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

His position is that 1. people distort facts to exaggerate crimes of their enemies and minimize their own crimes and 2. we are primarily responsible for our own actions not the actions of others. Both of these things are very easy to understand in any other context.

If you follow those precepts then you would focus on your own sides' lies and crimes which might naively be viewed as "anti-US" bias.

> Olle Tolgraven? [...]

Chomsky never argues that there wasn't any evidence of killings and seems to accurately describe Tolgraven's account: "A Swedish journalist, Olle Tolgraven of Swedish Broadcasting, said he did not believe there had been wholesale executions. But he said there was evidence the Khmer Rouge had shot people who refused to leave their homes in a mass evacuation ordered the first day of the takeover. " (Los Angeles Times, May 9, 1975). (c.f. Chomsky: "who denied the existence of wholesale executions").

> He pointed to Hildebrand and Porter [...]

I will have to read the book myself but looking at the references it does look like it has a "wide range of sources".

> he invented citations to J.J. Cazaux and Schanberg

Just to be clear: You are saying that he fabricated citations? Can you tell me the specific ones?

> Chomsky claimed publications like the Economist have "analyses by highly ... but rather a letter from a reader in response to that article.

He writes "have provided analyses by highly qualified specialists". I assume he's referring to the letter he describes himself in the subsequent paragraph from, "an economist and statistician for the Cambodian Government until March 1975" who "visited refugee camps in Thailand and kept in touch with Khmers" and who relayed conversations from a "European friend who cycled around Phnom Penh for many days after its fall" and who you misleadingly describe as merely "a reader". Perhaps you could object to the phrase "provided analyses" if he hadn't described the analyses himself in detail in the very next paragraph.

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I would re-iterate the point that the La Couture numbers were fabricated and had to be retracted; and the CIAs own numbers did not support allegations of genocide. Despite this the La Couture numbers were widely cited (and the CIA numbers were not). That alone proves the point that Chomsky was making and which I described at the beginning. When claims suits our foreign policy elite no evidence is required, when they don't no evidence is possible.

Even if you reject the "encroaching NATO" narrative, what makes "Putin just woke up one day and decided that remaking the Soviet Union and/or the zarist Russian Empire would be a great thing to do in the 21th century" the more plausible hypothesis?

What information do you have that Mearsheimer doesn't?

1. Criminal trials via random lottery of jury with the charged being viewed as innocent until proven guilty.

2. Checks and balances, where governmental power is intentionally limited and weakened.

3. A system of federated governments that elect representations, with a design favoring minority members of that federation.

Anarchism is always a balancing act between legitimate power and limitations on that power. Most forms of Anarchism do not reject all forms of power as illegitimate but rather place a heavy burden of proof on the claim that legitimate of the use of power.

I disagree with a lot of what Chomsky has said but I do think his definition of anarchism was very well stated:

"Well, anarchism is, in my view, basically a kind of tendency in human thought which shows up in different forms in different circumstances, and has some leading characteristics. Primarily it is a tendency that is suspicious and skeptical of domination, authority, and hierarchy. It seeks structures of hierarchy and domination in human life over the whole range, extending from, say, patriarchal families to, say, imperial systems, and it asks whether those systems are justified. It assumes that the burden of proof for anyone in a position of power and authority lies on them. Their authority is not self-justifying. They have to give a reason for it, a justification. And if they can’t justify that authority and power and control, which is the usual case, then the authority ought to be dismantled and replaced by something more free and just." - Noam Chomsky