posted October 16, 2010 07:45 PM         

but if any other country behaved towards the us the way we do much of the world, they would be branded imperialist and any other nasty names one could come up with...

posted October 16, 2010 08:22 PM         

you should know who you have your tongue out drooling over. Chomsky is an America hater of the first order.

Is that his attraction for you?

Noam Chomsky

Professor of linguistics, prolific pamphleteer, highly influential leftist
Known for his extreme views (e.g., that America is worse than Nazi Germany)
“The so-called War on Terror is pure hypocrisy, virtually without exception”

Born to Jewish parents in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on December 7, 1928, Noam Chomsky has taught at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology since 1955. In 1961 he was appointed full Professor in MIT's Department of Modern Languages and Linguistics (now the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy). From 1966 to 1976 he held the Ferrari P. Ward Professorship of Modern Languages and Linguistics. In 1976 he was appointed Institute Professor.

According to the Chicago Tribune, Professor Chomsky is “the most cited living author” and ranks just below Plato and Sigmund Freud among the most cited authors of all time. While acknowledging that he is reviled in some quarters for his ferocious anti-Americanism, a recent New Yorker profile calls Chomsky “one of the greatest minds of the 20th century.”

Chomsky is without question the most politically influential living academic among other academics and their students. He is promoted by rock groups such as Rage Against the Machine and Pearl Jam at their concerts the way the Beatles once promoted the Guru Maharaji, with the performers solemnly reading excerpts from his work in between sets and urging their followers to read him too. The devotion of Chomsky’s followers is summarized by radio producer David Barsamian, who describes the master’s effulgence in openly religious terms: "He is for many of us our rabbi, our preacher, our rinpoche, our sensei."

Manufacturing Consent, a documentary adapted from one of Chomsky’s books with the same title, has achieved the status of an underground classic in university film festivals. And at the climactic moment in the Academy Award-winning Good Will Hunting, the genius-janitor, played by Matt Damon, vanquishes the incorrect thinking of a group of sophomoric college students with a fiery speech quoting Professor Chomsky on the illicit nature of American power.

Any analysis of Chomsky must address linguistics, the field he remade so thoroughly by his scholarly work of the late 1950s that he was often compared to Einstein and other paradigm shifters. Those who admire this achievement but not his politics are at pains to explain what they take to be a disjunction between his work in linguistics and his sociopolitical ideas. They see the former as so brilliant and compelling as to be unarguable -- in all a massive scientific achievement -- and the latter as so venomous and counter-factual as to be emotionally disturbing.

Paul Postal and Robert Levine, linguists who have known and worked with Chomsky, take the view that the two aspects of his life’s work in fact manifest the same key properties: "a deep disregard of, and contempt for, the truth; a monumental disdain for standards of inquiry; a relentless strain of self-promotion; notable descents into incoherence; and a penchant for verbally abusing those who disagree with him."

Chomsky’s work in linguistics allowed him to make a transition from the university to the public arena in the mid-1960s and to be taken seriously as a critic of the war in Vietnam. In a series of influential articles that appeared in the New York Review of Books and other publications, he distinguished himself by the cold intellectual ferocity of his attacks on American policy. Although a generation older than most members of the New Left, he shared the latter's eagerness to romanticize the Third World.

Chomsky was one of the chief deniers of the Cambodian genocide of the 1970s, which took place in the wake of the Communist victory and American withdrawal from Indochina. He directed vitriolic attacks towards the reporters and witnesses who testified to the human catastrophe that was taking place there. Initially, Chomsky tried to minimize the deaths (a “few thousand”) and compared those killed by Pol Pot and his followers to the collaborators who had been executed by resistance movements in Europe at the end of World War II. By 1980, however, it was no longer possible to deny that some 2 million of Cambodia's 7.8 million people had perished at the hands of the Communists. But Professor Chomsky continued to deny the genocide, proposing that the underlying problem may have been a failure of the rice crop. As late as 1988, Chomsky returned to the subject and insisted that whatever had happened in Cambodia, the U.S. was to blame.

This conclusion is the principal theme of what may be loosely termed Chomsky's intellectual oeuvre: Whatever evil exists in the world, the United States is to blame. His intellectual obsession is America and its “grand strategy of world domination.” In 1967 Professor Chomsky wrote that America “needed a kind of denazification.” The Third Reich has provided him with his central metaphor for his own country ever since.

