The king of “America Bad” geopolitical analysis Noam Chomsky, likely on his way out.

LOST IN THE SAUCE

The Sauce Apostle
Joined
Jun 15, 2022
Messages
1,919
Reputation
849
Daps
6,749
Reppin
HONOLULU
Manufacturing Consent, Chomsky's treatise on how corporate media aligns with imperial interests

Manugactorinconsent2.jpg
This is probably one of the most formative pieces of literature for me, as I found it pretty young. Might even have been pre-high school. It's simple stuff for all of us now, but as a kid it pretty much shattered my worldview. Chomsky's work made me a much more analytical person and I probably owe a lot of my current worldview to him. It's sad to hear he's on his way out, but he's lived a long, long life as a mega influential figure, and he's one of few living human beings we can point to and say they definitely made a difference in the world for the better. I don't know if we'll ever see someone like him again in the foreseeable future. It feels weird to eulogize him before he's gone, but he deserves the praise regardless.

He really doesn't deserve to have his name slandered by the HL mental midgets. Thankfully everyone around here knows @Toussaint and @the cac mamba's centrist goof squad are dumb as rocks and full of shyt. I don't think there's a section on this site where their names aren't considered dirt.
This thread is a little extra weird, though. I think @Toussaint gets off on the embarrassment he feels from losing arguments and having his lies and distortions debunked, and he's been especially needy lately. I don't know what else it could be compelling him to so willfully set himself up to look like a clueless dumbass over and over again. It's a weird perversion, and I wish he wouldn't try to use Chomsky's situation to get his rocks off, but what can you do. :huhldup:
 

Mister Terrific

It’s in the name
Joined
May 24, 2022
Messages
6,713
Reputation
1,887
Daps
23,750
Reppin
Michigan
This is probably one of the most formative pieces of literature for me, as I found it pretty young. Might even have been pre-high school. It's simple stuff for all of us now, but as a kid it pretty much shattered my worldview. Chomsky's work made me a much more analytical person and I probably owe a lot of my current worldview to him. It's sad to hear he's on his way out, but he's lived a long, long life as a mega influential figure, and he's one of few living human beings we can point to and say they definitely made a difference in the world for the better. I don't know if we'll ever see someone like him again in the foreseeable future. It feels weird to eulogize him before he's gone, but he deserves the praise regardless.

He really doesn't deserve to have his name slandered by the HL mental midgets. Thankfully everyone around here knows @Toussaint and @the cac mamba's centrist goof squad are dumb as rocks and full of shyt. I don't think there's a section on this site where their names aren't considered dirt.
This thread is a little extra weird, though. I think @Toussaint gets off on the embarrassment he feels from losing arguments and having his lies and distortions debunked, and he's been especially needy lately. I don't know what else it could be compelling him to so willfully set himself up to look like a clueless dumbass over and over again. It's a weird perversion, and I wish he wouldn't try to use Chomsky's situation to get his rocks off, but what can you do. :huhldup:
To quote Rick Sanchez, your boos mean nothing, I’ve seen what makes you cheer.
 

Mister Terrific

It’s in the name
Joined
May 24, 2022
Messages
6,713
Reputation
1,887
Daps
23,750
Reppin
Michigan

On the NATO Bombing of Yugoslavia​

Noam Chomsky interviewed by Danilo Mandic​

RTS Online, April 25, 2006​


DM: Now, this particular humanitarian sharade was…

NC: That’s pre Kosovo.

DM: Right. And it was specific in a sense because it was based on the claim that it was preventing genocide.

NC: Now this is, see there are no examples yet.

DM: Let me just read something that you said in an interview around the time of the bombing. You said that “the term “genocide” as applied to Kosovo is an insult to the victims of Hitler. In fact, it’s revisionist to an extreme.” What did you mean by that?

NC: First of all let me just fix the timing. The things I’ve been quoting are from the late nineties.

DM: Before Kosovo.

