Support NeoGAF

[Boney]

I don't see whats wrong with re-establishing Russia ties. No amount of sanctions will ever depose or derail Putin, the best thing to do in the circumstance is ensure peace and hope rising living standards will lead to a true democracy.

Some people here really want to smear Chomsky though lol

The 4th filter to manufacture consent is the "flak machine" which specializes in marginalizing any type of critical dissent.

Funnily enough, the 5th one is to establish a common enemy.

 

[Dopus]

Chomsky is the left wing version of Alex Jones. Well his education and linguistics put him at a higher education level, it is the same sort of philosophy. Hate your country first, defend dispicable other nations, and demonize everything about the nature of your own government. It is a career built on self deprecation and conspiracy nonsense.

This has gone beyond the absurd now.

 

[Foffy]

I was listening to this earlier. As is often the case with Chomsky, he's making things clear, and for that I have very little to challenge or add.

Perhaps the only weak point he makes is while America does act like a tyrant elsewhere, that doesn't lead to the issue of "numbing" the fact Russia did what it did, and was likely able to take advantage of America's precariat class to get the human capital to buy it and continue the problems caused by it.

Chomsky is the left wing version of Alex Jones. Well his education and linguistics put him at a higher education level, it is the same sort of philosophy. Hate your country first, defend dispicable other nations, and demonize everything about the nature of your own government. It is a career built on self deprecation and conspiracy nonsense.

By this logic, Martin Luther King is also in the same arena as Alex Jones...

 

[cryptosporidium]

Um, yes it is.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarian_socialism

Educate yourself

you can not 'reject socialism as centralized state ownership and control of the economy'. Socialism is complete government ownership and regulation, libertarianism advocates for an incredibly limited goverment. these are on two seperate ends of the spectrum.

honestly that page is just advocating for libertarianism, there is nothing socialist about it.

 

[kame-sennin]

Chomsky is the left wing version of Alex Jones.

Someone actually wrote this.

 

[smokeandmirrors]

I was listening to this earlier. As is often the case with Chomsky, he's making things clear, and for that I have very little to challenge or add.

Perhaps the only weak point he makes is while America does act like a tyrant elsewhere, that doesn't lead to the issue of "numbing" the fact Russia did what it did, and was likely able to take advantage of America's precariat class to get the human capital to buy it and continue the problems caused by it.

Pretty much how I feel.

 

[Black_Sun]

you can not 'reject socialism as centralized state ownership and control of the economy'. Socialism is complete government ownership and regulation, libertarianism advocates for an incredibly limited goverment. these are on two seperate ends of the spectrum.

honestly that page is just advocating for libertarianism, there is nothing socialist about it.

Democratic People's Republic of Korea isn't Democratic nor a republic but it's still a thing

Besides he says he's been clear that he doesn't really label himself but that's the closest label that would fit him and those are based on his ideals rather than what he think would work

 

[leroidys]

Crimea wants to be part of Russia not the Ukraine. The people there speak Russian, consider themselves Russian and want to be part of Russia. And it's a response to Ukraine trying to join NATO.

Now, I don't support what happened but I'm not sure I'd call it an occupation.

And the ongoing civil war in Ukraine to peel off the eastern half, the civil war funded by Russia, with russian hardware and even Russian troops, what is that? Nothing? The Russian puppet pushed into power that jailed his political opponents, looted the country, ordered his countrymen murdered, and then fled to Russia?

Leaving aside Ukraine- The failed, Russian orchestrated attempt to assassinate the prime minister of Montenegro? The Russian propoganda flooding into Poland, Germany, the UK and the US to break their democratic systems? The land grabs in Georgia?

What about those?

The 4th filter to manufacture consent is the "flak machine" which specializes in marginalizing any type of critical dissent.

Funnily enough, the 5th one is to establish a common enemy.

Most of the discussion in here is dealing with specific things that Chomsky said, and specific disagreements with those things. Criticism can't go both ways?

 

[C4Lukins]

Someone actually wrote this.

Yep. Sorry you fail to see it.

 

[Dopus]

Yep. Sorry you fail to see it.

So enlighten us on the conspiracies he peddles then. Better yet, try and justify US imperialism. I could do with a laugh today.

 

[kame-sennin]

The thread is a trainwreck at this point, everyone is solely talking about one point in the entire interview which actually isn't that unreasonable.

I'm surprised they didn't zero in on this:

That’s very striking. The most astonishing fact about the last election, which is the Sanders achievements, that’s a break from a century of American political history. As I said, you can pretty well predict electoral outcomes simply by campaign funding alone. There’s other factors that intensify it. Here comes Sanders, somebody nobody ever heard of. No support from the wealthy, no support from corporations. The media ignored or disparaged him. He even used a scare word, "socialist." Came from nowhere. He would have won the Democratic Party nomination if it hadn’t been for the shenanigans of the Obama-Clinton party managers who kept him out. Might have been president. From nothing. That’s an incredible break. It shows what can happen when policies are proposed that do meet the general, just concerns of much of the population.​

 

[Icebergslim]

I know plenty of you guys hate Rachel Maddow but she had a powerful line when she said watch what they do not what they say and this seems to echo that idea. Put out eye popping headlines while in the shadows you work to undermine the very people who put you there.