The long conflict with the Soviets and the fact that it was fought out primarily in the Third World allowed Chomsky to elaborate on his analogy with the Nazis and to spin his narrative on the evils of American power. The Soviet dictatorship was not only "morally equivalent" to democratic America, in Chomsky’s view, but actually better because it was less powerful. The chief sin of Stalinism in his eyes was not the murder of millions, but the fact that he had given socialism a bad name.

Professor Chomsky has denounced every U.S. President from Woodrow Wilson and FDR to Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton as the front men in “four-year dictatorships” by a ruling class. In his view, the U.S., led by a series of lesser Hitlers, picked up where the Nazis left off after they were defeated in 1945. According to Chomsky, a case could be made for impeaching every President since World War II because “they’ve all been either outright war criminals or involved in serious war crimes.”

Chomsky also detests the state of Israel, a country he regards as playing the role of Little Satan to the American Great Satan and functioning strategically as an “offshore military and technology base for the United States.”

According to the website Stand4Facts.org, Chomsky has made the following statements about Israel, Jews, and the Holocaust:

“I see no anti-Semitic implications in denial of the existence of gas chambers, or even denial of the holocaust. Nor would there be anti-Semitic implications, per se, in the claim that the holocaust (whether one believes it took place or not) is being exploited, viciously so, by apologists for Israeli repression and violence.”
“I objected to the founding of Israel as a Jewish state. I don't think a Jewish or Christian or Islamic state is a proper concept. I would object to the United States as a Christian state.”
Israel is “a state based on the principle of discrimination. There is no other way for a state with non-Jewish citizens to remain a Jewish state…”
“Israel is virtually a U.S. military base, an offshoot of the U.S. military system.”
“There are a great many horrible regimes in the world. To take just one, the world's longest military occupation. There's little doubt that those under the military occupation would be much better off if the occupation were terminated. Does it follow that we should bomb Tel Aviv?”
“Of course [suicide bombers are] terrorists and there's been Palestinian terrorism all the way through. I have always opposed it….But it's very small as compared with the U.S.-backed Israeli terrorism.”
“I mean you’d have to go back to the worst days of the American South to know what it’s been like for the Palestinians in the occupied territories.”
“What this wall [separation barrier] is really doing is…helping turn Palestinian communities into dungeons, next to which the bantustans of South Africa look like symbols of freedom, sovereignty and self-determination.”
Of a pattern with this animus toward Israel is Chomsky’s involvement with neo-Nazis and Holocaust revisionism. This saga began in 1980 with Chomsky’s support of Robert Faurisson, a French anti-Semite who was fired by the University of Lyon for his hate-filled screeds. (“The alleged Hitlerite gas chambers and the alleged genocide of the Jews form one and the same historical lie,” Faurisson wrote.) Chomsky penned a preface to a book by Faurisson, explaining that the latter was an “apolitical liberal” whose work was based on “extensive historical research” and contained “no hint of anti-Semitic implications.”

In the post-9/11 political ferment, Professor Chomsky’s reputation, which had suffered because of his support of Pol Pot and his dalliance with figures like Faurisson, was revived by the anti-war Left. His following has grown, particularly in Europe and Asia, where his views have helped inform an inchoate anti-Americanism, and on the university campus, where divesting from Israel (a cause he has championed) and attacks against the War on Terror are de rigueur.

Professor Chomsky’s most recent book, Hegemony or Survival (2003), casts America as a threat to global survival. The New York Times and Washington Post both treated Hegemony and Survival as a significant work, with Pulitzer Prize winner Samantha Power writing in the Times that Chomsky’s book was “sobering and instructive.

Chomsky dismisses the atrocity of 9/11 as one that was dwarfed in magnitude by Bill Clinton’s 1998 missile attack on a factory in the Sudan following the bombings of two U.S. embassies by al Qaeda, in which no one was injured.

Telling an MIT audience of 2,000 that the U.S. military response against the terrorists in Afghanistan was a calculated “genocide” that would cause the deaths of 3 to 4 million Afghanis, Chomsky denounced America as “the world’s greatest terrorist state.” He also traveled to the Muslim world to repeat the charges of U.S. genocide and terror to millions in Islamabad and New Delhi. (None of Chomsky’s predictions of “genocide” and “famine” came to pass in Afghanistan, thanks to $350 million in food shipments supplied by the United States. Chomsky himself was aware of these shipments even as he made his accusations.)

