Thread: Noam Chomsky: A Linguistic Genius

are AA and Bkka related ? they seem to corner themselves and go in circular arguments when exposed,

Can people be really living in alternate reality ?

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You have already established the fact you know how to make personal insults. However, this does nothing to support your position.

Can you or can you not find a single empirical study that supports Chomsky's worldview?

Can you or can you not give a logical reason why you support his research methodology?

Can you or can you not explain the conflict between Chomsky's views and his lifestyle?

If not, feel free to carry on with your childish insults.

Originally Posted by Accidental Ajarn

You have already established the fact you know how to make personal insults. However, this does nothing to support your position.

Can you or can you not find a single empirical study that supports Chomsky's worldview?

hey AA, can you see Dead People ?

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Thanks for proving my point.

The obvious answer to all three questions is no.

Originally Posted by Accidental Ajarn

^

You have already established the fact you know how to make personal insults. However, this does nothing to support your position.

Can you or can you not find a single empirical study that supports Chomsky's worldview?

Can you or can you not give a logical reason why you support his research methodology?

Can you or can you not explain the conflict between Chomsky's views and his lifestyle?

If not, feel free to carry on with your childish insults.

Can you not answer reasonable questions yourself instead of repeating yourself ad infinitum?

Can you not stop ignoring answers that you receive purely on the basis that they're not convenient?

Can you reconcile the fact that you criticse Chomsky for his 'research skills' when it's abundantly clear you haven't even read what he himself has said and base all your opinions on those of others?

Can you not see the sheer bald-faced hypocrisy of your claiming to be a victim of personal attacks when it's your first port of call?

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Yet again, nothing but insults and personal attacks and nothing of substance in which to support your position.

Such anger, must have hit a nerve.

^You're a fraud, AA. Your childish games aren't fooling anyone. Grow up.

they seem to corner themselves and go in circular arguments when exposed

Spot on.

^ yeah, don't fall for it, Ant.

That troll bkka is the same, put me in his circular arguments, claiming that 2+2=3, and when exposed kept focusing on pointless details, like the name of the captain on a sinking ship.

Don't get sucked in, they are playing, or worse they are psycho, either way no point in discussing with them

This thread has deteriorated, inevitably, but if you want to read a Chomsky book with Empirical evidence coming out of it's ears ajarn, then I'd start with 'Manufacturing consent'- co-authered with Edward Herman.

If you just wish to criticise Chomsky because of your political views, without having read a single book, you hardly add credibility to your self proclaimed academic credentials.

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Just because other posters have made the claim I have not read Chomsky does not make it true.

Also, you are just joining in. You disagree with my views and therefore attempt to discredit me as you have no evidence to back up your claims.

Here is a review of your “empirical” work

Manufacturing Distortions

By Paul Bogdanor

Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media. By Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky. Vintage Books, 1994.

Resurrecting Marcuse’s theory of “repressive tolerance,” Chomsky and Herman argue that America is not truly free because a capitalist media cabal indoctrinates the public about foreign policy. In developing this claim they violate the most elementary principles of scholarly research, ignoring most national newspapers, nearly all magazines, all television channels, all wire services, radio news, talk radio, and nearly the whole of the Internet, including weblogs and webcasts. Furthermore, they systematically falsify the historical record while manipulating facts, references, numbers and logic to promote their totalitarian ideological agenda.

Consider the discussion of Vietnam. According to Chomsky and Herman, American intervention designed to prevent South Vietnam from being conquered by North Vietnam was morally equivalent to the Soviet invasions that conquered Eastern Europe and Afghanistan; thus resistance to totalitarian aggression is the same as totalitarian aggression (pp175-6, 184-5). Turning from questions of morality to issues of fact, they announce that the South Vietnamese government “had killed tens of thousands of people” by 1959 (p180). They offer no evidence, because the charge is untrue. On the other hand, they completely ignore the North Vietnameseterror, which resulted in 50,000-100,000 massacred and many more starved to death during the same period [1].

