe with mine. But I resist thanking him/her or expounding because, honestly, I don’t want to associate myself with all the scorn for the other bloggers that accompany her/his posts. (This is equally applicable to the post of the less prolific fiddlesticks and scribe5.)
I’d have liked to participate in some of the conversations lately. But civilly. By respectfully asking the other bloggers to endure my admittedly ‘politically incorrect’ takes on our collective perceptions of Islamism and many other matters (like the curiously predictable lens Noam Chomsky views the world through). And then by asking for an enlightening dialogue.
Not by spewing scorn and disdain.
As an example: making fun of spelling (and while misspelling ‘give’ as ‘gove’ – the lead word of the criticism!!!), and others too: ‘giult’ at 2:10 PM on 8/15/06; ‘pobably’ at 4:13 PM while unjustly scorning oolitic; and who knows what other hypocrisies.
And worse: the constant characterization of posts from others by use of disparaging smears like ‘nonsense’, ‘naïve’, and ‘dumb’.
Not to mention the by now utterly-beyond-tolerable tactic of accusing every dissenting byline of ‘anti-Semitism’.
I’d have (politely) liked to offer evidence of the authentic bigotry of many Muslim Koran-addicts, and the truth that these folks aren’t poor, undereducated tools of living demons (‘terrorists’—the Orcs of the 21st century) masquerading as faithful religionists, but middle class college graduates whose memetic absorption of their religious scriptures enables them to view human life as expendable.
But the ‘conversations’ lately in ROS threads have been just too appalling. Disgusting, even.
Jdyer, don’t get me wrong: I’ve learned a lot from your posts that include links. The substance of your posts often reflects my own understanding of the issues.
But your conversational technique is nothing short of abhorrent.
In fact, it’s not ‘conversational’ at all. It’s an electronic kind of ‘shout down’.
For you to write: “This is a personal attack and threat by Nabobnico…� after all the scorn you consistently spew at others is nothing less than breathtakingly myopic.
You and I, at a bar and over a beer, would probably have a mutually satisfying conversation…well, except that I’m sure your attitude toward dissenting opinions would send me, sooner instead of later, looking for someone less opinionated and more honestly interested in an exchange of information.
Now, to steer this post toward something more constructive: the Rules of Engagement/Terms of Endearment (thanks, sidewalker!) ban trolling, but leave disrespect a matter of mere warning. My question then is this: what good are the ROE if our moderators, in their hopes of encouraging civil conversation, can’t feel free to apply them to snideballs?
This thread, at this writing, already boasts over 100 posts. Yet a third of these (at this writing) are jdyer’s.
But that’s not all. A mere twenty-seven—that’s 27—bylines contributed those 100+ posts. (Including two [in 5 posts] from the already hard-pressed ROS staff trying to moderate the mayhem.)
How many more contributors might we have had if the offerings from the bulk of the bloggers hadn’t been subjected to derision from a domineering know-it-all?
This sort of discourse is off-putting, to say the least.
Look, we don’t mind defending our posts from attack—we know at the outset that that’s the risk of posting. But we don’t want to have to do it while defending our character, too, for cryin’ out loud. That’s supposed to be ‘out of bounds’.
Despite reading Brendan’s 5:24 PM, and despite appreciating all that goes with the concept of free speech, and even while appreciating how tricky it must be to indulgently monitor the conversation herein, I feel compelled to request from ROS a bit more moderation in many of these threads.
And for a bit less ‘carpet-bombing’ from the bloggers who Claude Rains would surely dub ‘the usual suspects’.
Again (and nothwithstanding this rather substantial gripe) the show was excellent. (And this is coming from someone who, despite identifying with the Left, often finds Chomsky much too dogmatic and tediously predictable in his analyses.)
August 16th, 2006 at 3:59 am
my problem with chomsky is he is disengeuous. he repeated the often repeated(by islamists and their sympathisers) nonsense about all the arab states accepting peace with israel. that is a lie. their terms were absurd and anyone knows recognition of current fact of existence is not the same as recognizing the right to exist. its playing with words. anyone with half a brain knows a deal acceptable to unabashedly antisemitic regiems like iran or syria is not an honest one. it is a p.r. offer, a false hand of peace for the niave and the media, and people like chomsky to pretend his position has the high moral ground when its just built on bad faith. it is an unviable and unfair plan. the right of return? right, the palestinians get a state, and get to settle in the israeli’s state too, so they can flood it until they are the majority and effectively destroy it? that is just a deal breaker and no honest plan would include it. he doesn’t have long term solutions, he just doesnt take any responsibility.
August 16th, 2006 at 4:02 am
Yup. I enjoy differing opinions. That is what makes the blog interesting. But the same old insults over and over and over and the consistant negativity does get extreamly tedious.
August 16th, 2006 at 4:05 am
Nope. I was saying yup to Old Nick’s post.
August 16th, 2006 at 4:13 am
(not darwhin’s)
August 16th, 2006 at 7:54 am
Hello everyone- I have not heard the show yet but sounds like a good one and I look forward to it. I agree with Old Nick’s comment above which said things that need to be said, apparently over and over. Thanks for tha analysis Nick- I think it’s helpful.
August 16th, 2006 at 10:14 am
Ditto in spades regarding Old Nick’s comments. I’m fairly new to this game, and on the evidence so far I doubt I’ll last long. But many thanks for a great show.
