Chomsky in Right Field [Updated]
Time out for a little summertime Lefty Inside Baseball. If you don't know the difference between the Second and Third International or you've never been in or denounced someone who was a member of this or that faction of the Fourth, you're probably better off tuning out for this one.
Ok, now that we're alone... I want to heartily recommened this post from one of my favorite blogging professors, the very sharp and literate Michael Berube.
Berube blows his stack over some recent mushy-headed pronouncements about Slobodan Milosevic made by MIT Prof Noam Chomsky. Turns out that Chomsky has bought right into the notion that Slobo got a bum rap, and that he was unfairly framed by NATO for much of the carnage that bloodied the Balkans last decade. That a fourth-rate hack like Ed Herman goes around peddling this stuff is little surprise to Berube (who dissents from me by branding Herman only third-rate). But what is someone with the wits of a Chomsky doing rolling around this muck? Why defend Fascists?
Far be it from me to understand what goes on Noam's head. From the outside, however, it looks like he's got the usual case of Manichean Anti-Yankeeism i.e. there's a lot of evil in the world but no evil greater than U.S. Imperialism, period.
It's important that someone like Berube calls Chomsky out on this repulsive nonsense. A noted leftist intellectual, Berube was also an intitial opponent of the war in Kosovo (as was yours truly). When he saw who his allies were, Berube re-evaluated his position. I remain ambivalent. I don't regret my opposition to the intervention but in retrospect some of the predictions I made (fortunately) never materialized. The arrest and trial and sudden death of Slobo were all events that I celebrated enthusiastically.
Please read all of Berube's post. And pay special attention to the excerpts he reproduces from my good bud, Ian Williams.
On a related note: I accidentally tuned into the local Pacifica station here in Los Angeles today. I was appalled and disgusted to hear large chunks of prime air time turned over to the promotion and endorsement of a whack-job conspiracy DVD that claims the 9/11 attacks were an "inside job" and the the Twin Towers were brought down by "controlled demolitions" i.e. that it was all a Reichstag event staged by the U.S. government. I find it equally appalling that the near entirety of the activist left remains absolutely silent on the wholesale degradation of what once a proud and important resource of alternative news and culture. The lefties have made a Faustian bargain: they remain quiet on the Pacifica sewer so long as they retain some access to the air. It stinks.
UPDATE: What a magnificent surprise. Now pinch-hitting for Noam Chomsky and moving to the left field position is none other than Dennis Perrin. You can read his ramblings on your own time; he swipes at Berube and throws a dripping little mud pie at me. It's all so predictable. I'm supposed to jump out of my skin because he calls me a liberal (the worst insult within the ossified left). And I'm accused of just hating, hating, hating anyone to my left.
Oh, I don't think so. Among the activist left this is, of course, a common malady. Dennis ought to know. "Nobody could possibly be more left, more pure, more righteous than I," muse many an activist as they walk in circles in the mid-day sun. But with all due respect to Cardinal Perrin of the Church of Latter Day Blogger Revvolutionaries, I really couldn't care less who is to my right or left as those categories have been seriously degraded. For the record, I would consider those who show any sympathy toward Slobo as being effectively on the extreme right. But my critics have to get their story straight: either I;m a renegade reactionary who has no truck with the left, period. Or I'm an unreliable liberal pretending to be a lefty and jealous of those to my left (because.......?). Can't have it both ways, comrades.
What most tickles me about Perrin is his cowardly dodge when it comes to Parenti, Herman and Johnstone. This college-educated guy, a long-time lefty intellectual who runs an opinionated blog all, of a sudden turns into a bumpkin know-nothing. He doesn't reallly know much about these folks, not enough to make a real judgement -- even though two of the three (Parenti and Herman) have near iconic status on the Left. Nope, not old Dennis Perrin. He's too busy shootin' stick and tunin' up Harleys and buying hot dogs at the Little League game or wanking over pictures of Christopher Hitchens and his wife to really know:
1) That Parenti has published book after book in explicit defense of Stalinism. One of his more recent booklets, in fact, praises Caeasar, Kim-il Sung, Fidel and Stalin all in one lump. He's also a bit smitten with Slobo. Anyone on the left with an IQ above 75 knows who Parenti is and knows what his hustle his. He's a busted-out academic, with no tenure and not one serious publication under his belt. He's made a living giving speeches to college kids in Madison and Berkeley and selling tapes on Pacifica, posing as a revolutionary (but actually acting as an expert in niche marketing). Back in the late 80's, I was teaching a media theory class at Cal State and Parenti, as Visiting Professor, came in to do a lecture on "Red, White and Blue Hollywood." If it had been delivered as an undergrad paper I would have failed it. My students hated it and pleaded with me to never invite him again. No problem.
2) That Herman has published oodles of the most vitriolic smear attacks on a range of lefty intellectuals (anyone who disagrees with his sectarian positions) and long ago stopped being taken seriously by anyone. Chomsky has more than a passing association with Herman, as Perrin suggests. They co-authored a two-volume set of books on U.S. imperialism which became a primer for much of the activist left. I'm aware of no repudiation by Chomsky of Herman's recent and blatant wing-nuttery.
3) That Diana Johnstone, more than "overheated" as Perrin weakly suggests, has distinguished herself as perhaps the leading pro-Slobo voice in the West (after Ramsey Clark that is). Most lefties I know, to their credit, believe that Johnstone is actually clinically damaged. You'd have to be to buy-in to her theories that Slobo was the great victim of the Balkans wars and that he was attacked because he was a "socialist." Omigod.
Dennis, if times are rough and you can't afford to buy any of the books from these characters about whom you claim to know so little, let me know and I'll be happy to see if I have any dusty copies piled up somewhere.
Finally, it's plain false that I make any connection between Chomsky and the conspiracy theorizing going on pver Pacifica. HOWEVER, Chomsky was a vocal supporter of the crew that took power in Pacifica five years ago and who is responsible for the current programming. He sure as hell had no problem back then putting up his name as an endorsement on their efforts to "take back Pacifica." Now that they've taken it back and ran into the ground, polluting the air with, indeed, conspiracy theory, Noam has become invisible on the issue. I had long, long private exchanges with him five years ago on this matter, urging him to reconsider his endorsement and encouragement of the Free Pacifica yo-yos. All I can say was how terribly unimpressed I was by his weaknes, his unwillingness to criticize in any way those who he considered his "friends," no matter how right or wrong they might have been. Noam Chomsky, you see, is a human being like the rest of us. And he shares many of our shortcomings and failures, regardless of his position on the Palestinians.
June 22nd, 2006 at 10:01 pm
If you would take the time to read Chomsky’s analysis in his two most recent books, you would understand that he’s not trying to make a case for sainthood for Milosevic but simply exposing yet another instance of US hypocrisy in claiming a humanitarian rationale for military intervention.
Regarding Milosevic’s involvement in the “ethnic cleansing”, Chomsky’s basing his argument on a $6 million, several year in the making, Danish government investigation. You’re basing your refutation on your friend from Penn State and a document that IWPR claims to have. I think I’ll stick with the Danes.
Why do you Kennedy Liberals spend so much time and energy trying to villify Chomsky?
June 22nd, 2006 at 10:35 pm
Before I comment, I want to declare my support for the Pabloite liquidationist faction in it’s opposition to the decadent remnants of a once-great Fourth International. Okay, as Comrade Hitchens would say, I’ve cleared my throat.
It’s interesting (?) in this context that Ann Coulter has said outright that we were “on the wrong side” of the Balkan war. This is also pretty standard issue over at wingnut sites like Free Republic.
(The rest is unforgiveably tangential , but speaking of Coulter, Atrios pointed out something interesting about her charming outburst in the wake of the Oklahoma City bombing that her “My only regret with Timothy McVeigh is he did not go to the New York Times Building”. Taken at face value, that would mean that she didn’t regret his bombing government buildings or workers, but only that he didn’t also do the Times. Methinks Atrios is being a tad literal, but I have no doubt that a pathetic doofus like Mickey Kaus, who proudly counts Coulter as a friend, or the idiots at Time who gave her a cover story, would think nothing of parsing Michael Moore - shit…Al Gore, even - to arrive at the most damning possible interpretation of a quote - as if suggesting killing journalists wholesale wasn’t enough to put you beyond the pale of civilized discourse. Her latest calculated outrage was the suggestion that John Murtha deserved to be “fragged”. Wake me when a book by a member of the fringe left who’s called for President Bush’s asassination makes it to the top of the NYT’s best seller list. That’s when we’ll know that the crazy left has become a cancer as widespread, influential and prone to embracing the dangerous, delusional and mentally diseased as the rabid right. Chomskly can be deeply wrong-headed about stuff, but he’s not come close to descending into the depths of sub-human detritis that resides rather comfortably - one might even say, is “lionized” - on the Woodyesque side of the political spectrum. I’m at the point with this bitch Coulter where I feel totally justified in wishing that she’d been accompanying her good friend Barbara Olsen as a passenger on the plane that slammed into the Pentagon on 9/11. It couldn’t have happened to anyone more deserving - and some other poor, innnocent bastard might have been spared. Now, isn’t it about time for our estimable defender of all things disreputable and indecent, Mr. Woody, to show up and grouse about “uneducated leftists” who have no sense of humor. I think I’ve displayed a singular talent for Coultereque humor by fantasizing about her demise in a terrifying death.)
