Noam Chomsky [offtopic from role models thread]

[Chavi]

Noam Chomsky: Don't think I need to say much about him. One of the most intelligent political critics in the world right now and is the person who started my interest in the area. I absolutely recommend his works

Role model: Anybody who realizes that Chomsky is an anarchist crackpot that aids and abets terrorism in the name of 'anti-imperialism' - whatever the f that means to him.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-jh2R-_eQY

Don't think I need to say much about him

touche

[TrueLight]

i watched a few of Noam Chomsky's videos and don't like his ideas. especially economic maybe he has a few good things on foreign policy...

http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?t=168756

i especially agree with Conza88 criticism of him

argh ok nope don't agree with him... his very good at twisting words though
http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?t=153224&page=2

[Cianyx]

Noam Chomsky: Don't think I need to say much about him. One of the most intelligent political critics in the world right now and is the person who started my interest in the area. I absolutely recommend his works

Role model: Anybody who realizes that Chomsky is an anarchist crackpot that aids and abets terrorism in the name of 'anti-imperialism' - whatever the f that means to him.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-jh2R-_eQY

Don't think I need to say much about him

touche

Okay. So what don't you like about him again? How does he aid and abet if he opposes terrorism from both sides?

^Haha. Even I don't agree with that. A quick search shows that the only locations where the quote appears is in Ron Paul forums. Sorry man, but it's quite obvious that it was a smear job. I'll watch the vid in a sec

[Pappa-Bohr]

Chomsky has gone senile, all he does is constantly peddle his doctrine of 'moral equivalency'.
Rather vile stuff.

[Yitzi_K]

@ Cianyx, Noam Chomsky? You can't be serious. For 'critic of America's foreign policy' read 'shameless apologist for the worst human rights abusers in history so long as they're anti-American'.

[Yitzi_K]

Noam Chomsky: Don't think I need to say much about him. One of the most intelligent political critics in the world right now and is the person who started my interest in the area. I absolutely recommend his works

Role model: Anybody who realizes that Chomsky is an anarchist crackpot that aids and abets terrorism in the name of 'anti-imperialism' - whatever the f that means to him.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-jh2R-_eQY

Don't think I need to say much about him

touche

Okay. So what don't you like about him again? How does he aid and abet if he opposes terrorism from both sides?

It would be nice if that were true, but it isn't.

Take a read of this: http://www.travelbrochuregraphics.com/extra/hypocrisy_of_noam_chomsky.htm

Also, not many people have 8-thousand word wikipedia entries dedicated exclusively to criticism of their ideas.

[ninwa]

Mod edit: split threads

[Russ]

Chomsky is a jerk and a lot of his ideas are opposed to mine. I'll grant that some of the stuff he says is relatively accurate, but so much of it is just blah.

[Cianyx]

Noam Chomsky: Don't think I need to say much about him. One of the most intelligent political critics in the world right now and is the person who started my interest in the area. I absolutely recommend his works

Role model: Anybody who realizes that Chomsky is an anarchist crackpot that aids and abets terrorism in the name of 'anti-imperialism' - whatever the f that means to him.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-jh2R-_eQY

Don't think I need to say much about him

touche

Okay. So what don't you like about him again? How does he aid and abet if he opposes terrorism from both sides?

It would be nice if that were true, but it isn't.

Take a read of this: http://www.travelbrochuregraphics.com/extra/hypocrisy_of_noam_chomsky.htm

Also, not many people have 8-thousand word wikipedia entries dedicated exclusively to criticism of their ideas.

Implying I haven't read his criticisms.
The only criticism which I found worth agreeing with is his occasional mis-quoting or statistical errors when giving interviews. Another one is that he dumbs down a lot of atrocities caused by China and USSR. That's usually because the range of deaths vary from sources so I assume he picks the ones best to suit his purpose. I'll concede those points.

Personally, the link you provided was for the most part, baseless and quite weak. If you're interested in his critiques, I heard that one written by Parenti is quite good,  but since his site, is down, I can't access the article. So obviously, I can't go through every clause in the links, so can you point to a few you want clarifying? A number of them has already been clarified or rectified by Chomsky or other sources such as Pol Pot, Sudanese pharmaceuticals, Anarchism and the tax haven.

Chomsky has gone senile, all he does is constantly peddle his doctrine of 'moral equivalency'.
Rather vile stuff.