 

[Black_Sun]

Chomsky is the left wing version of Alex Jones. Well his education and linguistics put him at a higher education level, it is the same sort of philosophy. Hate your country first, defend dispicable other nations, and demonize everything about the nature of your own government. It is a career built on self deprecation and conspiracy nonsense.

Yes because the US doesn't topple democracies and put in dictators.

The US hasn't made up lies to invade another country.

The US doesn't supply weapons to the cartels in Mexico.

The US didn't support eugenics programs.

The US didn't sterilize Hispanic-American women.

The US doesn't oppress the people in foreign countries to benefit itself.

The US doesn't support a state sponsor of terrorism like Saudi Arabia

Oh wait.

 

[Foffy]

Yep. Sorry you fail to see it.

When you make wooly claims, people will expect you to elaborate.

Alex Jones believes in reptile humans and shit. What is Chomsky's spook? That he calls out the dark plays of American power, which very clearly exist? How a nobel peace prize winner was a champion of double tap drone strikes?

 

[capitalCORN]

So enlighten us on the conspiracies he peddles then. Better yet, try and justify US imperialism. I could do with a laugh today.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/gcsebitesize/history/mwh/ir2/sovietexpansionineasterneuroperev1.shtml

 

[capitalCORN]

Yes because the US doesn't topple democracies and put in dictators.

The US hasn't made up lies to invade another country.

The US doesn't supply weapons to the cartels in Mexico.

The US didn't support eugenics programs.

The US didn't sterilize Hispanic-American women.

The US doesn't oppress the people in foreign countries to benefit itself.

The US doesn't support a state sponsor of terrorism like Saudi Arabia

Oh wait.

And Cold War Russia was a paragon of moral behavior.

 

[Black_Sun]

And the ongoing civil war in Ukraine to peel off the eastern half, the civil war funded by Russia, with russian hardware and even Russian troops, what is that? Nothing? The Russian puppet pushed into power that jailed his political opponents, looted the country, ordered his countrymen murdered, and then fled to Russia?

Leaving aside Ukraine- The failed, Russian orchestrated attempt to assassinate the prime minister of Montenegro? The Russian propoganda flooding into Poland, Germany, the UK and the US to break their democratic systems? The land grabs in Georgia?

What about those?



Most of the discussion in here is dealing with specific things that Chomsky said, and specific disagreements with those things. Criticism can't go both ways?

On Ukraine, I didn't dispute those. I was talking about Crimea specifically.

The push for Ukraine to enter NATO has pushed Russia into a "now or never" mode

On the rest, Russia has been treated like the enemy by the western world even after the USSR broke up.

The US broke their promises to not expand NATO last Germany and now we've expanded almost to Ukraine. They need a buffer zone.

If I'm lying then why doesn't the US invite Russia to join NATO?

 

[Amir0x]

I'd probably say him cheerleading for the Khmer Rouge and downplaying/denying the Cambodian genocide as US propaganda back in the '70s was him at his worst. Very intelligent people can have very large blindspots.

I forgot about that. I guess i should say it is an example of Noam's bad side.

 

[King Tubby]

And Cold War Russia was a paragon of moral behavior.

Fighting monsters does not absolve you of being a monster.

 

[Black_Sun]

And Cold War Russia was a paragon of moral behavior.

And I never said it was.

I think Russia is terrible but the US is near as bad if not just as bad when it comes to foreign policy

 

[capitalCORN]

On Ukraine, I didn't dispute those. I was talking about Crimea specifically.

The push for Ukraine to enter NATO has pushed Russia into a "now or never" mode

On the rest, Russia has been treated like the enemy by the western world even after the USSR broke up.

The US broke their promises to not expand NATO last Germany and now we've expanded almost to Ukraine. They need a buffer zone.

If I'm lying then why doesn't the US invite Russia to join NATO?

https://2001-2009.state.gov/r/pa/ho/pubs/fs/85962.htm

 

[ThoseDeafMutes]

The NK nuclear program at this point is roughly 100% about lil' Kim staying in power indefinitely and 0% about US bombing 60 years ago.

As part of a war that the North Koreans started without provocation, yeah. Chomsky's phrasing of the situation is as if "Threatening Military Maneuvers" by America are the only reason the North Koreans act up. Because they were just model world citizens otherwise right?

