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Noam Chomsky 'no longer able to talk' after 'medical event'

independent.co.uk

251–260 of 500 posts

Re: Noam Chomsky 'no longer able to talk' after 'medical event'

#251
post #71

I love Noam Chomsky so much. To me he is epitome of what a rational caring intellectual should be. Number one, he strives for the truth and while can have intellectual blind spots, isn't afraid of calling them out. We had him has a guest speaker for an internal presentation at Google and of course we had some hyper-rational libertarian eastern block swe kid who was going to take him down and Noam was super respectful…

>To me he is epitome of what a rational caring intellectual should be.

>America bad, everything bad = America

What a frighteningly distorted view of "rational" and "intellectual".

Re: Noam Chomsky 'no longer able to talk' after 'medical event'

#252
post #94
post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And the ACLU "supported" the Nazi movement in Skokie. Do you have any evidence that Chomsky himself denies the holocaust, or are you just slinging shit?

Just slinging, Chomsky only supported freedom of speech.

Who's the bigger problem, the idiot yelling fire in the crowded movie theater, or the morally superior intellectual supporting their right to do so? I'm not so sure.

Re: Noam Chomsky 'no longer able to talk' after 'medical event'

#253
post #194
post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes you believe this would work? Specifically any form of anarchism? Have you seen groups of people operate for large periods of time successfully like this? Anything I've looked into shows me human nature would make any anarcho-anything system fail due to infighting.

Lip's history. My father knew Neuschwander, so maybe i'm biased, but Lip was truly an example of what anarcho-syndicalism can and should be, and survived 5 years despite fighting both a government and all the industry leaders, because it couldn't be allowed to work. I think US historians wrote books on it, but often fail to mention that after (or really, a bit before) Neuschwander took control, the metal and steel in…

[deleted]

Re: Noam Chomsky 'no longer able to talk' after 'medical event'

#254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you believe that "vaccinations protect us against disease" is propaganda, I have very bad news about whatever information sources you've been following.

We're quite fortunate the internet wasn't a thing when polio was still around.

Polio measures did not focus on sacrificing the children for the elderly. COVID school and social/learning activity shutdowns did.

Re: Noam Chomsky 'no longer able to talk' after 'medical event'

#255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Before the truth was known? No. Before he accepted the truth after it became untenable for him to continue to reject it. Chomsky simply rejected all the earlier evidence pointing to a genocide as an American imperialist lie. For goodness sake, he characterized Barron and Paul's Murder of a Gentle Land as being sourced from "informal briefings from specialists at the State and Defense Departments" despite it clearly s…

This is just false. The main piece of evidence -- the death figures published by La Couture -- which was being widely cited, had to be retracted after Chomsky fact-checked it. The author himself said in the retraction something to the effect of "it doesn't matter what the numbers are". As for "Gentle Land" he supports his claim that "[their] scholarship collapses under the barest scrutiny". He writes: "To cite a few…

Chomsky's entire shtick was to start from the belief that the US is evil and that any evidence that might be favorable to US positions is suspect, then searching for contrary evidence, no matter how questionable, to show this was the case - even if it means manufacturing or distorting it.

Olle Tolgraven? He said the Khmer Rouge were shooting people during the ordered mass evacuation, something Chomsky left out. He also left out the other accounts from the same article which describe Phnom Penh as being littered with decomposing bodies.

He pointed to Hildebrand and Porter and called it "based on a wide range of sources" when in reality, everything documented after the Khmer Rouge took charge came from one source: official Khmer Rouge propaganda.

In order to refute claim Barron and Paul that "virtually everybody saw the consequences" he invented citations to J.J. Cazaux and Schanberg so he could use carefully cherry-picked quotes from them against it.

Chomsky claimed publications like the Economist have "analyses by highly qualified specialists who have studied the full range of evidence available, and who concluded that executions have numbered at most in the thousands." Notably, the Economist did write an article that hundreds of thousands had been executed. The claim the number was in the thousands came not from the Economist's highly qualified specialists, but rather a letter from a reader in response to that article.

It goes on and on and on and on. If Chomsky was held to the standard he held others, we would dismiss him as not credible for even a fraction of the half-truths and lies he peddled.

Re: Noam Chomsky 'no longer able to talk' after 'medical event'

#256
post #102
post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, no sarcasm and that's how I read it too.

So how is it humble? He is just saying he didn't hobnob with known intellectuals - isn't that just a statement of fact?

i think it's the opposite of humble, it's saying that he knows something that these intellectuals don't.

Re: Noam Chomsky 'no longer able to talk' after 'medical event'

#257
post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just slinging, Chomsky only supported freedom of speech.

Who's the bigger problem, the idiot yelling fire in the crowded movie theater, or the morally superior intellectual supporting their right to do so? I'm not so sure.

If this guy was yelling fire then so are we all.

Re: Noam Chomsky 'no longer able to talk' after 'medical event'

#258
post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I don't think I said that. We're talking about the history of the conflict which I think is important. The Israeli disengagement from Gaza in 2005 is part of how we got here so I think it's important for people following the conflict to know the details and not just respond emotionally to the terrible images of war- which I agree are disturbing.

Please do mention about the complete sea, air, and land blockade of Gaza, when you do that. You can mention the raid on Gaza freedom flotilla as well.

While Israel supposedly disengaged from Gaza, it had conducted similar attacks with hundreds of human casualties under the pretense of operational readiness, training, and the notorious mowing the lawn operations. Of course some of them were so called retribution and responses, which mostly begins by rockets on Israel soil, but not by the brutal oppression it administers to Gazans.

Re: Noam Chomsky 'no longer able to talk' after 'medical event'

#259
post #54
post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I checked sources, turns out literally tens of millions of people vocally and loudly disagree with you. I think it's not helpful to anyone to come in here and be so resolute and so black and white. Especially in the face of an event that has drawn the eye of the international community as a potential genocide. I'm not telling you what to believe, just that like, posting like you did is not engaging in any meaningful…

> I checked sources, turns out literally tens of millions of people vocally and loudly disagree with you.

That is not how truth works.

Re: Noam Chomsky 'no longer able to talk' after 'medical event'

#260
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recall vehemently disagreeing with Chomsky on many things when I was much younger, but then I somehow stumbled upon Howard Zinn’s “People’s history of the United States” and realized the version of history I knew was basically concentrated propaganda I was brainwashed into believing. That opened the door to understanding Chomsky. “Manufacturing consent” explains our present state of affairs really well.

If you reread what you wrote carefully an amazing irony falls out. You might consider your consent has simply been manufactured in another direction. Lots of Chomsky acolytes never quite reach that epiphany. They simply follow in his footsteps of being oh so traumatized by the sudden realization that governments lie and propaganda is a thing that you could get them to opt in to an even deeper set of absurdities and h…

Actually that’s only true if you uncritically accept everything either side says and reject the other side. That’s low IQ, don’t do that.
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