June 22nd, 2006 at 10:38 pm
The 9/11 conspiracy buffs should team up with these folks:
For Diehards, Search for Iraq’s W.M.D. Isn’t Over
By SCOTT SHANE
Published: June 23, 2006
WASHINGTON, June 22 — The United States government abandoned the search for unconventional weapons in Iraq long ago. But Dave Gaubatz has never given up.
Mr. Gaubatz, an earnest, Arabic-speaking investigator who spent the first months of the war as an Air Force civilian in southern Iraq, has said he has identified four sites where residents said chemical weapons were buried in concrete bunkers.
The sites were never searched, he said, and he is not going to let anyone forget it.
“I just don’t want the weapons to fall into the wrong hands,” Mr. Gaubatz, of Denton, Tex., said.
For the last year, he has given his account on talk radio programs, in Congressional offices and on his Web site, which he introduced last month with, “A lone American battles politicians to locate W.M.D.”
Some politicians are outspoken allies in Mr. Gaubatz’s cause. He is just one of a vocal and disparate collection of Americans, mostly on the political right, whose search for Saddam Hussein’s unconventional weapons continues
(see NYT today for the rest)
June 22nd, 2006 at 10:42 pm
*Sigh*. You can dig around in this can of worms for hour upon hour. And you’ll find wormy little rhetorical maneuvers like these, on Rajak.
Dr. Helena Ranta, forensic investigator of the Rajac incident:
“We have found no indication that it did not have to do with unarmed citizens.”
http://racak.homestead.com/files/ranta.htm
But that quote is apparently the basis of Roger Lippman’s claim that
“[The] Berliner Zeitung report is based simply on an inaccurate reading of the Forensic Science International article … Dr. Ranta explicitly refuted this argument in recent interviews, stating that the victims were civilians.”
http://www.glypx.com/balkanwitness/fair.htm
Actually, in the cited “recent interviews”, Ranta resorted to that twisty double negative precisely to *avoid* stating that the victims were civilians.
Actually, I know of no *forensic* source stating that the Rajak victims were civilians (unless a 12-year-old boy is automatically a civilian — ask any Israeli veteran of the Lebanon incursion if fighting insurgency is ever so clear-cut.) All of the reliable reports (i.e., those based on examination by international forensics teams of the bodies, which had been relocated by the Serbs) say that the victims had been wearing civilian *clothes.* Well, hell — so do almost all of the insurgents in Iraq, when they are fighting. And no doubt, when Iraqi government combatants in Iraq who are uniformed decide to commit massacres, they change into their civvies. “All cats are grey in the dark” isn’t just about sex.
Were they civilians? Were they mostly KLA fighters in civilian clothes? The village had about one tenth of its former population, which had mostly fled, and the area had seen Serb/KLA combat. And the KLA? “Freedom Fighters”? Or terrorists? The U.S. State Department had conveniently removed the “terrorist” designation for the KLA a few months before. Does that make the KLA *not* terrorists, all of a sudden? Were they really terrorists before?
Even now, Ranta won’t call the Rajak incident a massacre, saying that “massacre” would be a legal determination, outside her area of expertise.
She has said, and apparently stands by the claim, that Rajak represented a “crime against humanity”. Of course, a massacre is a crime against humanity. Except that … well, a frequent past contributor here has claimed that, under the Geneva rules, he would have a perfect right to summarily execute any enemy POW who was in violation of the Rules of War. I don’t know if that claim of his has any legal basis, but it certainly suggests that a certain mentality is not entirely absent in our own armed forces and veterans thereof. I suppose under his Rules, summarily executable POWs would include fighters out of uniform, since the Geneva rules require that one fight in uniform.
I’d still call Rajak a crime against humanity, no matter who perpetrated it and why, because I don’t think people should be executed summarily even if they are POWs out of uniform when they are captured. And it’s pretty clear that these people were summarily executed: shot at very close range. In fact, I wouldn’t mince words: it’s still a massacre. However, the most we can be sure of is that it’s in a broad category that would also include the crime against humanity of ordering an air strike against the house that Zarqawi was hiding in, which also killed a few women (but not a child, too, as first reported, if the retractions on that count are to be relied upon). That house was isolated, and it could have been safely surrounded. But somehow, just because a dangerous terrorist leader is (probably) in it, and time seemed to be of the essence, it’s OK to order an air strike against it without regard for who else might be inside. This is not to speak of terrorist safe houses that turned out not to be any such thing, something that has happened at more than once in air strikes against Iraqi households and neighborhoods.
I’m not going to dig out every little worm in this can. Suffice it to say that Chomsky, Herman, and others seem to be doing little more than they’ve always done. They point out that “our side’s” propaganda machine is doing what “their side’s” propaganda machine also does. Trump up the charges against the enemy. Minimize or loudly deny the charges against oneself and one’s allies. It’s the way of war: truth is always the first casualty.
It’s not “defending” Slobbo to say that some charges against him might be trumped up. Just because he was a disgusting demagogue and warmonger doesn’t mean he’s automatically guilty of any charge made against him. Just as Henry Kissinger being still free and able to toddle around the Beltway cocktail circuit at his advanced age doesn’t mean he shouldn’t be gasping on the floor of a jail cell, dying of a heart attack brought on by the stress of long confinement over charges of the most heinous war crimes. Good riddance to bad rubbage in both cases, if you ask me. But you have to ask: why does the small-time massacre perp do the hard time, while the big-timer hasn’t even seen the inside of a cell?
June 22nd, 2006 at 11:14 pm
“But you have to ask: why does the small-time massacre perp do the hard time, while the big-timer hasn’t even seen the inside of a cell?”
Well, in Slobo’s case it did happen, which is what seems to disturb his apologists the most. Here in Europe we have Peter Handke among others.
June 22nd, 2006 at 11:53 pm
Michael, here’s a real hoot on “Saddam’s WMDs”…when Alan Colmes, the Towering Midget of Tepid Liberalism, takes you down, you clearly are beyond life-support.
http://movies.crooksandliars.com/H-C-Santorum-Classified-WMD.mov
June 23rd, 2006 at 12:20 am
“Berube was also an initial opponent of the war in Kosovo (as was yours truly). When he saw who his allies were, Berube re-evaluated his position.”
Wow. So that’s a mark of intellectual integrity these days? Try this one on for size:
“I was an initial opponent of the invasion of Iraq, which I thought was a rush to war based on exaggerated, if not fictionalized, accusations. But when I found out that Ramsey Clark and Lyndon LaRouche also opposed the invasion, I … re-evaluated my position.”
In one of the passages of a a final report from what Berube calls the “Srebenica Denial Group”, we have the following:
—-
“In his book Warriors for Peace, Bernard Kouchner, former head of Doctors Without Borders, states that on his death bed, Bosnia’s wartime president, Alija Izetbegovic, acknowledged to both Kouchner and former UN envoy Richard Holbrooke that he had exaggerated claims of atrocities by Serbian forces to encourage NATO intervention against the Serbs. Specifically he mentions wartime POW camps that all three factions in the Bosnian civil war utilized, but which his government claimed in 1992 were really “death camps,” a charge which was widely publicized by reporters such as Newsday’s Roy Gutman (who shared a Pulitzer prize for this story) and ABC anchor Peter Jennings. Izetbegovic admitted to Kouchner and Holbrooke that “There were no extermination camps, whatever the horror of those places. I thought my revelations [sic] would precipitate bombing [against Serbs].”
—-
Had no such conversations ever taken place — i.e., if it had been Kouchner been simply lying here — it seems there would have been quite the news splash: Holbrooke strenuously denying that Izetbegovic had said any such thing, at least to him. Funny, I guess I must have missed that one.
Holbrooke went to bat for Izetbegovic over the Dayton Accords. When he did, did he know the following about the guy, who is said to have met with bin Laden twice?
—
“There can be no peace or coexistence between the “Islamic faith” and non-Islamic societies and political institutions. … Islam clearly excludes the right and possibility of activity of any strange ideology on its own turf. Therefore, there is no question of any laicistic principles, and the state should be an expression and should support the moral concepts of the religion. …”(Emphasis added, ‘Islamska Deklaracija,’ p. 22)
—
But there was Holbrooke, chanting Nazi Nazi Nazi about the Serbian government, while currying the favor with this Islamofascist.
Why not just expose all these fuckers for what they are, and leave bad enough alone? There is sometimes an unambiguous case for humanitarian-motivated superpower intervention. But there will always many more situations where, if you’re some little tinhorn dictator-wannabe, the very possibility of getting a superpower weighing in on your side leads to temptations to confabulate even more than you usually do. Why? Because it’s likely to work.
June 23rd, 2006 at 12:40 am
“Michael, here’s a real hoot on “Saddam’s WMDsâ€â€¦when Alan Colmes, the Towering Midget of Tepid Liberalism, takes you down, you clearly are beyond life-support.” [movie link]
Reg, you’re totally missing the point, the way ALL you leftists do. Saddam was a dangerous, dangerous man, with dangerous, dangerous weapons. We know he had WMD. And we know that he hated America. And also that he used to perform deep-throat fellatio on Osama bin Laden, just to show his respect for the guy.
And since you hate America too, you must also have WMD. Somewhere around the house. A house against which I’ve called an air-strike.
[KABLAM!]
Mission Accomplished. Bye, now.
(Sorry to duck out so soon, but I’m suddenly at my quota of three. As for the content of this last …. I haven’t seen Woody here yet, so I feel it’s my duty to the team to pinch-hit for him. I hope I did it Right.)
June 23rd, 2006 at 12:43 am
Thanks for the posts Michael.