NC: Yeah. Now, they needed some event to justify this massive self-adulation, OK? Along came Kosovo fortunately and so now they had to stop genocide. What was the genocide in Kosovo? We know from the Western documentation what it was. In the year prior to the bombing, according to Western sources about two thousand people were killed, the killings were distributed, a lot of them were coming in fact according to British government, which was the most hawkish element of the Alliance, up until January 1999 a majority of killings came from the KLA guerillas who were coming in as they said, you know, to try to incite a harsh Serbian response, which they got, in order to appeal to Western humanitarians to bomb. We know from the Western records that nothing changed between January and March, in fact up until March 20 they indicate nothing. March 20th they indicate an increase in KLA attacks. But, it was ugly but by international standards it was almost invisible unfortunately and it was very distributed. If the British are correct, the majority was coming from the KLA guerillas.

DM: And as it later turned out the KLA was also receiving financial and military support.

NC: They were being supported by CIA in those months. And to call that genocide, is really to insult the victims of the holocaust, you know, if that’s genocide than the whole world is covered with genocide.

That was not reported in the West. You do not report your own crimes, that’s critical. And right in the midst of all of this, “how can we tolerate a couple of thousand people being killed in Kosovo, mixed guerillas and …” In fact the 50th Anniversary of NATO took place right in the middle of all of this. And there were lamentations about what was going on right across NATO’s border. Not a word about the much worse things going on inside NATO’s borders, thanks to the massive flow of arms from the United States. Now that’s only one case. Comparable things were going on all over where the U.S. were supportive of much worse, but this, you had to focus on this, that was the topic for “the herd of independent minds.” It played a crucial role in their self image because they had been going through a period of praising themselves for their magnificence in their “normative revolution” and their “noble phase” and so on and so forth, so it was a god-sent, and therefore you couldn’t ask any questions about it. Incidentally the same happened in the earlier phase of the Balkan wars. It was awful, and so on and so forth. However, but if you look at the coverage, for example there was one famous incident which has completely reshaped the Western opinion and that was the photograph of the thin man behind the barb-wire.

DM
: A fraudulent photograph, as it turned out.

NC: You remember. The thin men behind the barb-wire so that was Auschwitz and ‘we can’t have Auschwitz again.’ The intellectuals went crazy and the French were posturing on television and the usual antics. Well, you know, it was investigated and carefully investigated. In fact it was investigated by the leading Western specialist on the topic, Philip Knightly, who is a highly respected media analyst and his specialty is photo journalism, probably the most famous Western and most respected Western analyst in this. He did a detailed analysis of it. And he determined that it was probably the reporters who were behind the barb-wire, and the place was ugly, but it was a refugee camp, I mean, people could leave if they wanted and, near the thin man was a fat man and so on, well and there was one tiny newspaper in England, probably three people, called LM which ran a critique of this, and the British (who haven’t a slightest concept of freedom of speech, that is a total fraud)…a major corporation, ITN, a big media corporation had publicized this, so the corporation sued the tiny newspaper for lible. Now the British lible laws were absolutely atrocious. The person accused has to prove that the, what he’s reporting is not done in malice and he can’t prove that. So and in fact when you have a huge corporation with batteries of lawyers and so on, carrying out a suit against the three people in the office, who probably don’t have the pocket-money, it’s obvious what is going to happen. Especially under these grotesque lible laws.

So yes, they were able to prove the little newspaper…and couldn’t prove it wasn’t done out of malice, they were put out of business. There was just euphoria in the left liberal British press. You’ve read The Guardian and The Observer, they thought it was wonderful.

NC: … was invasion of Falluja. Al Jazeera’s one thing, but there was worse. The invasion of Falluja was kind of similar to Srebrenica, if you look, but … They invaded Falluja; the first thing the invading troops did, U.S. troops, was to take over the general hospital and throw the patients on the floor, they were taken out their beds, put on the floor, hands tied on their backs, doctors thrown on the floor, hands on their backs, it was a picture of it in the front page of the The New York Times, they said it was wonderful.

NC: … was invasion of Falluja. Al Jazeera’s one thing, but there was worse. The invasion of Falluja was kind of similar to Srebrenica, if you look, but … They invaded Falluja; the first thing the invading troops did, U.S. troops, was to take over the general hospital and throw the patients on the floor, they were taken out their beds, put on the floor, hands tied on their backs, doctors thrown on the floor, hands on their backs, it was a picture of it in the front page of the The New York Times, they said it was wonderful.