Fair enough

[Yitzi_K]

Bottom line: Chomsky will support anyone so long as they're anti-American. I don't need to provide sources for that, you know it's true.

For 'clarified or rectified by Chomsky' read 'tried to go back on what he'd said when he realised just how wrong he was'.

Also, that other website, I must admit I hadn't actually read anything else besides the link that I posted. Now that you've drawn my attention to it, I went back and found it's just about the best website on the planet. I particularly liked:

The Axis of Evil:
Syria
Iran
France
North
Korea
House of
Saud
The BBC
The
 Guardian
The Nation
Howard
 Dean

Couldn't have put it better myself.

[Cianyx]

I initially ignored the link back to the site and assumed that you randomly grabbed it off google or something. It seems I was wrong. You know what? I completely agree with you, there is no point for further discussion. For a person whose idea of the "best website on the planet" idealises

“This is the Perfect War. They want to die, and we want to kill them.” -Sgt. Major Henry Bergeron, 1st Marine Division, Iraq

, proves to me that you are beyond reason

[Yitzi_K]

I initially ignored the link back to the site and assumed that you randomly grabbed it off google or something. It seems I was wrong. You know what? I completely agree with you, there is no point for further discussion. For a person whose idea of the "best website on the planet" idealises

“This is the Perfect War. They want to die, and we want to kill them.” -Sgt. Major Henry Bergeron, 1st Marine Division, Iraq

, proves to me that you are beyond reason

Actually I did get the link off google. It wasn't until you pointed out the nature of the site to me that I bothered to check it out, and I liked what I saw. I'm not saying I agree with absolutely everything on there, and obviously 'best website on the planet' was a bit of an exaggeration, but there is a lot of food for thought.

[Duck]

I don't understand absolute criticism of the war in Iraq (absolute is most certaintly the wrong word but I will elaborate further.) I understand if you believe that we have done enough/too much and the western world should leave the middle east, I think you're misguided and ill-informed but I understand your point of view. It's those who claim that the west should never have entered Iraq or that the sole reason for America's intervention was oil. I mean, do these people deny the horrible human rights abuses and the wholesale massacres?

[Russ]

Whether or not the west should have invaded Iraq is a question for the ages, but you can certainly say that we certainly should not have invaded based on the motivation of weapons of mass destruction.

There are plenty of places in the world with human rights abuses and America has shown nowhere near the level of involvement in solving those problems; it's fairly easy to conclude that they have a vested interest in occupying Iraq. Whether it's oil, I'm not so sure, but I think it's more about (borrowing from Chomsky here) extending American hegemony.

America refuses to do anything without first ensuring that it advances their agenda in some way. Case in point, their billions of dollars of AIDS donations are contingent upon being used to advance an "abstinence over condoms" approach to preventing infection. Regardless of the fact that it doesn't work, money has to be spent on it.

With respect to Iraq, the occupation by Coalition forces is (broadly speaking and applying conventional Western values) beneficial to the country. But I seriously doubt that America invaded Iraq with the sole motivation of removing a dictator and aiding an oppressed citizenry

[Cianyx]

Iraq wasn't invaded for oil because the oil fields are being sold to China and another country. None of the contenders for the contract were American, for that matter. The invasion of Iraq is still certainly one that puzzles me. If anything, it's probably because they have always been a thorn in the US' side. Out of all the Middle Eastern nations, Iraq probably was seen to be the most violent and therefore most dangerous to American interests. Therefore, during the Kuwait invasion, economic sanctions were placed on Iraq
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_sanctions
This killed over a million people (mostly children), created nationwide poverty among other things (also spawned the disgusting Food-For-Oil programme). It was predicted that the disgruntled population would overthrow Saddam but 10 years later, he is still in power. Honestly, it's probably them finishing the job.
Russ does indeed have a point. After the collapse of the regime, I read somewhere that IMF had placed more sanctions (which cannot be reversed under even the new government) called Structural Adjustment Programs. This allows private enterprises (foreign, no doubt) to enter and begin working on the virtually destroyed nation. Iraq's market is also open to multinational companies which essentially kills off local businesses and increases the wealth and power of multinational companies. This happens in third world countries as well, but I wouldn't say for sure that this was the primary reason (Besides that, I think the French are the ones working in Iraq but I haven't looked into the Iraq war much)