June 23rd, 2006 at 12:45 am
“Reg, you’re totally missing the point, the way ALL you leftists do.”
Dang…you got me. Thought I could slip through the net.
June 23rd, 2006 at 1:50 am
Marc, are you objecting to ads they’re running for a conspiracy theory DVD? Because you’ve run ads on this site for Ann Coulter and Bill Frist.
To paraphrase you, what are you afraid of? That you might be tricked into buying a DVD you disagree with? Donate more money to them and they won’t have to run those ads!
Now, if the hosts are explicitly endorsing the ideas contained within, different story. But it’s hard to tell based on what you wrote.
June 23rd, 2006 at 4:56 am
If you say so, Mr. Cooper, but it’s hard not to imagine your flubbing this one had to do with being on the same side as President Clinton, who basicly got this one right. How bout a little love for da bubba?
As for the 9-11 goofyness, a lot of progressives LIKE it. I get in their faces about it all the time and at the very least they defend it as a matter of free speech. They also believe Bill Clinton set fire to compound at Waco and shot people in cold blood when they tried to escape. They also listen to New Age shows all day just like a right winger listens to The 700 club. Dying is scary, we want answers, what are you gonna do?
June 23rd, 2006 at 5:16 am
I wonder if Marc’s journalism students ever take him to task for the sloppy, sophomoric way he levels unsubstantiated allegations against people like Chomsky and George Galloway.
Be sure to click on the link to the Chomsky-bashers Web site. Marc’s assertions about what Chomsky says about Milosovic take a real pounding. Betcha he won’t make that mistake again…
June 23rd, 2006 at 5:50 am
I shouldn’t be writing this. I’m over quota. And I’ve got stuff to do. But ….
Y’know, after Marc’s “4th rate hack” gibe against Herman, I went and read Herman’s “The Politics of the Srebrenica Massacre,” about an issue I’d never bothered to delve into much before. And I compared the level of his scholarship to that of his detractors. And where I could, compared the level of scholarship of those he cited to that of his detractors. And where I could, compared the level of scholarship of those cited by those cited, etc. And ….
Well, it just gets disgusting, after a while, walking down the forking paths of all those citations. All you find are more 4th rate hacks who write for scummy, obscure publications like Foreign Affairs magazine. Who work at obviously-Serb-aligned front operations like U.S. defense think tanks. Who actually have been on the ground in Bosnia working for UNPROFOR, but who are therefore, almost axiomatically, drunken whoring, lazy, lying scoundrels.
It must be some vast right-wing conspiracy, I tell you! (With some leftist dupes trailing along.) Maybe it’s funded by Storm Front or Aryan Nation or … I dunno.
But I do know this: None of them are true journalism professionals. Y’know, like that one guy who got a Pulitzer Prize for Bosnia reporting? OK, OK, he did it by relying almost entirely on one source, a source who later recanted, saying he was forced to memorize pages of made-up stories, and two of whose supposed victims later turned up alive and kicking. But, hey, that was just a fluke. It could happen to anybody. The point is: it was a great story that brought tears to your eyes. There is a truth greater than any mere fact. That’s the important thing.
Or what about the true professionals at that esteemed, non-partisan, unbiased NGO, the International Committee for Missing Persons? Wow, they are international, that’s a big job, ‘cuz there are a lotta missing persons in the world — Cambodia, East Timor, the list goes on. In its selfless work, IC-MP undertakes to identify missing persons in many countries, including … um … well, actually, it’s just focused right now on certain former Yugoslav republics. Actually, it’s mainly about trying to figure out what happened to at least six thousand more as-yet-unlocated Srebrenica massacre victims. ‘Cuz they just gotta be out there, right? Somewhere. But any day now, IC-MP will expand their scope. You just wait!
Anyway, don’t look. Don’t probe any deeper. It’s just horrible, all the lies by all these wingnuts. Just read Berube. And those whom Berube approving cites. Especially, don’t read Diana Johnstone. She’s not just a hack but a wacko. After all, Berube says so, and that’s good enough for me. (It better be — otherwise, I’d have to actually go and read her book.)
I mean, maybe there is something a little funny going on here, but … who has the time? Not me. Truth is beauty, beauty is truth, and all truth is simple. Sometimes the truth is even spelled right, when you read it off the Fox News crawl line.
June 23rd, 2006 at 6:14 am
“I wonder if Marc’s journalism students ever take him to task for the sloppy, sophomoric way he levels unsubstantiated allegations against people like Chomsky and George Galloway.”
I agree Bunker. Why make allegations against strange_ers like Galloway, and run the risk of being called sloppy and sophomoric, when all need be done is suggest one read or listen to their ramblings for themselves.
June 23rd, 2006 at 7:08 am
I like Berube, but Chomsky is being completely honest about the Dutch government study. What baffles me is that people like Marc make a big deal out of this - except of course to get a rise out of people - and in a “Eustonian” fashion.
If I were to point out that Kuwait was slant-drilling into Iraq oil in 90, does that make me a justifier of Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait? Context is important….
June 23rd, 2006 at 7:12 am
And the fact that you mention both in one post means you are trying to implicate Chomsky’s readers with 911 conspiracy buffs. Apples and oranges. For sure, some of these conspiracy bufoons may read Chosmky, but they’ll sure be turned off by his aversion to conspiracy theory - in fact much of the “911 truth movement” as these weirdos call themselves think Chomsky is a CIA agent.
June 23rd, 2006 at 9:14 am
Wow, Cooper is good at cheap shots, but pretending that Chomsky is a defender of Slobo is really a new low.
Turner has completely revealed the sloppy logic Cooper uses in his desparate attempt to not only pretend Chomsky is a defender of Slobo’s poltics but likewise for no apparent reason linking Chomsky with conspiracy theorists in the same post!!
So Cooper, can you cite a conspiracy theory that Chomsky holds to? It’ll be hard since he’s on the record opposing conspiracy theory as useless, but go for it, I’m sure you’re not like Coulter and just making stuff up in a smear job.
June 23rd, 2006 at 9:24 am
Mike Turner-
Aren’t you being a little hard on Marc? Chomsky bashing is a requirement of the CIA propaganda contract.
June 23rd, 2006 at 9:26 am
Michael Albert references Chomsky against conspiracy theory:
“The Difference
TO SEE THE operational difference between conspiracy theory and institutional theory we can compare a smattering of the views of two currently popular critics of U.S. foreign policy, Noam Chomsky and Craig Hulet. Here is an indicative passage from each.
@PAR SUB = HULET: “This isn’t about Kuwait. This isn’t about oil. It has nothing to do with those things. And it certainly doesn’t have anything to do with reinstalling a legitimate government [in Kuwait] when for the first time we’re trying to install a legitimate government which is a non-military despotism listed by Amnesty International as committing the same heinous crimes against his people [as Hussein]… What I am suggesting is that for the first time we’re going to expend American lives to put in a tyrant of only a smaller stature because of the size of his country…there is a foreign policy that is being orchestrated in violation of U.S. law, international law, and the U.S. constitution. Should that surprise anyone after Watergate, the Kennedy assassination?…
“Why should Americans die to restore a dictator invaded by another dictator? First it was to protect Saudi Arabia. Everybody now knows he [Hussein] had no intention of going any further than Kuwait. So they dropped that as a reason. They came up with the next one, that this is about oil. Then all of a sudden oil prices, right in the midst of the war, drop to $21 a barrel, which was where it was before the war. So it obviously can’t be about oil. So it can’t be our vital interests at stake. Is it about a legitimate government? If it’s about a legitimate government, then we’re putting back in power a despot under the Breshnev doctrine, not the Truman doctrine. The Breshnev doctrine being that we treat all nations as sovereign equalities regardless of how despotic they are, and we keep them in power. So for the first time George Bush is now acting out the Breshnev doctrine rather than installing a free republic or keeping a free people free. [There follows a long discussion of the U.S. holdings and influence of the Al Sabah ruling Kuwaiti family, followed by listener questions primarily focused on the efficacy of impeaching George Bush to which Hulet's response is:] It’s going to be up to the public whether or not George Bush–and I agree, it’s a ruling Junta–is impeached. It won’t be just up to Senators and Congressmen to make this decision. They won’t make the decision unless public opinion supports this kind of action.” [emphasis mine, M.A.]
CHOMSKY: “If we hope to understand anything about the foreign policy of any state, it is a good idea to begin by investigating the domestic social structure: Who sets foreign policy? What interests do these people represent? What is the domestic source of their power? It is a reasonable surmise that the policy that evolves will reflect the special interests of those who design it. An honest study of history will reveal that this natural expectation is quite generally fulfilled. The evidence is overwhelming, in my opinion, that the United States is no exception to the general rule–a thesis that is often characterized as a `radical critique’…
“Some attention to the historical record, as well as common sense, leads to a second reasonable expectation: In every society there will emerge a caste of propagandists who labor to disguise the obvious, to conceal the actual workings of power, and to spin a web of mythical goals and purposes, utterly benign, that allegedly guide national policy… any horror, any atrocity will be explained away as an unfortunate–or sometimes tragic–deviation from the national purpose….
“Since World War II there has been a continuing process of centralization of decision-making in the state executive, certainly with regard to foreign policy. Secondly, there has been a tendency through much of this period toward domestic economic concentration. Furthermore, these two processes are closely related, because of the enormous corporate influence over the state executive…”
THE COMMONALTY OFTEN evidenced in these two thinkers is distaste for U.S. foreign policy. The difference is that Hulet generally understands policy as the preferences of particular groups of people–in this case, “a junta” and the Al Sabah family–barely referring to institutions at all. Chomsky always understands the policies as arising from particular institutions–for example, “the state executive” and corporations.