Kissinger described meeting a man named Georgi Arbatov in 1969 as follows:

He was especially subtle in playing to the inexhaustible masochism of American intellectuals who took it as an article of faith that every difficulty in US-Soviet relations had to be caused by American stupidity or intransigence. He was endlessly ingenious in demonstrating how American rebuffs were frustrating the peaceful, sensitive leaders in the Kremlin, who were being driven reluctantly by our inflexibility into conflicts that offended their inherently gentle natures

Arbatov was a Soviet citizen who spent a lot of time in the United States and would frequently appear on television or in other capacities. The statement about a sort of intillectual masochism still feels like it's just as true today as it was back then. It's what I feel I'm witnessing half the time Chomsky decides to speak about a political subject. It goes beyond idealism to the point of dogma that basically every issue can be traced back to something America did, and Chomsky is not unique in that sort of perspective.

 

[capitalCORN]

Fighting monsters does not absolve you of being a monster.

And I never said it was.

I think Russia is terrible but the US is near as bad if not just as bad when it comes to foreign policy

I guess they don't teach the fucking Cold War in school anymore. Might as well retcon the Bay of PIgs into a fencing friendly.

 

[Dopus]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/gcsebitesize/history/mwh/ir2/sovietexpansionineasterneuroperev1.shtml

So Communism is the justification for US Imperialism. Let's say it was, and the US was moral in its hegemony. What about the Middle East? What about the Rape of South America? Cuba? Toppling elected governments and installing dictators? Backing coups?

Am I going too far again? Is this "Whataboutism" or is it just hypocrisy?

Before the unification of Germany and after the cold war, Gorbachev attempted to make a pan-European security pact. This is what Chomsky refers to when he says a continent-wide security system. This was outright rejected by the United States. Soon after the reunification of East and West Germany, Gorbachev allowed Germany to join NATO. During the talks between the Soviet Union and the United States, Russia were led to believe that NATO would not expand to the east and that the United States would respect Russian interests in the region.

The question that needs to be answered though is whether Russia were deceived when it comes to NATO's expansion. Spiegel have a good write up on the incident after analysing declassified British and German documents. What's clear is that Russia were made to think that NATO would not expand to the east and in subsequent years felt deceived by the United States. This is only compounded when bordering nations are invited to join the alliance and when things the the missile shield exclude Russia - even when they attempted to be a part of the deal.

Joshua R. Itzkowitz Shifrinson has a very good paper entitled - Deal or No Deal? The End of the Cold War and the U.S. Offer to Limit NATO Expansion. You can find it here. In it he argues that during the 1990 German reunification negotiations, the United States promised the Soviet Union that it would not expand NATO into Eastern Europe through informal non-expansion assurances. This was a deliberate attempt by the US in that the Russians wanted everything in writing, but when NATO's expansion was addressed in February 1990 there were only verbal agreements. The purpose of which was to maximise U.S. power in post–Cold War Europe and minimise Russian influence in the coming decades.

So, with the subsequent expansion of the alliance getting ever closer to the borders of Russia and bordering nations being invited to NATO and Estonia and Latvia already members - Russia feel that this is a direct threat to them and further aggravates the sense of betrayal after the reunification of Germany. Then you have the exercises and war games in these nations clearly designed with Russia as a foe, literally on the border. This is aggression. Is it justified? Maybe you could link me to another GCSE bitesize link so I can find out for myself.

 

[East Lake]

Chomsky doesn't hate the US. Since he's an american citizen he thinks talking about its crimes are more important than talking about others crimes, because as a US citizen you have most influence here, while you have virtually none inside Russia. Even if you watch a couple youtubes you'll likely see him say this.

He also thinks people need to hear about the crimes of their own country or party because there's an ideological blind spot there that isn't present when talking about the Russians or whatever other state is on the menu at the time.

 

[darkistheway]

And I never said it was.

I think Russia is terrible but the US is near as bad if not just as bad when it comes to foreign policy

I've noticed that a lot of Americans have a blind spot about this. There is a claim of moral high ground that is of very questionable origin.

I haven't dwelled on it a lot but it feels like NIMBYism (is that the correct use of that term?).

 

[Garrett Hawke]

It's great for once to see Obama blamed for Sanders failing to campaign in the south.

Such a nasty man, hacking Bernie's PDA so he missed all that campaigning.

 

[Conor_Fool]

Chomsky is the left wing version of Alex Jones. Well his education and linguistics put him at a higher education level, it is the same sort of philosophy. Hate your country first, defend dispicable other nations, and demonize everything about the nature of your own government. It is a career built on self deprecation and conspiracy nonsense.

Chomsky is the left wing version of Alex Jones.

This is a contender for the best GAF post I've ever seen

 

[King Tubby]

I guess they don't teach the fucking Cold War in school anymore. Might as well retcon the Bay of PIgs into a fencing friendly.

