The Laughing Noam

[Carcass]

Could anyone point me towards the enlightening discussion there was on the old board about Noam Chomsky's comparative views on Cambodia and East Timor please?

And why does everyone have 'Islamic' or Jewish names at the moment?

[Guest]

The Laughing Noam

Here are a couple of old Chomsky threads.

I think this is what you're looking for.

Here's another.

[Carcass]

The Laughing Noam

Cheers la.

[Incandenza]

The Laughing Noam

Re: names, its kind of a combination of the Changelog thread, where we're all Muslim terrorist sympathizers, and WOM asking if he should change his name.

[Femme Folle]

The Laughing Noam

It's MUSLIN, you inbesil.

[Incandenza]

The Laughing Noam

Don't yu call me a inbesil, you MORAN.

[Anton Gramscescu]

The Laughing Noam

What are Chomsky's views on Cambidia, exactly? My understanding is that while Pol Pot was in power he rubbished the rumours of genocide and said they were American propaganda - but I don't know if he ever did a mea culpa on that or what he says about the Khmer Rouge now, in retrospect.

[Guest]

The Laughing Noam

Neither of those threads will help, Carcass.

Toro, try the last ten paras of this for Chomsky/Cambodia stuff. Or perhaps simply here.

[Incandenza]

The Laughing Noam

As far as I understand it (I haven't read his writings from the time), what Chomsky did that caused so much offense was to compare the significant attention that the Khmer Rouge was receiving in the American media to what was going on in East Timor at the same time, and compared US-backed massacres in East Timor to what was happening in Cambodia). Chomsky also argued that the American bombing of Cambodia contributed to Pol Pot's rise to power, something that wasn't too popular in the US in the 1970s and beyond.

Here's Chomsky in an 1981 interview:

An honest person will apply the same standard to himself. In fact, I have been harshly and immediately critical of Soviet crimes, but the importance of this is slight. What is important is to expose the crimes of my own state, which are often hidden from view by the propaganda institutions. The reason is that by doing so I can help arouse public opinion which, in a democracy, can contribute to bringing these crimes to an end. The crimes of Pol Pot could be denounced, but no one had any suggestion as to how to stop them. The comparable crimes in Timor at the same time could have been stopped by an aroused public opinion, since the U.S. and its allies bore prime responsibility for them. Correspondingly, it is no surprise to find that there was vast outrage over Cambodia coupled with silence about Timor.

edit: a bit slow, and Horse responded while I was looking online. BTW, that's Antonio Gramsci, not toro.

[G-Man]

The Laughing Noam

Where did Toro post on this thread? Fucking Muslin names.

[Guest]

The Laughing Noam

BTW, that's Antonio Gramsci, not toro.

I is a FUKIN INBESIL.

Anyway this looks about right, but then I would say that because it's me on the Francis Wheen thread linked to on one of the threads vs links to:

in Chomsky and Edward Herman's seminal 1988 book, Manufacturing Consent, C+H do a few things: 1) compare media reports of the deaths in Cambodia under Pol Pot with the deaths in Cambodia caused by the US's massive bombing campaign between 1969 and 1975; 2) ask whether in fact the US's bombing a) was still contributing to mass death under Pol Pot, eg via ongoing starvation, and b) had been a major factor in the rise of the Khmer Rouge; 3) highlight some of the exaggerated and/or demonstrably false claims being made while Pol Pot was in power about the atrocities he was committing; 4) compare these claims with the relative silence over similar/worse crimes committed by a friendly government in Indonesia.

[Brandenburger Toro]

The Laughing Noam

Toro, try the last ten paras of this for Chomsky/Cambodia stuff. Or perhaps simply here.

Heh. Cheers anyway

[Anton Gramscescu]

The Laughing Noam

OK, this is actually what I was looking for. It's long, but extremely good as a dissection of Chomsky's record on Cambodia.

In 1978, Chomsky and Herman wrote a review of three books describing the cambodian genocide as part of a "flood of lies" about the country. There is also a chapter in After the Cataclysm which substantially underplays the nature of the genocide.

As more facts appeared about Cambodia, he gradually changed his tone, so that by 1988 and Manufacturing Consent, he was no longer talking about "lies about Cambodia" but rather contrasting what people said about Cambodia with what they weren;t saying about East Timor - what Horse said, above, basically.

The problem with that little list of things Horse quotes is that while 1, 2 and 4 are (I think) correct, 3 is pack of lies. What "false claims" were made about Pol Pot while he was in power? In fact, while he was in power, no one knew what was going on inside the country. There were very few reports at all.