For Hulet, the implicit problem is to punish or “impeach” the immediate culprits, a general point applicable to all conspiracy theory. The modis operendi of the conspiracy theorist therefore makes sense whenever the aim is to attribute proximate personal blame for some occurrence. If we want to prosecute someone for a political assassination to extract retribution or to set a precedent that makes it harder to carry out such actions, the approach of the conspiracy theorist is critical. But the conspiracy approach is beside the point for understanding the cause of political assassinations to develop a program to prevent all policies that thwart popular resistance. Conspiracy theorizing mimics the personality/ dates/times approach to history. It is a sports fans’ or voyeur’s view of complex circumstances. It can manipulate facts or present them accurately. When it’s done honestly, it has its place, but it is not always the best approach.
For Chomsky, the problem is to discern the underlying institutional causes of foreign policy. The modus operandi of the institutional theorist would not make much sense for discovering which individuals conceived and argued for a policy, or who in particular decided to bomb a civilian shelter. To understand why these things happen, however, and under what conditions they will or will not continue to happen, institutional theory is indispensable and the motives, methods, and timetables of the actual perpetrators are beside the point.
Take the media. A conspiracy approach will highlight the actions of some coterie of editors, writers, newscasters, particular owners, or even a lobby. An institutional approach will mention the actions of these actors as evidence, but will highlight the corporate and ideological pressures giving rise to those influences. A person inclined toward finding conspiracies will listen to evidence of media subservience to power and see a cabal of bad guys, perhaps corporate, perhaps religious, perhaps federal, censoring the media from doing its proper job. The conspiracist will then want to know about the cabal and how people succumb to its will, etc. A person inclined toward institutional analysis will listen to evidence of media subservience to power and see that the media’s internal bureaucracy, socialization processes, and interests of its owners engender these results as part of the media succeeding at its job. The institutionalist will then want to know about the media’s structural features and how they work, and about the guiding interests and what they imply.
The conspiracy approach will lead people to believe that either:
(a) They should educate the malefactors to change their motives, or
(b) They should get rid of the malefactors and back new editors, writers, newscasters, or owners.
The institutional approach will note the possible gains from changes in personnel, but explain how limited these changes will be. It will incline people
(a) Toward a campaign of constant pressure to offset the constant institutional pressures for obfuscation, or
(b) Toward the creation of new media free from the institutional pressures of the mainstream.”
http://zena.secureforum.com/Znet/ZMag/articles/oldalbert19.htm
June 23rd, 2006 at 9:29 am
J Cummings asks an excellent question:
“If I were to point out that Kuwait was slant-drilling into Iraq oil in 90, does that make me a justifier of Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait? Context is important…”
In Cooper’s book it would, but in any rational thinking person’s book it shouldn’t. You’re right, context is important, and as Turner has shown so well, Cooper and Berube have missed it or ignored it.
June 23rd, 2006 at 9:32 am
Chomsky refuting conspiracy theories. One might wonder what part of this Cooper or Berube would disagreee with? Note especailly part two, so what would be seen as ‘conspiracy theorising’ in that answer?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzGd0t8v-d4&search=conspiracy
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LoDqDvbgeXM&search=conspiracy
June 23rd, 2006 at 9:42 am
Turner: I think the historic record on Sbrenica speaks clearly enough. As does the record of the Bosnian Serbs and Slobo’s Serbs. Were some reports exaggerated? No doubt. Were some of the other players — including the KLA etc. — distasteful? Absolutely. Did the U.S. favor one side over another? For sure. It happened, however, to favor the side most affected and threatened and butchered by unbridled and relentless Serb aggression. Actually, I have no problem identifying the Serb forces with the sarcastic term you employ of Nazi Nazi Nazi — for that is exactly what they were. In the end, you’ve completed quite a nice audition for your own membership in the Denial Club.
I must also respond to the Ed Herman business. I dont have to guess about his credibility. I know what it is. Having written several filthy-ridden screeds about me (yes, moi) and with my parsing out the multiple errors, the total lack of reporting, and the aberrant conclusions that Herman reaches, I can without any hesitation classify him as a pathetic, fourth-rate hack whose only appeal is to Sara Lawrence sophomores who hate their daddies– and therefore their country.
LYT get the wax out of your ears. I said very clearly that the issue with Pacifica was precisely that their hosts have CHOSEN to feature the crackpot material and are eagerly promoting and endorsing it. You, as I, might not like the Coulter ads that have appeared on my site. And you might discount my assertion that they appear independent of my desires and choice as they are part of a ad network to which I subscribe but you cannot in good faith say that is the same as endorsing, promoting, and extolling them as occurs on Pacifica.
June 23rd, 2006 at 10:39 am
“And you might discount my assertion that they appear independent of my desires and choice as they are part of a ad network to which I subscribe but you cannot in good faith say that is the same as endorsing, promoting, and extolling them as occurs on Pacifica.”
And why would ANYONE with Cooper’s background subscribe to an ad network which features books by Frist & Coulter?
“Independent of my desires and choice”
Never heard of free will?
Did PajamasMedia put a gun to your head?
June 23rd, 2006 at 10:51 am
JasonM… two suggestions. Take either one, You are free to use the Pay Pal button at the top of the blog that would make advertising un-necessary. Or you can tune out if you dont like what you see here. Simple isn’t it?
No Pajamas didnt put a gun to my head. Not by any means. My association is voluntary. The ads that come down the pike come down indepedent of me. I certainly have the right to cancel the ad network. I have chosen not to. One reason is that most blog readers arent willing to pay a penny for what they read….maybe you can cjange the trend. I dont like Ann Coulter but I dont care very much if her ads are on my site because I know they are not going to change any minds. I dont imagine you think so either.
That’s a lot different, pal, than having a radio station relentlessly endorse, vouch for, market and award as a prize some crackpot material. If you dont see the difference… Im not gonna be able to help you. If the Coulter ads offend you, then please take me off ur reading list and go instead to where all your views and biases are left unchallenged and unmolested.
June 23rd, 2006 at 11:28 am
So Marc, any reason for the spurious association of Chomsky with conspiracy theories? I guess it’s too tough for a journalist to admit he’s wrong.
And Turner did a far better job refuting your simplistic understanding of the US bombing of Yugoslavia than your little ‘refutation’ did. And he’s right, anyone who thinks the US bombardment campaign was designed to save lives is living in a state of self-delusion.
And pardon me, Ed Herrman ‘filthy’? Did he ever associate you falsely with conspiracy theorists?
June 23rd, 2006 at 11:52 am
I think Turner’s one point is quite right. It’s like saying, “I used to be pro-environment, then I relized the Manson family were very pro-environment. Those people were sick! So go ahead and trash the place.”
Now, if Marc got into a spat with this Herman fella, wouldn’t that suggest he should recuse himself from attacking the guys views on other subjects? How can he be objective? You blog happy radicals sure throw a lot of insults around. Who was worse, Slobo or Charles Schumer? Can a forth rate hack ever pull himself up into third rate status? And what did Sara Lawrence ever do to you?
June 23rd, 2006 at 12:51 pm
I didn’t detect the Chomsky/conspiracy connection from the post. This is separate from the Slobo position. And that’s a far cry form 9/11 fantasies.
June 23rd, 2006 at 12:52 pm
What wonderful pathology! Can all this really be free? I dont have to pay to have u write this stuff? Cool!
Wall, let me honest — ur a an effin’ moron. OK? I feel better.
Let’s see… Ed Herman, with whom I have never had a conversation or a “spat”, writes two long pieces a couple of years ago falsely accusing me and several friends of high crimes and misdemeanors, does no reporting to check out any of his manufactured facts, gets just about everything wrong, slurs my repuation and integrity and because of that I should RECUSE myself from ever taking him on because I have a supposed axe to grind? What the fuck world do u live in, son? At the time Herman dumped his load of crap I had relatives — attorneys– who were goading me to sue his ass. I told them poor Herman didnt have enough assests to make it worth it. And in any vase, Herman’s punishment is that he has to be Ed Herman, poor bastard.
By your own measure, Mr. Wall (what an appropirate nom de guerre!) now that I have labelled you a friggin moron, you should now excuse urself from answering me! LOL! We should be so lucky.
I am also once again in a bit of an existential crisis… I do not operate this site to give unending platforms to such boring fucking trolls as moniquia among others… Im always tempted to simply shut down the comments section because too often it provides very little usable content…. it’s the same old whining from anonymous pips….and being human, it too often raised my blood pressure, an event I’d rather save for either hooking a 40lb albacore or flopping quad aces… but to waste my neurons on the sort of sewage that passes thru here really raised questions about my own sanity!
Take a shot at Chomsky and the world collapses! Fantastic! And this from people who claim not to be religious….sure.
When an emailer friend of mine asked me today why I tolerate the unending abuse from the likes of pips like Wall, moniquia, BB and others, I answered that it’s a bit like watching an Ant Farm. One has to balance the amusement factor against the pain in the ass of maintaining it.
It must feel good to once and a while dump the whole thing in the backyard and let the ants scurry out aimlessly on their own. I guess I get some brownie points for keeping them safely bottled up on this site.