Chomsky sees the 9/11 attacks as a turning point in history when the guns that were historically trained on the Third World by imperialist powers like America, were turned around. He sees this as a positive development, because in Professor Chomsky’s eyes unless American “hegemony” is destroyed, the world faces a grim future.

posted October 17, 2010 10:09 PM         

I like the part where he says,
"When we do it, it's not terrorism." lol
That's the only "justification" out there.

jwhop,

posted October 17, 2010 10:26 PM         

quote:

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jwhop, Do you really think I read your posts? lol...Valus

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posted October 17, 2010 10:27 PM         

quote:

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jwhop, Do you really think I read your posts? lol...Valus

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posted October 20, 2010 06:25 PM         

Now this is a debate I can get behind. Wait until I get my popcorn though...brb.

posted October 20, 2010 07:18 PM         

i'm not sure why they're so het up about retirement at 60, but they consider that important so out they go. they don't put johnny halliday in the president's office or kermit the frog in the parliament just to prove a point...

however to these people socialism is about workers' rights not about soviet gulags in the least. as i keep saying, there's socialism and then there's socialism.

as to chomsky, the fact that he criticizes his government doesn't equal hatred. jwhop didn't you ever criticize your kids? hate them much do you?

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/39766772/ns/world_news-europe

French strike to save 'birthright' of benefits
'Our elders fought for retirement at 60,' says one garbage collector

French protesters fight against pension reform Interactive

Union FO, or "Workers' Force," activist Eric Gilly, left, and his daughters Margot, center, and Stephanie, prepare to demonstrate in Marseille, southern France. The protest against a government plan to raise the retirement age to 62 has special meaning for five members of the Gilly clan.By ELAINE GANLEY, JONATHAN SHENFIELD
The Associated Press

MARSEILLE, France — Battling for benefits is a tradition in the Gilly family, passed from generation to generation — as it is for families across the country. And that goes some way toward explaining why the protests against plans to raise France's retirement age have shown such determination and ferocity.

For Gilly and many other Frenchmen and women, social benefits such as long vacations, state-subsidized health care and early retirement are more than just luxuries: They're seen as a birthright — an essential part of the identity of today's France.

The protest against a government plan to raise the retirement age to 62 has special meaning for five members of the Eric Gilly clan who are demonstrating in the streets of Marseille.

"We want to stop working at 60 because it's something our parents, our grandparents and even our great-grandparents fought for," says Gilly, 50, a union representative at Saint-Pierre Cemetery, the largest in this bustling Mediterranean port city.

"And over the years ... you can see that we're losing everything they fought for. And that's unacceptable."

In Marseille, strikes to protest President Nicolas Sarkozy's planned retirement reform have shut down docks, left tons of garbage putrefying on sidewalks and drawn tens of thousands into the streets for each of six protest marches since early September.

Gilly, with huge drums strapped over his shoulders, led the parade for the Workers' Force union Monday. His sister, two daughters and a nephew weren't far behind.

Story: Protesters block French airports, fuel depots

"Unionism, it's in the skin," Gilly said in an interview with Associated Press Television News. "It's more than a passion. When something is wrong or things aren't right, they have to be changed."

The nation usually watches with care over its citizens, who for decades have used street power to help shape French policy, sometimes pulling the rug from under politicians' feet.

Retirement benefits are coveted, by some, perhaps even more than a higher salary, making the issue particularly sensitive. Sarkozy's plan to raise the retirement age hits a nerve deep in the French psyche.

"France is showing some of its old cultural reflexes," said Etienne Schweisguth of the Center for European Studies at the Foundation for Political Science. "When there is something we aren't pleased with we must protest."

Trying to undo what the state wants dates back to an anarchist tradition of the 19th century, when unions first led a struggle against capitalism and a refusal to align with political parties, said Schweisguth. One wing of the hard-core CGT union, which is leading many of today's protests, still looks to that tradition.

Despite the anti-government protests, it is the French state that has for centuries been charged with protecting individuals and their rights.

"The state is the guarantor of the moral good," said Schweisguth, who studies changes in attitudes and values in society.

It was in 1982, under Socialist President Francois Mitterrand, that the minimum age to stop working was lowered from 65 to 60. The measure, emblematic of the 14-year Mitterrand presidency, was adopted by a special ordinance that bypassed parliament.
Sixty has since become a golden number — and the battle cry for entire families fearful of losing benefits bestowed on grandparents, parents or colleagues at work. Including the Gillys.