DM: What struck me was that you compared the Srebrenica massacre with the Falluja invasion, why is that?

NC: Because there are similarities

DM: Like what?

NC: In the case of Srebrenica women and children were trucked out and then came, you know, the massacre. In the case of Falluja, the women and children were ordered out, they weren’t trucked out, they were ordered out, but the men weren’t allowed to leave and then came the attack. In fact, it turned out that the roads out were blocked.

Well, I mean all things, it’s not the same story, but that part is similar.
I actually mentioned that a couple of times. Storms of protest hysteria, you know. Incidentally this Guardian affair – part of it which was totally fraud is on the part of the editors, not the reporter. They blamed it on the reporter, but it was the editors.

One other thing that they were infuriated about was that she asked me what about the thin man behind the barb-wire, isn’t that a horrible atrocity? I said well, you know, it’s not certain that it was correct. OK, that led to the hysteria. That’s when Philip Knightly tried to intervene to present once again his analysis and once again his critique of the media, but couldn’t. He is a very prominent, prestigious person. You just cannot break ranks; that’s not tolerated. I mean, we are lucky, we do not have censorship, it’s free society, but the self-censorship is overwhelming. Actually, Orwell once wrote about this, in something that nobody has read. Everyone has read Animal Farm and almost nobody has read the introduction to Animal Farm…
 

Mister Terrific

It’s in the name
Joined
May 24, 2022
Messages
6,713
Reputation
1,887
Daps
23,750
Reppin
Michigan
DM: I want to ask you about some of the present developments that are being used again to fabricate a lot of these issues. Slobodan Milosevic died last month. What is the significance of his death in your view?

NC: Milosevic was, he committed many crimes, not a nice person, terrible person, but the charges against him would have never have held up. He was originally indicted on the Kosovo charges. The indictment was issued right in the middle of bombing which already nullifies it. It used British, it admittedly used British and the U.S. intelligence right in the middle of bombing, can’t possibly take it seriously. However if you look at the indictment, it was for crimes committed after the bombing. There was one exception: Racak. Let’s even grant that the claims are true, let’s put that aside. So, there was one exception, no evidence that he was involved or you know, it took place,

But almost the entire indictment was for after the bombing. How are those charges going to stand up unless you put Bill Clinton and Tony Blair on the dock alongside? Then they realized that it was a weak case. So they added the early Balkan wars, OK? Lot of horrible things happened there. But the worst crime, the one that they were really going to charge him for that genocide was Srebrenica.

Now, there is a little problem with that: namely there was an extensive, detailed inquiry into it by the Dutch Government, which was the responsible government, there were Dutch forces there, that’s a big, you know, hundreds of pages inquiry, and their conclusion is that Milosevic did not know anything about that, and that when it was discovered in Belgrade, they were horrified. Well, suppose that had entered into the testimony?


DM: Does this mean that you are a “Milosevic sympathizer”?

NC: No, he was terrible. In fact he should have been thrown out, in fact he probably would have been thrown out and in the early nineties if the Albanians had voted, it was pretty close. He did all sorts of terrible things but it wasn’t a totalitarian state, I mean, there were elections, there was the opposition, a lot of rotten things, but there are rotten things everywhere and I certainly wouldn’t want to have dinner with him or talk to him, and yes, he deserves to be tried for crimes, but this trial was never going to hold up, if it was even semi-honest. It was a farce; in fact they were lucky that he died.




So in summation, Chomsky believes just a few thousand people died at Srebrenica. That it was in retaliation for the war against Serbs. That the concentration camps were refugee camps. The pictures of starved prisoners were manufactured . That Fallujah a battle where 600 civilians died in an urban battle that lasted 50 days, compared to an execution of disarmed civilians that occurred over 20 days that killed over 8,000. Lastly that Milosevic was not going to be convicted of war crimes.

Just a thoroughly repugnant individual
 

ADevilYouKhow

Rhyme Reason
Joined
May 11, 2012
Messages
35,303
Reputation
1,448
Daps
62,772
Reppin
got a call for three nines
That's a full-blown lie by people who don't like him criticizing America.