If anyone was making false claims at the time, it was Chmosky. As the linked article made clear), Chomsky himself was approving of sources that said that the evacuation of Pnhom Penh saved thousands of lives, while rubbishing sources like Francois Ponchaud who - correctly as it turned out - was trying to raise the alarm that a million people or more had died.

And he's never retracted anything he said from that period, apparently.

[Femme Folle]

The Laughing Noam

I just got the title of this thread.

[Carcass]

The Laughing Noam

Haven't you got a Noam to go to?

[Femme Folle]

The Laughing Noam

Noam'am.

[Incandenza]

The Laughing Noam

In my AP Psychology class, our teacher had a study session for us presented as a game of Jeopardy! There was a Rhyme Time category, and one of the "answers" (question) was "Linguist Chomsky's residences."

Noam's homes, of course.

[Guest]

The Laughing Noam

AG, I'm not really up for a very time-consuming trawl through articles from thirty years ago, but this looks like a decent rebuttal to the Sharp piece. The basic point is this: Chomsky and Herman didn't underplay the genocide. They pointed out that media reports of the time loudly proclaimed that a genocide was happening, ignoring sources that contradicted this and failing to mention the significant contribution of the US's previous bombing campaign, just as the same media reports had failed to loudly condemn the US bombing as it was happening. That genocide subsequently was perpetrated by the Khmer Rouge does not mean Chomsky and Herman should apologise; indeed in Manufacturing Consent they make the same point again, referencing 1975 reports about the Khmer Rouge's "genocidal policies" that were apparently comparable to the "Soviet extermination of the Kulaks" - such accusations being made before the facts were known, by commentators who had failed to bemoan deaths caused by the US and were failing to recognise the US's contribution to these deaths.

I can't go into too much detail, not having read After the Cataclysm - and given that there are an astonishing number of flatly dishonest critics of Chomsky out there, you really have to read the book yourself. Here is someone who seems to have done that, for what it's worth.

[Anton Gramscescu]

The Laughing Noam

So...in the absence of very hard information in the late 70's (a good point in that first link of yours, Horse), they chose to trash a book recounting stories of genocide based on eyewitness refugee reports and gave a decent review to a book that claimed that the evacuation of Phnom Penh actually *saved* lives. I can only assume that their preference for the latter set of stories over the former was that the former were too convenient for the US propaganda machine they abhor. Unfortnately, the fact they were convenient for the US didn't mean they weren't true. When evidence came along to show the truth of the matter, they did not say "gosh, we were wrong about that", but rather fell back on "but American allies did it too".

So, 1 out of 2 for accuracy, 0 out of 1 for self-reflection.

Also, I have to say I feel very queasy when people use terms like "American responsibility" in Cambodia. Certainly, great crimes were committed there during the bombings in 1970-75. And they would be crimes whether or not a genocide occurred. But of the many countries the US carpet-bombed in the 20th century (Germany, Japan, Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia and Iraq being the major ones), only one of them responded by setting up a government who chose - as a matter of policy - to reject foreign aid, turn its own people into slaves and kill a quarter of the population through force or starvation. Can one morally pin that on the US? Anymore than one can pin the holocaust on the French because of their hard line at Versailles?

I'm not quite sure Chomsky does this directly, but I rather think he implies it. Perhaps I'm over-analyzing, though.

[Guest]

The Laughing Noam

wrong thread. (that's the second time this week I've done that . . .)

[Guest]

The Laughing Noam

Abu Benito al Manitobani wrote:

So...in the absence of very hard information in the late 70's (a good point in that first link of yours, Horse), they chose to trash a book recounting stories of genocide based on eyewitness refugee reports and gave a decent review to a book that claimed that the evacuation of Phnom Penh actually *saved* lives. I can only assume that their preference for the latter set of stories over the former was that the former were too convenient for the US propaganda machine they abhor. Unfortnately, the fact they were convenient for the US didn't mean they weren't true. When evidence came along to show the truth of the matter, they did not say "gosh, we were wrong about that", but rather fell back on "but American allies did it too".

See my previous post.

Also, I have to say I feel very queasy when people use terms like "American responsibility" in Cambodia. Certainly, great crimes were committed there during the bombings in 1970-75. And they would be crimes whether or not a genocide occurred. But of the many countries the US carpet-bombed in the 20th century (Germany, Japan, Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia and Iraq being the major ones), only one of them responded by setting up a government who chose - as a matter of policy - to reject foreign aid, turn its own people into slaves and kill a quarter of the population through force or starvation. Can one morally pin that on the US? Anymore than one can pin the holocaust on the French because of their hard line at Versailles?

I'm not quite sure Chomsky does this directly

Well, no. So the preceding paragraph is a big straw man.