"This is a family affair because unionism is our big family," said Stephanie, 22, who is among Marseille's striking garbage collectors. "Our elders fought for retirement at 60."

"We have all the generations represented," she said. "There's me, my little sister, Dad. There we go. And then there will be our children, too. We will teach them."

Schweisguth said, that despite the ruckus, strikers represent a minority of the population and that, while polls show backing for such actions, they do not measure the fervor of the backing, which he called "flaccid."

Sarkozy, a conservative, has made pushing the legal retirement age back up a priority.

posted October 20, 2010 07:21 PM         

no when we do it we're being "manly"...when a few arabs commit hari kiri to do it they are cowardy custard maniacs.

posted October 21, 2010 12:36 PM         

quote:

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One wing of the hard-core CGT union, which is leading many of today's protests(...)

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CGT is the union closest to the old communist party, it's a marxist union. it's a radical one. but union in france have a very little number of members. something much smaller than in other european countries (please feel free to find the numbers and compare but it's something like 1% of the workers- or something of that level)

BUT this strike goes far beyond the CGT. this week, 71 % of french people were in favor of the movement. (movdement here means the disagreement with the government and the protests (pacific of course) and the strikes at the fuel refineries and the docks. every now and then, the train services (SNCF) goes on strike, some schools are closed because students from high schools demonstrates...

yesterday or the day before, 59% of french people WANTED THE MOVEMENT TO CONTINUE. that is massive, when there is a presidential election, they consider the vote obvious and massive when it's beyond 54 or 55 %. this movement is deep. however, the protests have raised many other angers that lie dormant most of the time. and yesterday 4000 kids, between 14 an 20 were, across the entire country, arrested here and there for burning some cars and throwing stones at the police. but what is 4000 youngster throughout a country bigger than california but smaller than texas when 3 million people according to the unions (1 million according to the police) demonstrated 6 times in 6 weeks out of a population comparable to that of california + texas together.

posted October 23, 2010 09:18 AM         

"Seen from a distance, we are just forty million losers." So wrote French political journalist René Étiemble just after Allied troops drove the Nazis from his country during World War II. Such candor is rare for a French political writer, especially one from the left, but a dose of candor might be just what France needs today.

At a time when France faces double-digit fiscal deficits and when its neighbors, the British and the Germans, are making serious efforts to restrain and even cut spending, French workers and students are taking to the streets, protesting an increase in the retirement age from 60 to 62. Fuel supplies have been curtailed nationwide; shops have been closed down, cars torched; garbage is piling up along the chic Parisian boulevards.

Protests have reached the point where Marseille's airport, the second-largest in the country, has been blocked. The U.S. Embassy, fresh from issuing alerts about possible new terrorist attacks in France, is now warning Americans about the possibility of violent labor protests. To add insult to injury, Lady Gaga canceled her planned concert in Paris due to the transport disruption. In response, President Sarkozy has asked the French Senate to press for immediate passage of the proposed pension reform bill.

A candid assessment might convince the protestors to accept changes in the retirement age and a reduction of other benefits. Those benefits include a guaranteed paid five-week vacation, virtual lifetime job security, and the equivalent of a four-day work week. But French unions, including the Confédération Française Démocratique du Travail (CFDT), are still debating how to block reform.

The obvious fact that France cannot afford such benefits as universal early retirement and an abbreviated work week seems to make little impression on the unions, especially public-sector unions and those more radical than the CFDT. The question of who pays for the lavish benefits of unionized workers never enters into the equation.

It is, of course, the French people who pay. According to recent estimates by the World Bank, the French living standard (as measured by "purchasing power parity") in 2009 was over 38% beneath that of the United States. At that level, the average French citizen enjoys little in the way of discretionary income beyond what he must spend on food, housing, transportation -- and most of all, taxes.

Most American families, with an average income of over $50,000, can afford a pleasant suburban dwelling, two cars, and a home entertainment center and still save for their retirement through a 401(k) account. Millions of French workers live in aging little apartments, ride public transportation to work, and depend entirely on government for their future needs. A marginal difference in real income of 38% affects everything from the quality of housing to the ability to travel, and everything in between.

How do the French unions intend to address this disparity? By increasing it.

