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On 10 Dec 2001, at 0:00, Jim Choate wrote:
> This is laughable, and a tad repetitive...
>
> You say you've checked [Chomsky's] sources and found them
> lacking.And I have given numerous examples, to which no one has replied, except as mattd has recently done -- by citing Chomsky as evidence for the truthfulness of Chomsky, much after the fashion of a Christian who cites the bible as proof of the divinity of Jesus, and Jesus as proof of the infallibility of the bible. > As I've requested before, list the book and the cite. And as I have answered before, my favorite examples, not because they are the most glaringly fabricated, but because they are the most cynically evil, are those I gave in http://www.jim.com/chomsdis.htm Chomsky's lies on Cambodia are no more flagrant than his lies on any other subject, but they are more entertaining and obvious because the Soviet line, and thus the Chomsky line, changed at the start of 1979, with the result that Pol Pot was abruptly rewritten from being a heroic defender of the oppressed masses against US imperialism, to being a tool of the CIA. That web page gives my favorite example, among many examples, of Chomsky giving a fabricated citation: "These reports also emphasize [....] repeated discoveries that massacre reports were false." We have repeatedly had long threads about that alleged discovery that massacres reports in Cambodia were false. The materials he cites fail to produce the discovery he claims. I have been throwing that one in you guys faces for many years, over and over again. No one has come back with a quote from those sources that would make Chomsky's account of what is to be found in them true. More recently, there was a sequel to Chomsky's lies on Cambodia, which probably has not yet been discussed on this list, in the usual exhausting detail. In the New York Times, June 23, 1997, Anthony Lewis briefly and in passing mentioned Chomsky's pre 1979 position on Cambodia. In response, Chomsky wrote a letter to the editor denying that he had ever held that position. Thus in this letter, Chomsky falsely cites Chomsky. This letter was not published in the New York Times, perhaps because it was largely irrelevant to the major points of Anthony Lewis's article, but was published on a web site controlled by Chomsky at the URL http://www.mediawatch.org/chicago/chomsky.html. After I repeatedly assailed him on this new lie, he pulled it off his web site, but it can still be accessed by the wayback machine: http://web.archive.org/web/19981202225344/http://www.mediawatch.org/chicago/chomsky.html Anthony Lewis in the New York times, June 23 1997, very briefly in passing excused Chomsky as follows: : : A few Western intellectuals, notably Prof. Noam : : Chomsky, refused to believe what was going on in : : Cambodia. At first, at least, they put the : : reports of killing down to a conspiratorial : : effort by American politicians and press to : : destroy the Cambodian revolution. : : : : That phenomenon or something like it -- : : explaining away reports of human rights : : violations as a Western way of interfering in : : other societies -- has recurred. When Idi Amin : : seized power in Uganda and began his massacres, I : : heard an American specialist on Africa dismiss : : the accounts. implying that Chomsky was merely mistaken, rather than untruthful or deluded, and failing to mention that Chomsky was one of those western experts that dismissed the crimes of Idi Amin. In response to this brief, gentle and euphemistic admonition Chomsky wrote an outraged letter to the editor as follows: : : Dear Editor: : : : : Anthony Lewis writes (June 23) that I "refused to : : believe what was going on in Cambodia," and "put : : the reports of killing down to a conspiratorial : : effort by American politicians and press to : : destroy the Cambodian revolution." The second : : charge is an invention. The first is his : : rendition of my suggestion that in dealing with : : horrendous crimes, one should try to keep to the : : truth, whoever the agent: for Cambodia, that : : means during both halves of the "decade of : : genocide," as the years 1969-79 are described in : : the one governmental inquiry (Finland). At the : : time I reviewed these and many other cases, : : including the "grisly" record of Khmer Rouge : : "barbarity." : : : : More interesting than the invented charges is : : what Lewis omits: my comparison of two huge : : crimes of 1975-1978, Cambodia and East Timor. The : : cases are not identical. There was no : : constructive proposal as to how to end or even : : mitigate Pol Pot's crimes (as a check of Lewis�s : : columns will illustrate). In contrast, there were : : easy ways to respond to the crimes in Timor, : : apparently the worst slaughter relative to : : population since the Holocaust: by withdrawing : : the decisive US military and diplomatic support : : for them. The reaction to the two cases is : : instructive, as is Lewis's conclusion that by : : describing Khmer Rouge crimes as comparable to : : those in Timor I was denying these crimes. : : : : Noam Chomsky In fact of course, he did not at first describe the Khmer Rouge crimes as comparable to those in Timor. In his 1977 article he compared them to the french resistance against the Nazis and never mentioned Timor. in his 1979 book he compared them to the US occupation of Japan, and ridiculed the suggestion that they were comparable to the Indonesian occupation of East Timor. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG B3hmUZOL5NShj3Q7ZDbHtqBVLVu76hseMyX087dN 4MRKcuxeFGWigtWCe0smeUKb2x9aE7BUu+fhO08k8