He said that the Serbian attacks on Bosnian Muslims was a horror story and a major crime, and he said that the Russian invasion of Ukraine was a war crime and that Ukraine had every right to defend itself. But he's made "RAH RAH AMERICA" posters so upset by his criticisms of American imperialism that they lie and paint him as if he defended Serbia and Russia.

Chomsky also speaks based on what he believes precisely, not based on what is politically correct to say in America. As a result, criticisms against him always revolve around how he uses words or his willingness to be a realist about what is happening, rather than the actual truth of his statements. The people attacking him are trying to defend a particular pro-American narrative and just looking for him to slip up and say the "wrong" politically incorrect statement about that narrative.

You have UN Security Council states and nuclear states actually committing crimes against humanity and engaging in wars of aggression to expand their territories(imperialism amirite?)and he hand waves it away. The narrative you’re trying to drive here isn’t relevant. Russia, China, and India’s actions for example are very clear cut and worthy of examination and scorn. “But America” is such a lazy retort when everyone knows the US has glaring issues but they don’t rise to drawing current parallels with the countries I listed and you know that.
 

Professor Emeritus

Veteran
Poster of the Year
Supporter
Joined
Jan 5, 2015
Messages
51,330
Reputation
19,861
Daps
204,015
Reppin
the ether
he hand waves it away.


Yet again, that's a lie, just like the first lie you tried to get away with.




The narrative you’re trying to drive here isn’t relevant. Russia, China, and India’s actions for example are very clear cut and worthy of examination and scorn.


He HAS said that those nations' actions are worthy of examination and scorn.




“But America” is such a lazy retort when everyone knows the US has glaring issues but they don’t rise to drawing current parallels with the countries I listed and you know that.


It's fascinating how easily the propaganda has conditioned you to believe the exact reverse of the argument being made.

"But America" is not the argument. "But America" assumes that we live in some other country where Putin's conduct or the CCP is our primary interest, and we can't address that because someone keeps going, "But America."

WE'RE AMERICANS, DUMMY, AMERICA AND THE ALLIES WE SUPPORT ARE THE PRIMARY INTEREST! Chomsky is pointing out how America always defaults to "But China!", "But Russia", "But [insert random nation we have geopolitical objectives against here]" in order to deflect from their own actions and hypocrisy. That's what this whole fukking thread is about. Chomsky has said over and over that as Americans, our primary interest should be the conduct of America, because that is the conduct that we have the greatest responsibility for and the most power to change.

What power do you have to control Putin's conduct? We're seen that the entire force of the US government makes little difference in what decisions Putin makes. What power do you have to influence the decisions of the CCP? Apparently, very little, as we don't seem to have any impact in how they treat Falun Gong or Uyghur people. But you know how much power we have to control the actions of the US military? THAT'S OUR OWN fukkING MILITARY, WE CONTROL THAT BIITCH. Why keep deflecting to other nations we can't control as an excuse for ignoring the atrocities and injustices we've participated in and/or politically supported ourselves?



OP chose a title for this thread that admits the fact that America was the subject. He keeps deflecting to other countries because he knows he can't defend American conduct. Saying, "But Russia is worse than us!" doesn't comfort a single victim of America's foreign policy.
 

Professor Emeritus

Veteran
Poster of the Year
Supporter
Joined
Jan 5, 2015
Messages
51,330
Reputation
19,861
Daps
204,015
Reppin
the ether
Social media babble


I tried to quote @Toussaint and realized he hadn't typed a single statement, he's still just mass copy/pasting twitter links. :mjlol:


Chomsky said that Russia exhibited more restraint than the USA did in Iraq, and that's obviously true. The USA started their war with "shock and awe" of blowing up shyt across the country including civilian infrastructure, while Russia literally started (and in part failed) by trying to do less damage. Their damage has ramped up as the war has gone on and the shyt they have done is evil as hell, but what Chomsky rightly points out is that even at their worst, they're still not worse than what the USA did completely on its own with a fraction of the resistance.