You're being a real asshole. I'm not anti-American by any means, but the United States has done a lot of horrible shit around the world and domestically. In a lot of cases it didn't accomplish much of anything positive for American interests, regional, or global stability, not to mention the people hurt or killed in the process.

Chomsky doesn't hate the US. Since he's an american citizen he thinks talking about its crimes are more important than talking about others crimes, because as a US citizen you have most influence here, while you have virtually none inside Russia. Even if you watch a couple youtubes you'll likely see him say this.

He also thinks people need to hear about the crimes of their own country or party because there's an ideological blind spot there that isn't present when talking about the Russians or whatever other state is on the menu at the time.

The problem, and this is not exclusive to him, is that he goes so far in criticizing American policy and actions that he has his own blind spot when it comes to those America comes in conflict with.

 

[capitalCORN]

So Communism is the justification for US Imperialism. Let's say it was, and the US was moral in its hegemony. What about the Middle East? What about the Rape of South America? Cuba? Toppling elected governments and installing dictators? Backing coups?

Am I going too far again? Is this "Whataboutism" or is it just hypocrisy?

Before the unification of Germany and after the cold war, Gorbachev attempted to make a pan-European security pact. This is what Chomsky refers to when he says a continent-wide security system. This was outright rejected by the United States. Soon after the reunification of East and West Germany, Gorbachev allowed Germany to join NATO. During the talks between the Soviet Union and the United States, Russia were led to believe that NATO would not expand to the east and that the United States would respect Russian interests in the region.

The question that needs to be answered though is whether Russia were deceived when it comes to NATO's expansion. Spiegel have a good write up on the incident after analysing declassified British and German documents. What's clear is that Russia were made to think that NATO would not expand to the east and in subsequent years felt deceived by the United States. This is only compounded when bordering nations are invited to join the alliance and when things the the missile shield exclude Russia - even when they attempted to be a part of the deal.

Joshua R. Itzkowitz Shifrinson has a very good paper entitled - Deal or No Deal? The End of the Cold War and the U.S. Offer to Limit NATO Expansion. You can find it here. In it he argues that during the 1990 German reunification negotiations, the United States promised the Soviet Union that it would not expand NATO into Eastern Europe through informal non-expansion assurances. This was a deliberate attempt by the US in that the Russians wanted everything in writing, but when NATO's expansion was addressed in February 1990 there were only verbal agreements. The purpose of which was to maximise U.S. power in post–Cold War Europe and minimise Russian influence in the coming decades.

So, with the subsequent expansion of the alliance getting ever closer to the borders of Russia and bordering nations being invited to NATO and Estonia and Latvia already members - Russia feel that this is a direct threat to them and further aggravates the sense of betrayal after the reunification of Germany. Then you have the exercises and war games in these nations clearly designed with Russia as a foe, literally on the border. This is aggression. Is it justified? Maybe you could link me to another GCSE bitesize link so I can find out for myself.

I've already posted this, but look at all this hostility:

https://2001-2009.state.gov/r/pa/ho/pubs/fs/85962.htm

You're being a real asshole. I'm not anti-American by any means, but the United States has done a lot of horrible shit around the world and domestically. In a lot of cases it didn't accomplish much of anything positive for American interests, regional, or global stability, not to mention the people hurt or killed in the process.

I'm not denying any sins. But you need to check your expectations. The world is a dirty place, and that's the macro level, not even talking about corruption. Even your favorite Scandinavian social utopia deals in blood money. Socialist hero Bernie Sanders threw his weight behind the Sandinistas even.

 

[David H Wong]

Chomsky doesn't hate the US. Since he's an american citizen he thinks talking about its crimes are more important than talking about others crimes, because as a US citizen you have most influence here, while you have virtually none inside Russia. Even if you watch a couple youtubes you'll likely see him say this.

He also thinks people need to hear about the crimes of their own country or party because there's an ideological blind spot there that isn't present when talking about the Russians or whatever other state is on the menu at the time.

It's not that - it's that he takes the other side in EVERY conflict - the USA is always the world's bad guy, in his eyes. I realize he thinks he's fighting against an overly patriotic popular opinion, but he goes so far the other direction - and intentionally does it in such inflammatory language - that it becomes self-parody.

He's not Alex Jones, but he's not to be taken seriously, either.

 

[Boney]

Crimea wants to be part of Russia not the Ukraine. The people there speak Russian, consider themselves Russian and want to be part of Russia. And it's a response to Ukraine trying to join NATO.

Now, I don't support what happened but I'm not sure I'd call it an occupation.

Well, it's an occupation no doubt since it's usurping sovereign land. Would be similar to a Polynesian country occupy the Easter Islands with little resistance from within, since they don't really consider themselves Chileans, or sort of a flip side on the Faulkland islands - Argentina type of deal.
Can't remember where, but I came upon a column about from a journalist that lived in Russia for many years and was talking about how power or greatness is represented not directly through the military but through recapturing the territory of the soviet empire as some sort of glory days.

