Oh come on Nick, Noam Chomsky discussing geopolitics is like Mao discussing quality of life. I respect the man’s scientific contributions but there hasn’t been anything sensible to come out of his mouth since senility and anarchy kicked in.
are you kiding me? I would sell my bike and give the funds to redecorate his office anytime. He’s the most brilliant man i’ve ever heard speak on Geopolitics, ever. I admit the guy from CBC is a dimwit, so this one is better :
about his linguistics, pretty interesting
Not much better - still sounds to me like he is pulling stuff out of his ass.
Any of his comments about 9/11 are largely just diatribe and completely ignorant of the most of the 20th century history he has lived through and shouldn’t be senile enough to forget.
Hell the fact that he treats the event as some singularly important historical event proves to me that he is merely jumping on a bangwagon and pushing hyperbolic thinking that is edgy enough to keep his name in the public conscience.
I mean he’s an anarchist so he’s not going to be able to do anything but trash the means of operation of the nation state - despite reaping all its rewards and comforts. Its pretty formulaic at this point.
i simply don’t understand how you could assert this. He incessantly refers to past and present events, and his recollection of dates is beyond comparison. His entire argumentation reposes precisely on the precept that international affairs have not changed at all during the last few centuries, and the occurences since 9/11 fit snuggly in that continuum. What he says about 9/11 itself is nothing extraordinary, it simply is documented fact.
Oh come on, his whole thesis is basically a grand conspiracy theory when you strip away the pretty sounding rhetoric. Hell, the illuminati subtext is so thick you need a demolition saw to cut through it.
He speaks of 9/11 in that interview you posted as being a singular event where the west for the first time in recent memory was the victim of the sort of terrorism it perpetrates (in his opinion) all of the time.
Thats factually not even true and in more or less direct opposition to another BBC interview when he basically says 9/11 is nothing special and no different from 1993.
Yeah his historical memory is great for a very narrow selection of historical fact that directly supports his very special thesis. For every mention of the Husseins, Suhartos, etc he completely forgets the Maos, Stalin’s and Pol Pots. His historical bent and the thrust of his arguments is really no more profound than the vilification of the US - its stale and boring.
That’s precisely his purpose. We only ever focuse on the crimes of others and wilfully ignore our own. The justification for proliferation doesn’t stand up when we actually glance at our own wrongdoings; the logical solution to the threat of terrorism is ceasing to be hypocrits. Through intellectual subversions and manifest dishonesty, such as coming up with notions of preemptive defensive policies (an Orwellian inherent contradiction), etc., we prepetrate precisely, but in much amplified fashion, the crimes whose responsibility we impart to others. We fight terror (sic!) : War is peace indeed.
His purpose isn’t to highlight the crimes of other regimes, rather it is to show you that their villification by us contributes to their resentment in proportion to the crimes we commit ourselves, but the stigma of which we offhandedly repudiate as becoming of the West’s ascendency, as only WE are morally justified to do anything.
The conventional view, and to which by now i understand you to adhere, is that sure we commit crimes, but it doesn’t matter since their crimes are worse, and by developing massive weapons, we prevent them from engaging in worse crimes yet. So don’t criticise us.
Noone will ever recognize a dissenter amongst themselves.
Depends on your definition of conventional. I’m a neoclassic realist with an affinity for “offencive” realism.
The world is nasty place and the only way to have your culture survive (beyond a memetic copy and paste) is through strength of arms and thats a simple fact - niceties and discourse you seem to push as being the norm are merely the product of grudging respect between equal powers fully capable of beating each other to a pulp - idealism and warm fuzzy feelings of doing the right thing only get lip service when a society has gotten fat with its own success (and quickly dissipate when the fat wastes away - see all of 20th century history sic)
My view is quite simply that there are some things worth protecting at almost any cost and given the ugly state of affairs choosing the lesser of evils is the only recourse you’ve got.
The day you can take resource scarcity, ideological fanaticism and human nature out of the equation is the day I’ll start worrying about crimes - I’m more interested in survival, even if that means doing nasty things seemingly at odds with our cultural values.
I think you’ve been making the mistake that I’m excusing our “crimes” through moral relativism. My actual opinion is that I accept that doing nasty things is part of the cost of doing business.
You have heard of propaganda right? Everyone’s doing it.
Hell it was expedient to paint communist Russia as a great ally not too long ago which is why to this day Stalin’s regime does not evoke a proportional level of revulsion in the public conscience.
You can’t solve terrorism - its the tool of the weak vying for power and the idealogue fighting for a voice and there will always be the weak hungry for power, the disenfranchised and the fanatical ideologues no matter how nice you try to be.
I thought I should throw this one in - it seemed hugely appropriate :
-Hans Morgenthau