June 23rd, 2006 at 1:36 pm
Michael Turner has it right: the people who insist that 8000 were killed in Srebrenica, rather than the 200 claimed by Herman, have been reading the Fox News crawl line. I hope everyone will remember how hard Fox stumped for war in Kosovo! Cooper and Berube are Fox stooges!! Herman’s reporting on Cooper, like his claim that Berube was “working with” David Horowitz, is entirely right!
Hey, Marc, I’ve got the same thing going in my comments section, too. At least it keeps these folks off the streets, I guess.
Just one thing: I didn’t rethink my opposition to Kosovo simply because my allies were Serbian nationalists, war-crimes deniers, and Tom DeLay. After all, supporting Kosovo meant having allies like the New Republic editorial board. That’s why I explicitly said, on my blog, that I trust Ian Williams’s account of the war, as well as the accounts provided on the invaluable Balkan Witness site. I started believing that the (somewhat botched) intervention was necessary once I learned more about the history of Serbian ethnic cleansing in the post-Tito era, and once I started reading Herman’s and Johnstone’s extraordinarily vile and craven apologetics for the same.
I apologize for calling Herman a third-rate hack. You’re right, Marc, he’s not quite that smart.
June 23rd, 2006 at 1:58 pm
A) Can M Berube or Cooper provide a citation that Ed Herman claims only 200 were killed at Srebinica…
B) If you can’t or can do so, explain why you exxagerate - i.e. I agree that Herman is a little strident and possibly misguidedt on the Balkans, but Williams, writing for a pro-Bosnian government site is hardly unbiased. No mention of the Jihadis in Bosnia… Many of the essayists in Ali’s book, as Williams acknowledges - were and are tough critics of Milosevic’s ethnic cleansing but placed it in the broader context. Nothing I’ve seen from Chomsky contradicts this reasoned attitude.
C) In fact, Chomsky’s book about the Balkans makes the case - right or wrong - that the intervention made the situation worse, admitted by Wesley Clark in fact. So has the subsequent occupation. Even if you take issue with his analysis, there is nothing remotely suggesting sympathy or support for Milosevic. Perhaps you can glean that from some people with which he may be affiliated, though I disagree, but from Chomsky not at all.
Please cite examples - or else I’ll just assume - rightly or wrongly, that your real goal is to slander Chomsky.
I’m a big fan of Michael Berube’s writing. Too bad, like most writers from all stripes, the style leaves when polemicizing.
June 23rd, 2006 at 2:48 pm
“Far be it from me to understand what goes on Noam’s head. From the outside, however, it looks like he’s got the usual case of Manichean Anti-Yankeeism i.e. there’s a lot of evil in the world but no evil greater than U.S. Imperialism, period.”
Those of us on the right have been saying this for at least a couple of years, many were saying it longer.
JCummings: “I’ll just assume - rightly or wrongly, that your real goal is to slander Chomsky.” And?
June 23rd, 2006 at 3:08 pm
“Can M Berube or Cooper provide a citation that Ed Herman claims only 200 were killed at Srebinica …”
Of course not. Because Herman isn’t so sloppy as to take official Serb figures at face value. He says that the credible eyewitness testimony can support estimates of “hundreds” killed. He doesn’t put a cap on it, though. Forensic evidence since then might take it into quadruple digits, though one must wonder how, a decade after the event, the IC-MP could only identify 2,000 human remains from various graves, with little absolute certainty about how many were victims of actual massacres, and very little idea of where to look next for the remaining supposed 6,000.
As for 8,000 killed, well, try doing the math yourself. Here’s what Herman comes up with:
—-
“The 8,000 figure is also incompatible with the basic arithmetic of Srebrenica numbers before and after July 1995. Displaced persons from Srebrenica-that is, massacre survivors– registered with the World Health Organization and Bosnian government in early August 1995, totalled 35,632. Muslim men who reached Muslim lines “without their families being informed” totaled at least 2,000, and some 2,000 were killed in the fighting. That gives us 37,632 survivors plus the 2,000 combat deaths, which would require the prewar population of Srebrenica to have been 47,000 if 8,000 were executed, whereas the population before July was more like 37-40,000 (Tribunal judge Patricia Wald gave 37,000 as her estimate). The numbers don’t add up. [45]”
—-
Indeed. They are way, way off. Now, there might have been some circumstances that argue against the above analysis. Srebrenica might have experienced a large influx of refugees, making up the balance. That would be an interesting question to explore. But you can’t just let the historical record “speak for itself” when it says things like “2+2=5″. You’ve got to do the math. And if the figures are still too fuzzy, you’ve got to call people out when they insist that the numbers are clear and precise. You have to say they are either fools or liars. Fools will be fools, of course. It can happen to anyone. But liars have motives. Among these liars is a man who, it seems, on his deathbed, apparently admitted to promoting inflated figures and stories about systematic “death camps”. What would have been his motive? Well, he denied that the Clinton administration had communicated a “5,000 Bosnians massacred” trigger point for U.S. intervention. But several others confirm that criterion being communicated, including that leader’s former Srebrenica chief of police.
June 23rd, 2006 at 4:22 pm
This is just disgusting. The lefties defending Slobo are simply repeating the sins that the left has commited in the past.
June 23rd, 2006 at 5:29 pm
http://www.haverford.edu/relg/sells/srebrenica/endgame.html
I don’t know what the correct numbers are, but there seems to be a correlation with this figure and missing people.
June 23rd, 2006 at 6:18 pm
The Dirty Little Secret is that the deranged weirdos who now run most of Pacifica actually do represent the Left.
Read Victor Serge on pre-World War I Paris. The Left has always thrived in a dung heap of eccentricity and derangement, which later blossomed into full-blown sycophancy for Stalin, and now has turned back into an eclectic dung-heap of weirdness. Oh, and sympathy for Islamic medievalists.
Marc, you wouldn’t last 6 months if there were ever a Left revolution in this country.
Fortunately, fecklessness is a natural consequence of eccentricity.
On KPFK, Ian Masters is left, although he’s getting shriller. I don’t know about Jon Wiener and Suzi Weissman, the last thoughtful types I remember on the station.
You have a critical faculty and a sense of history. The nutcases are right. You really didn’t belong on Pacifica.
June 23rd, 2006 at 6:25 pm
“Oh, and sympathy for Islamic medievalists.”
Oh, them little green footballs…
June 23rd, 2006 at 8:32 pm
I think was Shakespeare who said “I’ve been thrown out of better joints.”
I apoligize. I was teasing. I read “Manufacturing Consent” about ten years ago (it was pretty good) which I think that Herman guy co wrote. I see his name pop up once in awhile when acamemics nobody cares about start trading insults when I’m skiming “Counterpunch” . I’m about as interested in him as the next Hillary Duff vehicle. I have never seen a Hillary Duff vehicle.
Cooper, make fun of my name all you want, but let the Pacifica thing go. You were right. They were wrong. Those kinds of artistic coops are a recipe for mediocrity. Human beings just haven’t learned, for the most part, to function in those kinds of groups, and Los Angeles has got to be about the last place in the world you should expect them to. It’s clouding your judgement, and it’s going to give you a heart attack.
Thing about Chomsky: I’ve rarely seen the kind of rightous reaction to disagreements that always seem to come from his followers. If he can honorably disagree with people, why can’t they? He seems a pretty decent fellow on balance to me; though I thought he was post 9-11 comments were corse, and he made predictions about genocidal effects of the invasion of Afghanistan that thankfully never panned out. (Working from memory here, happy to be corrected. ) Beyond that, I don’t see why you can’t counter Parenti without the personal stuff. Since when does a radical place so much value in making tenure?
Frankly, Mr. Cooper, I’d rather you take this out on unseen scribblers like me than your customary abuse of Dems who, rather than play hero on internet sites and left journals, have to go out and try to get a thing or two right in a political world which, after all, is just one big Pacifica.
That said, I promise to take a powder in the near future. For now, however, I have to keep reading. Reg is just too DAMN GOOD!
June 23rd, 2006 at 8:35 pm
“Parenti has published book after book in explicit defense of Stalinism. One of his more recent booklets, in fact, praises Caeasar, Kim-il Sung, Fidel and Stalin all in one lump.”
Gee, Marc, I poked at your “defense of Stalinism” link expecting something truly X-rated explicit in defense of ol’ Josef. I was rather disappointed.
Parenti’s obviously an old commie, but … well, the formerly Communist republics of the USSR *are* economic disaster zones now. And he points out that many of the reforms of capitalism under liberal democracy in the West were enacted under popular pressure generated in part by the appeal of socialism as a model. If that constitutes an “explicit” defense of Stalinism per se (Parenti parenthetically notes that Stalin is “dead, by the way”), this must be some new meaning of “explicit” that’s entered the dictionaries since I last checked.
“The Assassination of Julius Caesar” is not a “booklet”. It’s 160 pages. It was apparently nominated for a Pulitzer (though it didn’t make the finalist nominee list.) The Publisher’s Weekly review somehow doesn’t go apeshit over the praises that Parenti supposedly showers on Kim il-Sung or Stalin, and I didn’t notice even the one scathing review on Amazon bothering to mention any such praise. A search for what would be necessarily be a very controversial quote from that book, to the effect you claim, has so far turned up nothing.
But, what does all that matter? Parenti, Johnstone, Perrin — they are a bunch of frickin’ exaggerators! Exaggerators! EXAGGERATORS! In fact (and I could prove this if I had time to do the research, or at any rate to simply repeat it until numb acceptance was the only possible response) they are the biggest exaggerators who ever walked the Earth, or any other planet.
Plus, they insulted me a few times. QED.