I was listening to this earlier. As is often the case with Chomsky, he's making things clear, and for that I have very little to challenge or add.

Perhaps the only weak point he makes is while America does act like a tyrant elsewhere, that doesn't lead to the issue of "numbing" the fact Russia did what it did, and was likely able to take advantage of America's precariat class to get the human capital to buy it and continue the problems caused by it.

By this logic, Martin Luther King is also in the same arena as Alex Jones...

The thing with the Russians is that it's not what's impacting Trump's policy. He's in it for himself and the rest of the kleptocrats. So far Tillerson has shown no willingness to ease up on any sanction. So with those two precedents, how does Russia impact the US policy? Well, for one they could get their sanctions removed, saving the country from economical collapse and freeing up the Asian trade routes, diminishing of the economical leverage the US has against Europe and Asia. Second, which I suppose is the crux of the matter for some people, is that it would rip apart the illusion of American democracy, since —the logic goes — they somehow had enough political leverage to undermine every single political mechanism and public opinion, just so they could get their sanctions lifted.
So as far as Chomsky is concerned, the preoccupation of this somehow being an unprecedented act against America, where no outside government has ever had any type of communications set up with any of the two established parties is just being beyond naive. And beyond that, there's really nothing about it that would be directly affecting the population in a negative way other than "Trump got elected", which makes his point even more sensible since he's talking about building up opposition against what is being actively being put in place.

Which is why I found the public pressure against the AHCA so noteworthy and I'm hoping something similar can materialize against the privatization of the education system through vouchers.

you can not 'reject socialism as centralized state ownership and control of the economy'. Socialism is complete government ownership and regulation, libertarianism advocates for an incredibly limited goverment. these are on two seperate ends of the spectrum.

honestly that page is just advocating for libertarianism, there is nothing socialist about it.

That's not true though. The notion that socialism can only be expressed through the complete centralization of all production and distribution is not only antiquated, it's wasn't even right in the first place since it corresponds more to Leninism and the Bolsheviks.

Take Polanyi's definition for example. "the tendency inherent in an industrial civilization to transcend the self- regulating market by consciously subordinating it to a democratic society”. This already exist in market economies in some form, where the point in which democracy interjects will vary from country to country. This can also be carried into what one would call participatory economics in which common ownership is characterized by the specific workers working in a particular place where they're structured similarity to civil society.

 

[Dopus]

I've already posted this, but look at all this hostility:

https://2001-2009.state.gov/r/pa/ho/pubs/fs/85962.htm

There is no point in engaging with you because you won't give me the same courtesy back. You've said nothing.

 

[C4Lukins]

So enlighten us on the conspiracies he peddles then. Better yet, try and justify US imperialism. I could do with a laugh today.

I am sorry, what did you put forth in order for me to go through the immense effort of me trying to discredit a mans life's work?

Sorry this is getting a little catty. I have read a half dozen works by Chomsky. And while doing so, I would research the opposing view. It was a poli-sci class in college 15 years ago that started this.

At the same time, Alex Jones had a silly public access show in Austin that I watched constantly, and had a lot of drunken nights laughing at him with friends.

The point being is that I found the same sort of rhetoric coming from the two of them, only from opposite sides of the coin. They were dead set and certain about how history is playing out and who is responsible. And they both had a tendency to blame the United States.

Now I am not saying that anyone should love this country. We have a very messed up history that could rival any other country you could bring up. But those are two individuals that hate the very essence of what we are is a country. And have devoted their lives to trying to destroy it. We could create the perfect version of America in those two destructive minds, and they would become contrarian to that new world in an instant.

 

[Jenov]

As part of a war that the North Koreans started without provocation, yeah. Chomsky's phrasing of the situation is as if "Threatening Military Maneuvers" by America are the only reason the North Koreans act up. Because they were just model world citizens otherwise right?

Kissinger described meeting a man named Georgi Arbatov in 1969 as follows:

He was especially subtle in playing to the inexhaustible masochism of American intellectuals who took it as an article of faith that every difficulty in US-Soviet relations had to be caused by American stupidity or intransigence. He was endlessly ingenious in demonstrating how American rebuffs were frustrating the peaceful, sensitive leaders in the Kremlin, who were being driven reluctantly by our inflexibility into conflicts that offended their inherently gentle natures


Arbatov was a Soviet citizen who spent a lot of time in the United States and would frequently appear on television or in other capacities. The statement about a sort of intillectual masochism still feels like it's just as true today as it was back then. It's what I feel I'm witnessing half the time Chomsky decides to speak about a political subject. It goes beyond idealism to the point of dogma that basically every issue can be traced back to something America did, and Chomsky is not unique in that sort of perspective.