Chomsky and Herman also tell us that by 1965, “over 150,000 people” had been killed in South Vietnam according to “figures cited by Bernard Fall,” which include “victims of the state terrorism of the US-installed regimes” (p183). Turning to their source, we find that this figure (actually 160,000) is not an estimate of civilian losses from Bernard Fall but an estimate of combat losses from Viet Cong propaganda [2]. Meanwhile, they do not mention the very real communist atrocities: the death-squad murders of 37,000 civilians [3]; the abduction or slaughter of up to 155,000 refugees on the road to Tuy-Hoa [4]; the post-1975 massacre of up to 200,000 opponents [5]; the mass killings in concentration camps [6]; the mass expulsions which drowned as many as 400,000 boat people [7]; and so on.

On Cambodia, Chomsky and Herman quietly abandon their earlier view that the Khmer Rouge had killed only 25,000, that its crimes had been inflated by “a factor of 100” and that Pol Pot’s brutality had “saved many lives” [8]. Now they try to equate American bombing with communist genocide, arguing that “the responsibility of the United States and Pol Pot for atrocities” in Cambodia is “roughly in the same range” (pp264-5).

They generate this conclusion by a remarkable sleight of hand. First, they give estimates of 500,000-600,000 dead in the civil war (1970-5) (p263), more than twice the real figure [9]. Second, they attribute the civil war deaths - all deaths, both military and civilian, on all sides - to American bombing (p260), in truth only a minor factor [10]. Third, they reduce the toll of Khmer Rouge atrocities (1975-9) to 750,000-1 million (p263), only half of the actual number [11]. Finally, they maintain that the starvation component of this toll “must be attributed to the conditions left by the US war” (p263), and not to the Khmer Rouge policy of enslaving the whole population while abolishing medicine and hospitals and rejecting food aid in the midst of a government-created famine. Doubtless unfairly, I am reminded of the techniques of Holocaust deniers, who exaggerate the cost of Allied bombing and then attribute Jewish deaths in the camps to starvation and disease caused by the war against the Nazis [12].

Also of interest is the profusion of misquotations and misrepresentations in this section:

(a) Discussing the civil war, Chomsky and Herman report that “[Francois] Ponchaud gives the figure of 800,000 killed,” but “seems to have exaggerated the toll of the US bombing” and is “a highly unreliable source” (p383n31). In fact this exaggerated figure came not from Ponchaud but from Khmer Rouge propaganda he was quoting [13].

(b) As evidence of “conditions left by the US war,” they offer the desperate state of Phnom Penh in 1975 (pp263-4). But American bombing had ended two years earlier, and the city had been mercilesslyshelled by the Khmer Rouge for more than a year before it fell [14].

(c) They add that Nixon Administration sources “predicted a million deaths in Cambodia if US aid were to cease” (p264). The prediction actually referred to the likely death toll from the communist takeover [15].

(d) They also say that a CIA demographic study placed Khmer Rouge executions at 50,000-100,000, along with an estimate of total mortality that is “meaningless” (pp383-4n31). Concealed in this formulation is the fact that the execution figure referred only to a single purge, while the CIA’s overall estimate of population decline under the Khmer Rouge was 1.2-1.8 million [16].

The list goes on.

Next we are given the untenable analogy of Cambodia and East Timor (pp284-5, 301-3). With identical reasoning, Nazi apologists equate Auschwitz and Dresden. The Khmer Rouge slaughtered millions in Cambodia, while Indonesia killed scores of thousands in East Timor. Pol Pot murdered a quarter of his subjects, while Suharto killed less than one percent. There is no comparison between the two crimes. But these distortions are only the tip of the iceberg.

Yes, I know I make the leftist on the board uncomfortable, but let us see if they actually can produce any evidence, or are they only going to further attempt to insult the messenger in order to attempt to discredit the message.