June 23rd, 2006 at 9:21 pm
I’m going to break my self-imposed silence to address sopme of the following:
I was appalled and disgusted to hear large chunks of prime air time turned over to the promotion and endorsement of a whack-job conspiracy DVD that claims the 9/11 attacks were an “inside job” and the the Twin Towers were brought down by “controlled demolitions” i.e. that it was all a Reichstag event staged by the U.S. government.
Yeah, this is asinine. How one can do a controlled demolition of two 110 story building packed amidst other very tall buildings (not to mention an unplanned demolition of 7 WTC is beyond me.
I’ve seen lots of buildings come down in Manhattan.They dismantle them floor by floor. Controlled demolition in Manhattan is an oxymoron.
I find it equally appalling that the near entirety of the activist left remains absolutely silent on the wholesale degradation of what once a proud and important resource of alternative news and culture. The lefties have made a Faustian bargain: they remain quiet on the Pacifica sewer so long as they retain some access to the air. It stinks.
Marc,
This is bordering on shtick. Here are some ideas: spend all your time listening to their broadcasts and send complaint letters to the station (via certified mail, return receipt requested). Then visit the station and request to see the public file to make sure your letters are in there. If your letters are not in there, or if they do not make the public file accessible to you during normal business hours, file a complaint with the FCC. They will surely be fined. Keep up this pressure and if they remain non-compliant, they will probably go bankrupt from the fines in 20 to 30 years.
You could also maintain a record of their programming and at license renewal time, file a competing application (just make sure that you do it in good faith and have the means to operate the station should you be awarded the license) showing that the current license holder is not broadcasting in the public interest. It’s expensive, but the upside is you will own your own station.
You can also start your own LP station, and maybe if there is enough listener support, you can expand. AM frequencies are going begging these days, especially stand alones, so you probably get one for a little less than $1M
Or you could do what I and most of the people I know on my side of the political aisle do: let the kooky ones marginalize themselves. If you believe giving Ann Coulter attention might ” validate her existence”, then surely the same would apply to the lunatic left.
KPFA-FM is sui generis, but I would bet you dollars to donuts that the winter Arbitron books for New York and Los Angeles would show WNYC AM/FM and KCRW-FM leaving WBAI-FM and KPFK-FM in the dust. WKCR and WFUV routinely outpoint WBAI.
“Oh, and sympathy for Islamic medievalists.”
You’re an ass and a racist one at that. The very idea that you would use the case of a homeless, emotionally disturbed man to make the case of your self-proclaimed belief of the “prevalence of violent crime in that racial group” is beneath contempt.
June 23rd, 2006 at 9:24 pm
Just to be clear, that last part was not directed at you, Marc.
June 23rd, 2006 at 9:39 pm
Excellent points Randy. Nope, I dont intend to dedicate any more of my life to the Pacifica sewer. Been there and done that.
You’re right on the money btw regarding ratings. The latest report on public radio ratings delineates what it calls “winners, “coasters” and “sliders.” KPFA with its automatic audience in Berkeley squeaks by as a coaster. But the NY and L.A. stations are actually listed as “super sliders.” How about that? Must be a CIA trick.
Michael Turner, what’s your point? Parenti is a Stalinist hack and apologist, notwithstanding the whole whopping 160 pages of his book. I used the diminutive to refer not to the lack of verbiage, but rather to the anemic intellectual product contained therein. SO what part of Stalinist Apologist do you object to? Parenti cannot be taken seriously except by some geriatrics in East Berlin and dopey freshmen at UW.
June 23rd, 2006 at 11:09 pm
Marc, thank you for calling attention to the degeneration of KPFK with its lunatic conspiracy mongering. So sad, considering the potential. As for Chomsky, no one who’s been paying attention and is not a lefto-religious groupie will be unaware that the guy, though brilliant, is slightly cracked and has done a huge disservice to the cause of the left. Meanwhile, the independent left that we need is overshadowed by self-righteous blowhards who have little connection to the real struggles of human beings. Keep up your truth-telling journalism in the spirit of Orwell; it is like a breath of fresh air.
June 24th, 2006 at 1:22 am
“Michael Turner, what’s your point? Parenti is a Stalinist hack and apologist, notwithstanding the whole whopping 160 pages of his book.”
If it’s a good book, it doesn’t matter if it’s as few as 90 pages.
If Parenti defends socialism over capitalism, that doesn’t automatically make him a Stalinist hack. I don’t happen to be a Communist, so I can’t agree with him ideologically. But ideology isn’t the issue. The truth about the war-time situation in the former Yugoslav republics is. Who’s getting it right?
“I used the diminutive to refer not to the lack of verbiage, but rather to the anemic intellectual product contained therein.”
Not a usage I am familiar with. As an “anemic intellectual product”, it seems to have come in for a few more mainstream accolades than most of his output.
“SO what part of Stalinist Apologist do you object to?”
I wasn’t objecting to “Stalinist Apologist”. Don’t put words in my mouth. (Or in your own, retroactively.)
I was objecting to your linking to an essay of his using the words “explicit defense of Stalinism” when the essay contained no such thing. (Among other objections.) If anything, Parenti was saying in that essay that the fall of the Soviet Union was an opportunity to advance the public debate on socialism, precisely because of the break in political continuity from Stalin’s time. And that the Left hasn’t taken nearly enough advantage of this new breathing room. Especially considering that more breathing room for debate has been opened up on another front: the supposed failure of socialism that the Fall is thought to exemplify has been used to rationalize a retreat from all socialistic policies, and where this retreat has been successful, he argues that it’s been to the detriment of most people. The argument that liberalism benefited by having a competing model is not a bad one, actually. Certainly that model wasn’t economically competitive. But GDP growth isn’t everything, especially when it leaves so many poor and struggling. I somehow think you could grudgingly agree.
I don’t care whether Parenti’s academic career is itinerant. I don’t care that most of his books have been published by City Lights. I don’t care that he’s a socialist who defended socialist dictatorships because they were, at least, “actually existing socialism”.
What I care about is what he might have to say about the issue at hand here, and on what points he might right. Because it’s the truth that really matters. If truth is the first casualty of war, perhaps war can be the first casualty of truth.
In any case, I certainly couldn’t care less that you’ve been insulted by him. Because that doesn’t bear on the issue at hand either. You might want to review the definition of “ad hominem”.
If it makes any difference, I’m perfectly happy to talk about “Srebrenica massacres” (note the plural). There were plenty. That’s established, even if most of them were retail rather than wholesale slaughter. But if “Srebrenica Massacre” translates in your mind as “7 or 8 thousand systematically killed, in a manner centrally organized and conducted with at least the tacit approval of Slobo”, I’m not going to use the term, until somebody proves to me that it applies. So far, I haven’t seen such proof. If the key promoter of that high-range figure says, on his deathbed, that he made the figure up after all, precisely to instigate NATO bombing, then that death toll probably has no basis in reality (especially since one of those he reportedly told, Holbrooke, hasn’t denied the conversation, to my knowledge.) And unless you can bring Slobo back from the dead and make him ‘fess up, we may never know how top-down the killing were. If you want to say there was a Srebrenica Massacre, I’m going to ask, “which one?” And if you say “You know, THE Srebrenica Massacre”, I’m going to ask you for a definition, and for proof. Then, if you want, you can rant on and on about what psychos and Stalinoid scum the “deniers” are. If you like. But it won’t convince me of anything, nor should it convince anybody of anything.
June 24th, 2006 at 6:37 am
“might right” -> “might be right”
“killing were” -> “killings were”
Probably numerous other errors. To think I used to be a proofreader for a living ….
June 24th, 2006 at 7:16 am
Cooper: either I;m a renegade reactionary who has no truck with the left, period. Or I’m an unreliable liberal pretending to be a lefty and jealous of those to my left (because…….?). Can’t have it both ways, comrades.
—
Why not? This is exactly the stock-in-trade of Norm Geras, Harry’s Place, Christopher Hitchens, Paul Berman et al. Mouth leftish rhetoric while supporting US imperialism abroad. It was perfected in the 1950s by Irving Howe, Jay Lovestone and the people involved with Encounter Magazine. You know, the people that Frances Stoner Saunders wrote about in “Who Pays the Piper”.
June 24th, 2006 at 7:17 am
Turner, has Parenti mounted a tacit, as opposed to explicit defense of Stalinism? I confess I don’t see it the link Cooper provides here.
June 24th, 2006 at 7:53 am
The funniest was Marc Cooper providing a link for a classicist book by Parenti and holding that within the book he defends Kim Il Sung. Why not just attack Parenti’s ideas (with which there is plenty to disagree) as opposed to making up stories.
Parenti at least sired the finest reporter that The Nation has right now.
June 24th, 2006 at 7:54 am
Marc is probably closer friends, as he acknowledges, with David Horowitz than Noam is with Ed Herman. Is this why we don’t see much on Marc’s blogs in regards to Horowitz’s patently dangerous ideas in regards to education? Defending one’s friends is only human, right?
June 24th, 2006 at 7:58 am
It’s off Marc’s topic, but I didn’t start it here.
“The prevalence of imprisonment in 2001 was higher for
– black males (16.6%) and Hispanic males (7.7%) than for white males (2.6%)
– black females (1.7%) and Hispanic females (0.7%) than white females (0.3%)
* * * *
“Lifetime chances of a person going to prison are higher for
– men (11.3%) than for women (1.8%)
– blacks (18.6%) and Hispanics (10%) than for whites (3.4%)
“Based on current rates of first incarceration, an estimated 32% of black males will enter State or Federal prison during their lifetime, compared to 17% of Hispanic males and 5.9% of white males.”