Wow yeah, that's a perfect read on Chomsky. Half the crap I read from him sounds just like that. Every once in a while there's some insightful stuff, I'll give him that, but lately it's just a lot of blind anti-Americanism and a hearty dash of tin foil hattery.

 

[Dopus]

I am sorry, what did you put forth in order for me to go through the immense effort of me trying to discredit a mans life's work?

Sorry this is getting a little catty. I have read a half dozen works by Chomsky. And while doing so, I would research the opposing view. It was a poli-sci class in college 15 years ago that started this.

At the same time, Alex Jones had a silly public access show in Austin that I watched constantly, and had a lot of drunken nights laughing at him with friends.

The point being is that I found the same sort of rhetoric coming from the two of them, only from opposite sides of the coin. They were dead set and certain about how history is playing out and who is responsible. And they both had a tendency to blame the United States.

Now I am not saying that anyone should love this country. We have a very messed up history that could rival any other country you could bring up. But those are two individuals that hate the very essence of what we are is a country. And have devoted their lives to trying to destroy it. We could create the perfect version of America in those two destructive minds, and they would become contrarian to that new world in an instant.

You've made a claim that he is a left wing version of Alex Jones and provided no reasoning for this. The only thing you have said that that he has devoted his life to destroying the very essence of America and that's not really saying much at all.

 

[East Lake]

It's not that - it's that he takes the other side in EVERY conflict - the USA is always the world's bad guy, in his eyes. I realize he thinks he's fighting against an overly patriotic popular opinion, but he goes so far the other direction - and intentionally does it in such inflammatory language - that it becomes self-parody.

He's not Alex Jones, but he's not to be taken seriously, either.

The problem, and this is not exclusive to him, is that he goes so far in criticizing American policy and actions that he has his own blind spot when it comes to those America comes in conflict with.

I think he's mostly accurate in his criticisms actually. You have to separate out his criticism of the US with whether he supports the other side. For example with Russia if you look around you can find many quotes from him disparaging Putin but again it not his focus. He focuses on what he believes to be abuses of US power.

He also criticizes the current US policies in Iraq, does that make him pro-ISIS? No it just means he focuses on what he thinks people need to hear.

 

[C4Lukins]

This is a contender for the best GAF post I've ever seen

This is why nobody even bothers to attempt a reasonable and polite discussion on these boards. I am going to puss out of this thread because I cannot even begin to debate gifs of one of the greatest basketball player ever and the ex head of the NRA laughing at me.

 

[King Tubby]

I think he's mostly accurate in his criticisms actually. You have to separate out his criticism of the US with whether he supports the other side. For example with Russia if you look around you can find many quotes from him disparaging Putin but again it not his focus. He focuses on what he believes to be abuses of US power.

He also criticizes the current US policies in Iraq, does that make him pro-ISIS. No it just means he focuses on what he thinks people need to hear.

I'm not going to go as far as some other posters in this thread and call him a kook. I think he's very intelligent and I appreciate him as a thinker and a dissident. However, when he says shit like this:

So why are the Democrats focusing on this? In fact, why are they focusing so much attention on the one element of Trump’s programs which is fairly reasonable, the one ray of light in this gloom: trying to reduce tensions with Russia? That’s—the tensions on the Russian border are extremely serious. They could escalate to a major terminal war. Efforts to try to reduce them should be welcomed. Just a couple of days ago, the former U.S. ambassador to Russia, Jack Matlock, came out and said he just can’t believe that so much attention is being paid to apparent efforts by the incoming administration to establish connections with Russia. He said, "Sure, that’s just what they ought to be doing."

So, meanwhile, this one topic is the primary locus of concern and critique, while, meanwhile, the policies are proceeding step by step, which are extremely destructive and harmful. So, you know, yeah, maybe the Russians tried to interfere in the election. That’s not a major issue. Maybe the people in the Trump campaign were talking to the Russians. Well, OK, not a major point, certainly less than is being done constantly. And it is a kind of a paradox, I think, that the one issue that seems to inflame the Democratic opposition is the one thing that has some justification and reasonable aspects to it.

It's hard to take him seriously on the matter. There are so many reasons why this is a ridiculous statement to make.

 

[darkistheway]

This is why nobody even bothers to attempt a reasonable and polite discussion on these boards. I am going to puss out of this thread because I cannot even begin to debate gifs of one of the greatest basketball player ever and the ex head of the NRA laughing at me.

You compared Noam Chomsky to Alex Jones with literally nothing substantive and think it was an attempt at a reasonable and polite discussion?

 

[Conor_Fool]

This is why nobody even bothers to attempt a reasonable and polite discussion on these boards. I am going to puss out of this thread because I cannot even begin to debate gifs of one of the greatest basketball player ever and the ex head of the NRA laughing at me.