Notice that even though Chomsky's explicit purpose was to discuss USA hypocrisy in its lack of concern for its own military carnage, @Toussaint didn't type a single fact or comparison with the US war in Iraq? Why is that?

Well, let's go with an objective measure: deaths.

3 years into the war, there were three major population-level studies of deaths in the Iraq War. They found somewhere between 700,000 and 1,000,000 deaths due to the war, with between 150,000 to 600,000 of those deaths being violent. Obviously, it was difficult to get a firm # because the USA had completely destroyed Iraq as a functioning nation and US government didn't give a flying fukk how many Iraqis it had killed.

Right now, we're 2.5 years into the Ukraine War. Most of the estimates I've seen are from about 2 years into the war, and they range from 35,000 to 70,000 Ukrainian troops killed and 11,000+ civilians killed.

Oh, and Iraq's population in 2003 was much SMALLER than Ukraine's population right now.




So the USA in 2003 walked and killed 10x as many people as Russia did, with a much higher % of those deaths being civilians, despite Iraq being a smaller country than Ukraine and despite facing far less resistance. But tell me again why Chomsky is wrong when he says that America was less restrained?

All @Toussaint will do in response is post more social media. He lacks any understanding of the issues at all, he is nothing more than a pro-America bot at this point.
 

Mister Terrific

It’s in the name
Joined
May 24, 2022
Messages
6,713
Reputation
1,887
Daps
23,750
Reppin
Michigan
We now know two of Putin’s demands were complete disarmament of Ukrainian military and complete veto power over Ukrainian defense.




Chomsky would gladly serve the west on a platter to every two bit autocrat in history if he could oppose the U.S. If you are allied with the west your life, dignity, freedom mean nothing.

Thank god we are made of stronger stuff
 

Professor Emeritus

Veteran
Poster of the Year
Supporter
Joined
Jan 5, 2015
Messages
51,330
Reputation
19,861
Daps
204,015
Reppin
the ether
We now know two of Putin’s demands were complete disarmament of Ukrainian military and complete veto power over Ukrainian defense.


WTF does that have to do with what Chomsky said? Chomsky didn't say it was Ukraine's duty to give in to all of Putin's demands. He spoke of what was a realistic manner in which to end the war. How do you see the war ending?




Chomsky would gladly serve the west on a platter to every two bit autocrat in history if he could oppose the U.S. If you are allied with the west your life, dignity, freedom mean nothing.

Thank god we are made of stronger stuff


Goddamn, you talk like a WW2-era military propaganda film that showed before Yankee Doodle Dandy. Have you noticed that EVERY time your idiotic ass has claimed that Chomsky supported a dictator, I was able to show you exact counterevidence of Chomsky condemning that dictator and their actions? AMERICA openly aligns with and arms dictators, not Chomsky. AMERICA has spent your entire lifetime hiding and downplaying the crimes of dictators so long as they were aligned with it, not Chomsky.





You admitted in your thread title that you hate Chomsky because he says, "America bad". But not ONCE have you managed to debunk a single thing Chomsky says about America. You keep throwing in red herrings and deflecting to mischaracterizations of Chomsky's statements on other nations because you know that's the easiest way to muddy the waters. When he talks about America, you have nothing to say.
 

Professor Emeritus

Veteran
Poster of the Year
Supporter
Joined
Jan 5, 2015
Messages
51,330
Reputation
19,861
Daps
204,015
Reppin
the ether
@Toussaint, since you claimed that Chomsky's comparison between Iraq and Ukraine was wrong, just answer these simple questions:


1. Did the USA kill far more Iraqis (even only counting the first 2-3 years) than Russia has killed Ukrainians? Yes or no?

2. Did the USA kill far more Iraqi civilians (even just in the first 2-3 years) than Russia has killed Ukrainian civilians? Yes or no?

3. Did the USA inaugurate their war with a far more devestating starting blow ("Shock and Awe") than Russia did in Ukraine? Yes or no?

4. Did those substantially more Iraqi deaths come despite the fact that Iraq was offering far less resistance? Yes or no?

5. Did those substantially more Iraqi deathss come despite 2003 Iraq having a much small population than 2022 Ukraine? Yes or no?