Here is a more academic review of your famous Chomsky’s propaganda Model found in your choice of his “empirical work.”

“The method sounds scientific except that Chomsky selected his cases (and his data) to make a political point while a lack of information on sampling, coding procedures, and so forth raises questions not so much about the existence of bias in any particular case, but about the viability of a model about “the media” in general based on anecdotal evidence.”

“Chomsky perceives the American media in their entirety as so intrinsically elitist that they “yield a propaganda result that a totalitarian state would be hard put to surpass. The last judgment strains credulity because it obliterates all distinctions in the degree of openness.”

“The reappearance of Chomsky—if that’s what it is—on the public stage is less as a media scholar with a new seminal theoretical model than as a political activist promulgating his political doctrine.”

http://www.ucm.es/info/compolit/Chomsky.pdf

Political Communication, 21:93–101, 2004

Originally Posted by Accidental Ajarn

Yes, I know I make the leftist on the board uncomfortable, but let us see if they actually can produce any evidence, or are they only going to further attempt to insult the messenger in order to attempt to discredit the message.

Originally Posted by Accidental Ajarn

Yes, I know I make the leftist on the board uncomfortable

I think quite the opposite, although that is my summary observation and backed up by no empirical evidence.

Meanwhile the gauntlet has been thrown, and not answered. Care to write a critique of Chomsky based on your own primary research, rather than cut n pasting yet another right wing blog? Or shall we all have a nice game of tit for tat, responding with a fawning left wing blog, then another rightist diatribe, and so on?

The plain fact is that at this point, I can write a more credible critique of Chomsky than yourself- based merely on the fact that I have read a fair amount of his work. The original debate however was about his importance- I'm afraid you lost that one quite convincingly, although it was brave of you to try.

If anything, you are convincing more people to make the effort to read Chomsky- although not yourself apparently. Keep up the good work.

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Again, only personal attacks and nothing of substance on the issue.

Originally Posted by Accidental Ajarn

Just because other posters have made the claim I have not read Chomsky does not make it true.

Also, you are just joining in. You disagree with my views and therefore attempt to discredit me as you have no evidence to back up your claims.

Here is a review of your “empirical” work

Manufacturing Distortions

By Paul Bogdanor

Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media. By Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky. Vintage Books, 1994. ...

So, once again, the basis of your 'research' into Chomsky and his work boils down to you cutting 'n pasting someone else's. Do you actually have an opinion that wasn't given to you?

Originally Posted by Accidental Ajarn

Yes, I know I make the leftist on the board uncomfortable, but let us see if they actually can produce any evidence, or are they only going to further attempt to insult the messenger in order to attempt to discredit the message.

I think you give yourself far too much credit. I can't speak for anyone else but I don't think you're coming across anything like the 'academic' that you portray yourself to be. Frankly I've just chalked you up as yet another troll; incapable of using logic and reason so instead resorting to silly little games.

Troll 101 Book of Principles:

when losing an argument, claim some kind of "imaginary" victory, and then use anything except logic to find your way out of the argument, a pointless distraction at that point is highly encouraged

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Again, nothing here in support of your position, only a personal attack. Both previous posts

^ yeah, you read that book for sure

At this point my biggest concern is that this guy holds himself out to be a teacher. His students probably have a prima facie case for fraud.

The education system is really going to shit nowadays if that's the case

is there anything we could do to prevent intellectual fraud from holding teaching job ? maybe a website like we have for convicted pedos ? it should be a public service of the highest priority

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Yet again, you two refuse to address to issue and resort to name calling and insults. Ok, obviously you have no evidence or logical reasoning to support your position and therefore have let your emotions take over.

Carry on.

Hey, why is it the same people who believe in a US government coverup of UFOs are the same people who support Chomsky?

I think we already know that you are able to draw your own conclusions from the most dubious sources of information and make them fact, carry on, I find it quite amusing.