Source: Department of Justice statistics
I didn’t make these pretty horrendous facts up. Whatever the explanation (culture, genetics, poverty, child abuse, drugs, selective enforcement, all of the above–take your pick), as a society we ought to think about it. Then we might be able to do something about it.
In the mainstream press, though, it’s largely a taboo subject, while the relatively rarer (and sometimes fabricated) white-on-black incidents get major play.
June 24th, 2006 at 8:40 am
Yeah GOM, there’s something wrong with the minorities, and I read plenty about it in the papers. Who is responsible and why is the question, but I split the blame somewhat away from “it was done to them.” Poor whites are underreported too, yet they outnumber all others. Reality can be a bitch on a narrative depending on the track.
June 24th, 2006 at 8:49 am
Grumpy Old Man Says:
June 24th, 2006 at 7:58 am
It’s off Marc’s topic, but I didn’t start it here.
“The prevalence of imprisonment in 2001 was higher for – black males (16.6%) and Hispanic males (7.7%) than for white males (2.6%)
– black females (1.7%) and Hispanic females (0.7%) than white females (0.3%)
—
Interesting how Cooper’s blog attracts raving, rightwing racists like this.
June 24th, 2006 at 9:05 am
Michael Turner says:
“But if “Srebrenica Massacre†translates in your mind as “7 or 8 thousand systematically killed, in a manner centrally organized and conducted with at least the tacit approval of Sloboâ€, I’m not going to use the term, until somebody proves to me that it applies. So far, I haven’t seen such proof. If the key promoter of that high-range figure says, on his deathbed, that he made the figure up after all, precisely to instigate NATO bombing, then that death toll probably has no basis in reality (especially since one of those he reportedly told, Holbrooke, hasn’t denied the conversation, to my knowledge.)”
The statement that this figure for the number of people killed at Srebrenica is based on the claims of one person, as Michael Turner writes here, is a LIE SO MONSTROUS that it demonstates a complete disregard for the massive evidence that such a massacre did take place. However I am not going to waste my time listing that evidence here, because frankly I don’t give a fuck what assholes like Turner think, but leave it to the bloggers who care about this to do their own research–which will lead them to so many sources on this they can come back with their own rejoinders to Turner and all of the Srebrenica deniars Marc cites in his post.
June 24th, 2006 at 9:10 am
yes, during KPFK fund drives, the powers that be at Pacifica seem to think that 9/11 conspiracy theories are where it’s at…it’s unlistenable and embarrasssing and sucks away so much energy and possibility. people do criticize and complain but it’s all defended on the air with the phrase: listen and make up your own mind. and: KPFK is giving you what other media outlets won’t.
Argh.
It sort of reminds me of another conspiracy theory (on a different scale) that burned bright in the 1980s — and sucked away $$ and energy that could be better spent in other directions - something to do with Central America - began with a “C” and had institute in its name. anyone?
I could be wrong here….
June 24th, 2006 at 9:26 am
Michael Patenti’s book “The Assasination of Juluis Caesar” is, in my opinion, a solid piece of scholarship and social history, a book which was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize after all. Perhaps Marc’s jeolous that his “pamphlet” on Vegas didnt receive similar accolades.
Seriously though, these attacks are pretty sloppy. Noam supported a certain faction during the pacifica squabble therefore he signs endorses all their future programming choices. OMIGOD. I’ve argued that pacifica should move away from movement cheerleading and be a palce for discussion and debate. Advocates for different movements, liberals and socialists, people with different perspectives should be in dialogue and debate with one another. Reproters shoild be at the white house asking critical question of those in power instead of just slamming bushies as “brownshirts”. In short have my diffefences with pacifica but that doesnt mean i supported the lockouts, the firings, the slick power moves all bravely reported by amy goodman and democracy now. ON the issue of Stalin, Parenti argued, in a tedious and tiresome screed, that the numbers killed in the gulags are much lower than whats been put out there. He calls Leon trotsky one of the “most authoritarian Bolsheviks”. IMHO its fair to say that his utterings on Stalin have quite an apologetic and dare i say icky feel to them. But, then agian so do Marc’s attacks
June 24th, 2006 at 10:04 am
Thank you Ahmed. Do you think there is any truth or for that matter relevence, to Parenti’s account of the gulag numbers? I’ve heard Marxist’s claim the same thing, I have no idea if they have any basis for saying so.
Balter seems right, when you google “Serbian Massacres Milosevic” the frist thing that comes up is Parenti’s “The Demonization of Milosevic”, which I think is fair to say is a apology, A quick stroll down the page shows that the Coulter/Parenti camp is up against Human Rights watch and many others.
Roger Lippman at Z net says Herman is right when blaming the U.S. for murder in Afganistan, but makes a mess of Bosnia. United Human Rights Council gives us the standard account I had no idea anyone much questioned until this thred.
June 24th, 2006 at 10:32 am
Whatever the explanation (culture, genetics, poverty, child abuse, drugs, selective enforcement, all of the above–take your pick), as a society we ought to think about it. Then we might be able to do something about it.
You’re backpedaling here, but you’re still a racist ass. The example you used was irrelevant and your implication is that blacks are more likely to commit violent crimes than whites.
I find it amazing that an attorney no less would be using the rates of incarceration for this argument instead of rates of conviction, guilty pleas, etc.
One need only look at the different penalties for crack cocaine possession and dealing versus cocaine possession to get one clue and to conisder the mandatory sentencing guidelines which removed discretion from judges to get another clue.
I have a BA from a state school and you have a PhD in anthropology from Columbia amd JD from UCLA Law School and you couldn’t consider anything other than race until you got called on your reactionary nonsense.
Pathetic - in a word.
June 24th, 2006 at 11:17 am
“Who is responsible and why is the question, but I split the blame somewhat away from “it was done to them.†Poor whites are underreported too, yet they outnumber all others. Reality can be a bitch on a narrative depending on the track”
Is this is suppossed to be some Mark York beat poetry?
June 24th, 2006 at 11:51 am
Take a minute away for this…a face of the left that doesn’t obsess in obscure corners but appeals broadly to common sense and embodies our better nature with good humor and grace.
http://tinyurl.com/oj3t6
June 24th, 2006 at 12:01 pm
Ahmed, both you and Parenti are full of it. Soviet history is something I know about and let me tell you out that Parenti is not considered an authoritative source by anyone working in the field. Instead he is an ideological hack and I repeat again and will do so again if necessary, a shameless courtesan to Stalin.
So Trotsky was one of the most authoritarian Bolsheviks? Compared to who? Stalin!
It’s an argument that merits no further extension. The whole Parent riff on Stalin reeks of dank cells and mass graves — aboslutely disgusting. And shame on you Ahmed for buying into any of it. Parenti is a fraud and a hustler.
June 24th, 2006 at 12:17 pm
Last word (from me) on this subject: I will let Parenti speaks for himself. http://www.politicalaffairs.net/article/view/387/1/38
In the above interview with a Marxist journal, Parenti exposes reveals his compassion for Slobo as well as his own obsessions with defending Soviet Communism. He raps liberals for what he claims is their anti-Stalin obsession. But of course his reponse raises the similar question of why, at this point in history, does Parenti feel compelled to defend the Soviet model? Answer: he likes it. Here’s what he says about lefties who supported the war in Kosovo:
“But they supported the war in Yugoslavia against Slobodan Milosevic because he had “Stalinist” credentials – namely he was from a Communist background.
Here was a guy who was democratically elected president three times. He ran a four-party coalition within the parliament. I was in Yugoslavia and there was an open opposition to him, posters put up, demonstrations against him. He was trying to keep together a country that had a decent social democracy, where 80 percent of the economy was publicly owned, where people had decent housing, education, health care. People on the left – I’m talking about many liberals, feminists, anarcho-leftists like Cohen Bendit and Susan Sontag – supported that war. They stood shoulder to shoulder with NATO, the White House and the Pentagon – 78 days of bombing. Even some of the ones who opposed the bombing shared the NATO brief about Yugoslavia. They shared the brief of the White House aggressors right up to the point of the bombing. So they actually gave support. Then when they say, “Oh no, not the bombing. We don’t want that.” They don’t see how they cleared the way for the acts they say they didn’t want. So this is what you’ve got on the left.
When the Soviet Union was overthrown, I said, “Well, I guess that’s going to stop all this propaganda we get all the time.” It hasn’t. It’s gone down a bit, but the references, the documentary films, the books that come out, it still goes on. If you read their literature they’re still talking about the hordes of Stalinists lurking here and there. That’s where their passion really is. It’s really not in fighting imperialism, building coalitions, or anything of that sort. They are more anti-Communist than the people on the right. The people on the right take it so utterly for granted that they don’t have to be fulminating every minute. But many of the “anti-Communist left” are still fighting Kronstadt or Barcelona or the ghost of Stalin.
A whole group of progressive intellectuals signed a statement condemning Cuba for cracking down on people who were openly collaborating with the US Interest Section in Havana for regime change, who were paid agents of the United States. That’s called subversion. If you had the Cuban Interest Section in Washington holding meetings with people, giving them money and telling them to go out and try to destabilize the US government, those people would be arrested and charged with treason and sedition. People who have done a lot less than that have been jailed. Eminent progressive writers and thinkers, economists, historians, linguists signed on to condemn Cuba. The US supported policies of total destabilization, of hijacking planes and not returning the planes, not returning the passengers, and not punishing the hijackers, and then expecting Cuba not to act against them. It’s the same thing they did with Allende in Chile. One side had to scrupulously abide by every single democratic procedural nicety and not in any way fight back, while the other side was free to use every kind of violent and subversive measure available. That’s the way the US media wants it, but you would expect people with a class perspective to have a different judgment. I think, those are the kind of problems you get into when you think without Marx and Lenin.”