August 16th, 2006 at 10:19 am
First, let me say that I initially became acquainted with Chomsky’s work in 1967, when I was an undergraduate studying language. I did not know of his political views or activities until the mid-1970’s, and was quite surprised. I read several of his books, and was stricken with the realization that his thinking was at least an order of magnitude greater than mine, and I had (and to this day continue) to think of myself as a pretty smart guy. But Chomsky is in a different league, though in his modesty, he would deny it. His contributions to the world of ideas rank with those of Darwin, Freud, Marx, and Einstein. If you don’t realize this, you’re missing the point.
August 16th, 2006 at 10:19 am
Hurley:
Don’t you dare get queasy on us now. I’ve always appreciated reading you — even when I don’t always agree with your posts. Stick around and give us more!
August 16th, 2006 at 10:32 am
I agree with Old Nick too and my feelings about Chomsky are similar to those of bobby
It’s a pity that instead of commenting on what Chomsky said in the broadcast, we get the same old allegations against him (and they call HIM predictable !) from people who are usually pro-Israel. It’s rather pathetic that from all of Chomsky’s vast output all they can find are the same few examples, none of which have any serious merit.
Chomsky is obviously not afraid of saying unpopular things; if he doubted the Holocaust he would have said so explicitly. Instead he has explicitly said that such views are absurd. As someone else said above, his point was that if you believe in free speech that means even for views which are absurd or abhorrent; it doesn’t mean freedom only for views most of us find acceptable.
Similarly he has never “defended Pol Pot” - if he thought he needed defending he’d say so and explain why. Instead he said that what the Khmer Rouge did was a terrible atrocity and he and Herman did not take a position at the time on the actual figures because of the difficulty of getting at the facts.
They were making a point about US media coverage, which usually adopted the highest estimates anyone offered. They pointed out that even the US State Department had lower estimates of the numbers killed than those generally used by US media. The point was not to defend Pol Pot, but to illustrate the general bias in US media, which understimates atrocities by the US and its allies, and overestimates those by its enemies.
All rather obvious, but this won’t stop those who wish to attack Chomsky because he tells some awkward truths about the US and Israel, from repeating the same few, tired allegations against him.
August 16th, 2006 at 10:50 am
Old Nick says:
“even when I don’t agree with your posts”
Why you malicious ant-Semite…The noive!
And thanks to ted for a lucid rehearsal of some of the alleged issues that have led to Chomsky being an object of mindless hatred to so many. For a while there I thought this discussion a tedious sideline to the issues Chomsky engages, but it’s not. Chomsky is worth defending, and this is a good place to do it. Long may he carry on, in truth and, inevitably on occassion, in error, in which case I’m sure we can count on jdyer and others to hold him accountable, as they should.
August 16th, 2006 at 11:14 am
Long ago Herbert Marcuse called talk radio “obscene.” As I read these comments about Noam Chomsky’s appearance on Open Source I remmember why he said that. When you give an “open mike” or an “open blog” to people who think that any opinion is as good as any other, without concern about argument, logic, evidence, or truth you invite thoughtless ad hominem attacks. That is, indeed, obscene. Is that the best we can do?
August 16th, 2006 at 11:35 am
What an abuse of the name “Socrates” and what an absurd claim: [Chomsky thinks] ” that any opinion is as good as any other, without concern about argument, logic, evidence, or truth”. Where’s the argument, evidence or logic to support this ?
One might disagree with Chomsky, but he presents you with massive evidence and and logical argument for his views, as well as a sardonic sense of humour. He needs the latter, given the amount of vilification he gets - much of it as silly as this and hence only deserving a derisory laugh.
In fact Chomsky has criticised much “postmodern” writing for its relativism and disdain for such Enlightenment practices as logical argument and use of evidence - practices which in fact characterize his own work.
August 16th, 2006 at 11:41 am
Oops, sorry - my mistake Socrates ! I read and posted too quickly (it’s my afternoon dip in alertness here in Paris
). You are in fact talking about the comments here rather than Chomsky ! And how right you are 
August 16th, 2006 at 12:23 pm
Hurley, thanks for the LOL your 10:50 AM awarded me.
Regarding my appreciation of Noam Chomsky: first, I value him highly as our leading American dissenter. Even if he overstates the case on occasion, his voice and views are more than welcome – they’re damned necessary as an intellectual counterweight to the ideological rantings of the reactionary chorus wailing from richly funded prop-shops like the Heritage Foundation, American Enterprise Institute, FOX News, and the intellectually dishonest publishers of cretins like Ann Coulter.
We need a thousand more Noam Chomskys.
And they deserve at least as much ‘think tank’ funding as the ultraconservative wealthy heap onto their many pet prop-shops.
My quibble with Chomsky lies mostly in how he frames his analyses. Now, it could simply be an outcome of my own sloppy reading, but it seems to me that he accuses the corporate-government establishment of consciously/deliberately subjecting the world’s less privileged to US corporate imperialism. I’m not disputing the reality of the subjection. I simply tend to think that the subjugation is a result of the establishment’s culture: the way their worldview/paradigm allows them to rationalize their selfishness as ‘good for all’, and even as ‘godly’. John Maynard Keynes reputedly said:
“Capitalism is the astounding belief that the most wicked of men will do the most wicked of things for the greatest good of everyone.�
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_Maynard_Keynes
Even if that quote is a misattribution, it’s not exactly wrong. In fact, it ironically nails a central tenet of corporate capitalism. It points to the importance of culture to explain the inhumane workings of today’s parasitic economic systems. Our elites require their entire think-tank industry to justify their concept of ‘ownership’ and how they use it squeeze ever more juice from the fast-drying fruit we call the Earth.
But most of this happens at a semi-conscious level, I think. Otherwise, the elites would never be able to sleep at night. Clueless folks like Dubya’s mama have to believe the propaganda to be able to articulate the couple of quips you can read HERE: http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Barbara_Bu