In what rational way do you expect me to reply to a post saying that Noam Chomsky is the left wing version of Alex Jones? It would take someone more patient than myself to help you to realize the utter stupidity of such an accusation. You'll need to look into both of their histories and academic achievements yourself and if that doesn't change your mind, then I certainly wont either.

Your post simply made me laugh my ass off and I tried to convey that in my reply.

 

[Aaron Strife]

Didn't you read the earlier bit of public opinion has absolutely no impact on policy unless you are rich? Second, you can't vote for the public option, since nobody is running with it. Certainly not Dems.

Yes they did.

http://www.cnn.com/2016/07/09/politics/hillary-clinton-health-care-public-option-bernie-sanders/

If you wanted a public option you should have voted for Clinton.

 

[gogosox82]

Thanks for the links op will check out later.

 

[jviggy43]

We can recognize our own shitty behavior in terms of meddling in other countries' affairs while also still taking our own treason and interfering seriously.

And further, if attacking Trump on policy was the more effective measure to take he would never have become president. Its ineffective because his base clearly doesn't mind getting fucked over by such policies. Revealing Russian collusion would extend beyond party lines, presumably-although I really am not sure if even that would be enough to shake his base's unwavering support of this man. But some pretty poor points here made by chomsky. If hes arguing ideologically on attacking him for his policy rather than the russian interference fine-but then thats what gets philosophers' into trouble, being too far removed from the actual reality of things and operating under the assumption of some ideological paradigm.

 

[East Lake]

I'm not going to go as far as some other posters in this thread and call him a kook. I think he's very intelligent and I appreciate him as a thinker and a dissident. However, when he says shit like this:



It's hard to take him seriously on the matter. There are so many reasons why this is a ridiculous statement to make.

He says why he has that perspective though. From his point of view meddling in foreign elections is normal behavior. And by normal I don't mean good, but expected. So it's probably hard for someone with his historical perspective to really care if Russia wanted a friendly administration. After all it involved no bombs, and probably wasn't all that effective even if all the allegations are true, Hillary won the popular vote and probably could have won the whole thing if she took the rust belt seriously. From his perspective that's very little compared to other regime changes.

 

[leroidys]

On Ukraine, I didn't dispute those. I was talking about Crimea specifically.

The push for Ukraine to enter NATO has pushed Russia into a "now or never" mode

On the rest, Russia has been treated like the enemy by the western world even after the USSR broke up.

The US broke their promises to not expand NATO last Germany and now we've expanded almost to Ukraine. They need a buffer zone.

If I'm lying then why doesn't the US invite Russia to join NATO?

Sure, but that thread of conversation was Russian aggression, and I was posting reasons why sanctions are warranted.

And talk all you want about NATO, but Russia obviously isn't that worried about it if they're literally invading and annexing parts of countries(!!!) on NATO's border.

To your second point, there is actually a history of post Cold-war NATO-Russia partnership. IIRC in his first year of office, Putin's admin joined on NATO as an advisory member.

NATO and the west have certainly, certainly not treated Russia with proper deference and respect past the cold war, but NATO and the west are the convenient single enemy for the Russian people and state that Boney posted about earlier (though the subject was Chomsky).

As someone who has lived in Russia and who reads primary sources in Russian, the level of propaganda that is put out against the west is literally more extreme now than during the soviet union.

 

[wordballoons]

this shit is so dumb.

especially considering the topic is about Chomsky and he's like a 100.

Perhaps it was uncalled for, but the undue praise the man gets is unsettling. Poor man's intellectual. He occasionally makes some good points, but more often he goes off on tangents or just says things that are very quotable. He certainly isn't "the world's most important dissident," and calling him such is an insult to people who actually risk their lives standing up to administrations, or who write pieces that actually have intellectual context/resonance beyond dorm rooms, etc.

 

[ThoseDeafMutes]

The question that needs to be answered though is whether Russia were deceived when it comes to NATO's expansion. Spiegel have a good write up on the incident after analysing declassified British and German documents. What's clear is that Russia were made to think that NATO would not expand to the east and in subsequent years felt deceived by the United States. This is only compounded when bordering nations are invited to join the alliance and when things the the missile shield exclude Russia - even when they attempted to be a part of the deal.

Why don't we see what Mikhail Gorbachev had to say in October 2014, in an interview with a Russian (government owned) website:

One of the key issues that has arisen in connection with the events in Ukraine is NATO expansion into the East. Do you get the feeling that your Western partners lied to you when they were developing their future plans in Eastern Europe? Why didn't you insist that the promises made to you – particularly U.S. Secretary of State James Baker's promise that NATO would not expand into the East – be legally encoded? I will quote Baker: ”NATO will not move one inch further east."