Ahh yes. I get up every morning and first thing I do is check to see if Marx and Lenin are awake as well. I’d hate to face the day without ‘em.
What senseless blather.
June 24th, 2006 at 12:31 pm
“I get up every morning and first thing I do is check to see if Marx and Lenin are awake as well. I’d hate to face the day without ‘em.”
They sure beat Irving Howe and Paul Berman.
June 24th, 2006 at 12:55 pm
Since Parenti mentions Kronstadt in this interview with some brain-dead hack from the mercifully moribund “Communist Party”, I’ll suggest to Marc that event is evidence that, prior to his being driven into intra-Bolshevik opposition and ultimately exile by Stalin, Trotsky was easily among the most ruthless and authoritarian of the Bolsheviks, at least in dealing with grass-roots dissidents. While there’s obviously no quantitative comparison to the full-blown erection of Stalin’s Gulag regime, the seeds were sown when, among other things like the Red Terror, Lenin and Trotsky decided the way to deal with the disaffection of hungry sailors, who had been among the most fervent revolutionaries and who took the idea of democratic “soviets” as the basis of the new revolutionary government seriously, was to shoot the rebels down - an operation directly supervised by Comrade Trotsky. Kind of makes you wonder how different things would have been had Trotsky outmaneuvered Stalin after Lenin died.
June 24th, 2006 at 1:01 pm
Actually, Rudy, while not a fan of Berman’s, I make a point of reading a little something from Irving Howe each and every morning between coffee and brushing my teeth, and I find it empowering. He’s my Oprah.
June 24th, 2006 at 1:36 pm
I’m not arguing one way or the other about Parenti. Suffice to say, I disagree with much of what he has to say -though his excellent book on Caesar, contrary to what Marc still hasn’t taken back - has no mention, let alone support of Kim Il Sung or other 20th century politicians. As I said, there is plenty with which to disagree - see above - without fabricating things.
Incidently, the modern CPUSA, of which Marc quotes from, is very centrist, openly giving up an goal of a classless society and being solidy pro-Democratic party.
June 24th, 2006 at 1:47 pm
Cooper’s rightwing rant here is amusing and quite disturbing.
He is of the same spirit of those that he claims to hate and foment about the most, Stalin in particular.
Cooper is a commissar, a lackie for the status quo.
REally, Mark, you are obviously jealous because Chomsky, Herman, and Parenti have far more crediblity–in their academic scholarship and the respect they garner from sane people of the world–than you and your sell-out intellectual poseur freinds do.
The shrill tone of your attack on Chomsky and Amy Goodman/Pacifica signals an inferiority complex.
Allende would turn to you today and say ‘You too Cooper’–and you would bow your head and slither away into the arms of the nearest CIA asset in the vicinity. LOL
Yes, you should shut down the comments section because you, a Stalinist-egoist at heart, can’t stand to be called on your stinking brain farts.
‘nough said. You are living in the times of slave revolt, Cooper. Flee to the master’s big house, where you belong.
June 24th, 2006 at 2:35 pm
“Actually, Rudy, while not a fan of Berman’s, I make a point of reading a little something from Irving Howe each and every morning between coffee and brushing my teeth, and I find it empowering. He’s my Oprah.”
What’s disturbing is that in all likelihood the ubiquitous “reg” is not joking.
June 24th, 2006 at 3:30 pm
“the modern CPUSA, of which Marc quotes from, is very centrist”
Jesus Christ…I’m starting think Woody’s peculiar form of insanity - lumping me together with Stalin and Castro - might actually provide some perverse “balance” to this fun-house mirror in which fervent supporters of Castro and shrill revilers of Mikhail Gorbachev, who’s sole basis for continuing as a remnant of a faction appears to be nostalgia for the likes of Leonid Brezhnev and Erich Honecker, could be considered “centrist”.
Marc - how’s the pay at the CIA? I think I’m about ready to join up. I might as well make my immersion in Irving Howe Thought pay off with something more than my decidedly robust glow, deep inner peace and silly grin. (Actually, I’m surprised you can handle being part of an operation that appears to be so riddled with Democrats.)
June 24th, 2006 at 3:32 pm
Marc writes:
“HOWEVER, Chomsky was a vocal supporter of the crew that took power in Pacifica five years ago and who is responsible for the current programming. He sure as hell had no problem back then putting up his name as an endorsement on their efforts to “take back Pacifica.”
At last a get it. For Marc, this whole thing is personal. Apparently, he lost some sort of sinecure he thought he had at Pacifica.
June 24th, 2006 at 3:46 pm
Don’t leave home without it…
http://tinyurl.com/qa5fp
June 24th, 2006 at 4:01 pm
Well, Reg, the pay over at the CIA ain’t bad. In fact, it’s a whole lot better than the meager sum I got when I has my “sinecure” over at Pacifica! LOL!
Man, call the exterminator!
June 24th, 2006 at 4:13 pm
But surely you were getting something under the table from the agency to support your efforts to destroy Pacifica.
(I’m beginning to get the hang of this.)
June 24th, 2006 at 4:33 pm
Of course, the problem with the CIA is that they’ve become so damned left-wing.
“The CIA’s left-wing bent was confirmed by Bill Gertz of the Washington Times…”
More here:
http://www.aim.org/media_monitor/A2039_0_2_0_C/\
With the CIA on the left and the CPUSA in the center, I’m having real trouble keeping score in Ideological Lalaland.
June 24th, 2006 at 5:32 pm
Parenti’s book really “nominated for Pulitzer”?. As Wikipedia discussion of Parenti makes clear, ‘nominee’ (technically “entrant”) doesn’t really mean anything since anybody can nominate any book. It’s very different from ‘Nominated Finalist’.
Funnily enough, when Parenti is interviewed in Democracy Now! (Feb 23, 2004), Amy Goodman tells that his latest book has been “nominated for a Pulitzer Prize”. They should check out this stuff themselves.
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/02/23/1528222
June 24th, 2006 at 7:03 pm
Michael Balter writes:
“The statement that this figure for the number of people killed at Srebrenica is based on the claims of one person, as Michael Turner writes here, is a LIE SO MONSTROUS ….”
I didn’t say it was based on the claims of one person. I said it was a number was favored by a “key promoter”. Don’t put words in my mouth.
Reading the Wikipedia entry for “Srebrenica Massacre” is chilling. If even only 10% of what witnesses reported was true ….
However, there’s also a disturbing pattern in this article: mass burial sites that supposedly contained hundreds, or over a thousand victims, yielded only dozens or less than 200 bodies, respectively. The explanation is, Bosnian Serbs engaged in massive reburials to hide the evidence as the murders came under increasing international scrutiny.
But let me ask you this: let’s say you killed a family of seven. Would you then hide five or six of the bodies, so that you could plea-bargain down to first-degree murder of fewer people? Why would you do that when you could hide ALL of them? Why did the Serbs who supposdely killed, say, 1000 men at a given site, leave any mass burial site evidence at all, if they had the means to relocate 70-80% of the bodies?
The Wikipedia article says “a Serb commission” arrived at a figure around the typically-quoted 8,000. It doesn’t mention whether it was a particular Bosnian Serb commission that started with what is admittedly a ridiculously low figure (the low hundreds), but was increasingly pressured until it hiked the figure back up to the typical figure, despite a lack of compelling forensic evidence.
About 5,000 human remains have been exhumed. About 2,000 have been “identified” — by DNA analysis. What percentage were the victims of Serb massacres? What percentage were victims of *systematic* Serb massacres? What percentage were victims of other massacres? What percentage were conventional military casualties? What percentage were “collateral damage” of conventional military engagements?
It’s known that marchers in the Tuzla column fell to fighting among themselves at times. How do you distinguish a cluster of smaller mass graves along the Tuzla column route as the hasty burials of victims of internal conflict, as opposed to the burials (or reburials) of victims killed by Serb forces?
I’d like clear answers to these kinds of questions. If you don’t, I suspect it’s because your mind is made up, and you don’t want to be confused by any more facts. I’m also (unhappily) willing to see the issue as being fraught with complexities and ambiguities forever. Some people prefer a simplistic story to an ambiguous and complex story, they’d like to see “End of Story” and close the book with a firm opinion. For them, such stories have that nice “ring of truth”. But real life isn’t like that. Especially real life during civil war.
June 24th, 2006 at 7:07 pm
Really, Parenti did a great job raising Christian, a kick ass political analyst and writer.
No, Michael Parenti was never as much an enthusiast for Soviet-style communism as he was/is a critic of US captitalsim.
Lest anyone forget, the fact that the Soviet Union existed as ‘competition’ force the US oligarchy, business, and political classes to act in more egalitarian fashion.
Of late, we can see how the elites in the US behave when they have the likes of Cooper’s tepid, liiberal reformism to contend with.
And Comsky and Goodman’s existence keeps Cooper and the Nationites a tad bit honest.
But what amazes me about Cooper’s screen against Chomsky et al is that there is ‘no there there” ( as Anna Nichole Smith quipped famously on her wedding night). Cooper̵