By every single objective measure, USA fought war more indiscriminately and deadly when invading Iraq that Russia did when invading Ukraine. Chomsky's exact claim was that Russia's invasion of Iraq WAS wrong and WAR a major crime and that they SHOULD face consequences for it, but that the USA is a hypocritical country that condemns such invasions when their "enemy" does them, but then turns around and does the same thing when it serves its own geopolitical interests. Was that true, or not?

You give the impression that you don't give a flying fukk about the black/brown people America kills, just so long as you can deflect to some American enemy.
 

Mister Terrific

It’s in the name
Joined
May 24, 2022
Messages
6,713
Reputation
1,887
Daps
23,750
Reppin
Michigan

More on Russias demands from the New York Times

Ukraine-Russia Peace Is as Elusive as Ever. But in 2022 They Were Talking.​

Representatives from the warring nations held peace talks in the early weeks of the Russian invasion. They fizzled. Documents from those talks show why any new ones will face major obstacles.​



The Russian team wanted Ukraine and every other treaty signatory to cancel the sanctions against Moscow they had been levying since 2014 and to publicly call on other countries to do the same. Ukraine was to cede its entire eastern Donbas region and recognize Crimea as part of Russia. A seven-point list targeted Ukraine’s national identity, including a ban on naming places after Ukrainian independence fighters.

The latter demand illustrated one of Mr. Putin’s stated rationales for going to war: he had described Ukraine as an artificial country that should be considered part of Russia.


Russia’s treaty proposals read like a laundry list of Kremlin demands, including that Kyiv-controlled parts of eastern Ukraine be ceded to Russia’s proxy “people’s republics.”​


“Ukraine recognizes the independence of the Donetsk People's Republic and the Luhansk People's Republic within the administrative boundaries of the former Donetsk and Lugansk regions of Ukraine and, in this regard, shall introduce comprehensive changes to the national legislation.”

“Ukraine shall cancel and henceforth not impose, and also shall publicly call on all states and international organizations to cancel and henceforth not impose, any and all sanctions and restrictive measures imposed since 2014 against the Russian Federation.”

“Ban, with the introduction of criminal liability, the glorification and propaganda in any form of Nazism and neo-Nazism, the Nazi movement and organizations associated therewith, including holding public demonstrations and processions, construction of monuments and memorials and naming toponyms, in particular, streets, settlements and other geographical objects.”

The draft included limits on the size of the Ukrainian armed forces and the number of tanks, artillery batteries, warships and combat aircraft the country could have in its arsenal. The Ukrainians were prepared to accept such caps, but sought much higher limits.

A former senior U.S. official who was briefed on the negotiations, noting how Russian forces were being repelled across northern Ukraine, said Mr. Putin seemed to be “salivating” at the deal.

American officials were alarmed at the terms. In meetings with their Ukrainian counterparts, the senior official recalled, “We quietly said, ‘You understand this is unilateral disarmament, right?’”


Russia’s ceasefire proposaldeclared that Ukraine would need to withdraw its troops on its own territory.​


“Ukraine carries out the withdrawal (return) of units of its armed forces, other armed formations, weapons and military equipment to places of permanent deployment or to places agreed upon with the Russian Federation.”

The biggest problem, however, came in Article 5. It stated that, in the event of another armed attack on Ukraine, the “guarantor states” that would sign the treaty — Great Britain, China, Russia, the United States and France — would come to Ukraine’s defense.

To the Ukrainians’ dismay, there was a crucial departure from what Ukrainian negotiators said was discussed in Istanbul. Russia inserted a clause saying that all guarantor states, including Russia, had to approve the response if Ukraine were attacked. In effect, Moscow could invade Ukraine again and then veto any military intervention on Ukraine’s behalf — a seemingly absurd condition that Kyiv quickly identified as a dealbreaker.





Far leftists like Chomsky often misread the motivations of authoritarians because secretly they agree with the authoritarian world view. I’m sure in his heart of hearts he believes Ukraine is Russia or the Soviet Union same as he supported the Serbs because he couldn’t get over the collapse of Yugoslavia. Individual rights and right to self determination be damned.
 
Top