The topic of ”NATO expansion" was not discussed at all, and it wasn't brought up in those years. I say this with full responsibility. Not a singe Eastern European country raised the issue, not even after the Warsaw Pact ceased to exist in 1991. Western leaders didn't bring it up, either. Another issue we brought up was discussed: making sure that NATO's military structures would not advance and that additional armed forces from the alliance would not be deployed on the territory of the then-GDR after German reunification. Baker's statement, mentioned in your question, was made in that context. Kohl and [German Vice Chancellor Hans-Dietrich] Genscher talked about it.

Everything that could have been and needed to be done to solidify that political obligation was done. And fulfilled. The agreement on a final settlement with Germany said that no new military structures would be created in the eastern part of the country; no additional troops would be deployed; no weapons of mass destruction would be placed there. It has been observed all these years. So don't portray Gorbachev and the then-Soviet authorities as naïve people who were wrapped around the West's finger. If there was naïveté, it was later, when the issue arose. Russia at first did not object.

The decision for the U.S. and its allies to expand NATO into the east was decisively made in 1993. I called this a big mistake from the very beginning. It was definitely a violation of the spirit of the statements and assurances made to us in 1990. With regards to Germany, they were legally enshrined and are being observed.

- http://rbth.com/international/2014/10/16/mikhail_gorbachev_i_am_against_all_walls_40673.html

There was never a discussion of letting Poland or Eastern Europe into NATO or anything of that sort for the very logical reason that they were all part of the Warsaw pact at that time and the idea of NATO expanding eastward could only have meant Expanding into East Germany. Which is what was discussed, and what was agreed to and what has been in effect ever since (and remains to this day). The idea of expanding into the Baltic would have been unthinkable, as the USSR had not yet disintegrated either.

The real question is - did the Russians believe that they had received a guarantee to that effect? Some clearly did. Gorbachev believes instead that it violated the "spirit" of that cooperation. Since then, this has morphed into the idea that there was an actual pledge made which was violated, and that has become basically the official state line under Putin. As a conterweight to your sources, here's another that comes to a completely different conclusion:

https://www.csis.org/analysis/twq-myth-no-nato-enlargement-pledge-russia-spring-2009

We actually have multiple respected, valid historians of the Cold War coming to different conclusions on this topic, and people on both sides seem to have had different conclusions, even among themselves, about what was or was not guaranteed, when, and who said what and who promised what. The biggest takeaway are what we basically already know to be true in general - that diplomats are deliberately vague, that everybody reads into agreements what they want to hear, and that if you want something, you should always get it in writing. One reading that you can't take away from the histories, whether they think an agreement was reached or not, was that the Russians were deliberately misled, i.e. that this was part of a master plan whereby the US promised this for Germany, knowing it would be rendered moot by being able to enlarge into Poland, the Baltics, the former Czechoslovakia and so on. For the same reason that the Soviets themselves were not fully cognizant of the changes going on, neither were the Americans.

The discussion in it's entirety is, of course, something that only makes sense in the context of great power politics, whereby we consider the desires of America and Russia, but not the desires of those countries whose membership is under discussion. NATO is perceived by Russia (and others, in this thread even) as exclusively a tool of American imperialism. But it is perceived by those who wish to join it as the best - and possibly the only - shield against a future resurgence of Russian imperialism. The same summit between Bill Clinton and Boris Yeltsin that discussed NATO enlargement in the mid 1990's was also the one where Bill Clinton and Boris Yeltsin discussed the First Chechen war. I'm not trying to tell you this as some sort of whataboutism, I'm literally telling you that the geopolitical situation in Europe was one where people were already concerned about the volatile situation of Russia and some of the post-soviet states.

NATO, too, was not inevitably and forever more a Russian adversary. Although we have now settled back into traditionalist lines, coexistence seemed highly promising. You've been linked a pretty thorough (although slightly rosy in the later years by selective exclusion) timeline of Russia-US relations immediately after the cold war. There was once a proposal - although it is not clear how seriously it was given or taken - that Russia might intend to join NATO. That never happened, but they did join was the Partnership for Peace program, something designed to help intensify relations between the former rival superpowers. The expansion of NATO was also not the only reason for a breakdown in relations between Russia and the US, it's just the one that gets the most press-time and the most play in political slinging matches. It's a particular favorite among the pro-Russian side of things because you don't even need to warp the historiography much to make out like Russia was basically an innocent victim among all these proceedings and that they were majorly wronged.

 

[Aytumious]

Perhaps it was uncalled for, but the undue praise the man gets is unsettling. Poor man's intellectual. He occasionally makes some good points, but more often he goes off on tangents or just says things that are very quotable. He certainly isn't "the world's most important dissident," and calling him such is an insult to people who actually risk their lives standing up to administrations, or who write pieces that actually have intellectual context/resonance beyond dorm rooms, etc.

Who would you recommend?

 

[akira28]

Chomsky must realize the people benefiting from a rapproachment with Russia are primarily oligarchs? The literal mirror image of what he sees wrong in America, really.

the peaceniks see any move towards russia as a move away from nuclear war.