Given free rein, the leftists who dominate the unions would bring the French economy to its knees. Saddled with similar levels of debt, Britain's Conservative government has proposed bold measures to cut spending by $127 billion over four years. Cutting the expenditure of government by 20% is a serious response to Britain's debt problems. If successful, it will restore the sort of credibility that will enable future growth in the economy. Meanwhile, Germany has moved to raise its retirement age to 67, a measure that makes the French look like a nation not just of losers, but of slackers as well. With no reform of its pension scheme and other worker benefits, France will become less and less globally competitive.

As in America, France's retirement system faces ever-increasing deficits as fewer workers support ever larger numbers of retirees. Without reform, including an increase in the retirement age, future deficits (currently nearly $45 billion annually) will surely increase. The unions' answer to this deficit situation is to raise taxes on businesses, thus making them even less competitive, and to raise taxes on the public as well.

Raising taxes would be devastating for companies and individuals who already pay some of the highest tax rates in the world. Another alternative, doing nothing (the California plan), would be equally destructive. For one thing, it would undermine global confidence in the French economy, creating a situation similar to that in Greece. A potential lowering of the French credit rating would lead to higher borrowing costs and thus less funding available for pensions and for everything else. It would also put pressure on the euro and on France's relations with its more provident neighbor, Germany. Finally, it would add to inflation, a stealth tax that affects everyone.

posted October 23, 2010 12:00 PM         

why, for sure, would a govt LISTEN to its PEOPLE in times of stress? crazy, eh jwhop?

posted October 23, 2010 02:14 PM         

That tax with which O'Bomber and his Socialist congressional pals want to hit those earning $250K or more will hit a hell of a lot of middle class business owners who file their income taxes as Sub Chapter S corporations.

Those are not the coupon clipping bond holding wealthy the Communists and Socialists are forever wailing, moaning, whining, screeching and shrieking about.

They're the owners of small businesses which produce about 70% of the new jobs in the United States.

So, some European nations have finally wised up....just as the economic dunce O'Bomber is attempting to reproduce the European Welfare State in America.

posted October 23, 2010 07:36 PM         

here, the trouble for the government is that he's trying to pass again another law that hurts the middle class (which indeed is becoming the lower class more and more) while giving billions to banks who create troubles for themselves and then ask people's money.

the even bigger problem that is becoming clearer now for the elite, it's that this feeling of being fed up to pay for richs is not anymore a privilege of the marxists, but it is now shared by more than the majority of the population. today 61 % of french wanted this movement to continue. and the law was signed yesterday.

posted October 24, 2010 08:33 AM         

One other problem katatonic...actually lots of other problems but how about that "tax credit"...which is an offset against "net income".

Small business people didn't get successful by being stupid.

They would say...."tax credit" offset against WHAT NET INCOME?

pire:

The goal of Socialism is to destroy the middle class. The shrinking middle class in France can be laid at the feet of communist and Socialist unions, the socialist government and the slumbering population which believes in Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy and the free lunch.

The primary goal of all collectivists...including Socialists and Communists is to make everyone dependent on government for everything.

I don't give a rat's ass how the French "feel". They're about to be slapped by reality. There is no free lunch and the Socialist welfare state they've erected is about to come tumbling down because it...like other Socialist systems cannot be sustained.

Ummm, just ask the Greeks. Greece is the future of the European nations if they don't get a handle on their cradle to grave Socialist welfare systems.

posted October 24, 2010 11:29 PM         

Huh???

Corporations and other businesses won't let anyone vote??

Where do you get this stuff...and calling it "stuff" instead of what it really is...is doing you a favor.

Last time I checked, corporations, including banks and other financial institutions gave more money to demoscats...including O'Bomber...than they gave to republicans in 2008.

posted October 25, 2010 10:29 AM         

Of course consumers have the power over businesses...including corporations.

Consumers can put corporations out of business fast.

Further katatonic, you forget that consumers can also bring their injuries...caused by corporations....to courts of law and win monetary damage awards against them; sometimes huge damage awards.

posted October 25, 2010 11:32 AM         

what good will it do you to bring down the corporation after all the corn and soy is destroyed and "altered"? and all the cows that supply your meat are sterile from eating the stuff...no more cows! that will be fixed with your money, right?

tell the people in the gulf how much power they have over BP's payout schedule.

posted October 25, 2010 04:06 PM         

like i said, i don't understand why they want to retire at 60. but destroy the middle class? they have joined the middle class and swelled it. and what skin off anyone's nose if they leave the workforce and make room for the younger generation who will then pay in to the pension fund as well?