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Would this be the same Chomsky who refused to accept the scale of the Khmer Rouge atrocities, blaming it on media bias? A linguist may have some use in examining the way the media works, but I wouldn’t buy a screwdriver from a greengrocer and I wouldn’t get my political analysis from a linguist.
This is an enjoyable thread but like a debate between Fidel Castro and Sarah Palin one that will go round and round in ever-decreasing circles with neither of the ideologically polar-opposed sides giving an inch, and inevitably ending up in a slanging match
…heard great argument
About it and about: but evermore
Came out by the same door where in I went.What do any of you think of Distributism? One of the many ‘third way’ economic models designed to fill the large void between the extremes of Command or Capitalist models that the world has been dogged with
Long appealed to me, apart from the link to Catholicism
Would this be the same Chomsky who refused to accept the scale of the Khmer Rouge atrocities, blaming it on media bias?
Same with Serbia too ..if i recall rightly.
http://carolynbaker.net/site/content/view/851/1/
"He that hath ears to hear, let him hear."
The first page of this article is interesting:
Grimes, firstly, let me make this clear, I am not an admirer of Hilter. I mearly came on here to make the point that he was not a half wit. Meglomaniac yes. deranged yes. half wit no.
Finally, there has been no word on ‘scortched earth’ because it the Russians that used the tactic, not the Germans.Clive, a treaty is a treaty. The British promised that if Germany invaded Czechoslovakia, we would declare war in Germany. We didn’t keep our promise for some reason
This is actually incorrect Max.
Germany supported a Slovakian indipendant state. They declared to the Slovakians that if they did not delcare independance immediately, they could no longer gurantee to hold Hungarian claims to their land. Therefore they declared independance, and telegramed to Berlin, requesting that Berlin guarantees Slovakinan independnce. Hilter responded that he would be glad to “take over the protection of the Slovak state”.The treaty which the English and French had previously signed guaranteed Chekoslovakian borders. Seen as this country had since ceased to exist, and one of the states had asked for German protection, technically there was no treaty to honour.
This gave the British and French thei out card, which they duly took.Hope this helps.
Indeed, from reading some of his work, it seems that Chomsky’s job involves assembling conspiracy theories from newspaper cuttings. As I remember, he objected to the Balkan interventions primarily because it was America doing the intervening whilst at the same time they were not intervening in East Timor. On the subject of Milosevic’s government or indeed, Balkan politics as a whole, he appeared to have no opinion.
On the Khmer Rouge, between April 1975 and January 1979, they killed 1.67 million people, approximately 20% of their own population. Yet as late as 1980 in his book, ‘After the Cataclysm: Postwar Indochina and the Reconstruction of Imperial Ideology’ the great sage wrote the following:
The positive side of the Khmer Rouge picture has been virtually edited out
The positive side? What, you mean that Pol Pot may have been a brutal dictator, but at least he made the trains run on time?
If any academic historian or politician had made such a monumental miscalculation, it would have been the end of their careers. But not Chomsky, because he’s a linguist. As Francis Wheen puts it:
If they (Chomsky and his army of disciples) weren’t in such a hurry, they might sometimes have to pursue the logic of their own argument – which isn’t really an argument at all, merely an unending buffet of savoury propagandist canapes with no main course to follow’.
Clive, I used the unnamed soldier quote because it’s a relatively famous and oft used quote, largely indicative of American military views toward smaller nations.
I could have quoted other soldiers who, for example, took part in the My Lai massacre. I didn’t do so because, as Drone says, it’s quite a pleasant thread. You really wouldn’t want to read those quotes.
As anyone who has ever been to a football match will tell you, it’s one thing giving it the big one (as the Hamas leader in your quote appears to be doing), and another doing the business as the Americans have been doing nice and quietly at home since the Presidency of the psychopathic Andrew Jackson, and abroad since 1950 and the CIA-led protection of the United Fruit Company in Guatemala.
With British support, by and large.
Incidences of actual genocide against a people are relatively rare in Muslim culture. Sadly, there are too many to mention in Western European history – as Stalin memorably opined “A single death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic”. We’re a bloody lot.
Andrew, I’m going to have to check your claim out. I’m using Shirer “The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich” – a reasonable reference as Shirer was in Berlin at the time. I’ll be back shortly. Oh and Chomsky – even the left are a bit Marmite about him. You’re cherry picking with this one – his work in Guatemala changed people’s perceptions forever.
Andrew, I’m going to have to check your claim out. I’m using Shirer "The Fall and Rise of the Third Reich" – a reasonable reference as he was in Berlin at the time. I’ll be back shortly
My claim?
You said that my assertion was wrong. It was actually correct but appallingly light on detail as I was at work.
Essentially, the events leading up the start of WWII can be summarised thus.
The safety of the Czechoslovakian state against aggression was guaranteed by Great Britain, France, Germany, Belgium and Italy at Locarno in 1925, Andrew.
This is known as the Pact of Locarno or the Locarno Treaties. It’s sometimes known as the Rhineland Pact (Shirer refers to it as such on several occasions).
Originally designed to prevent the restoration of the Hapsburgs, the treaty essentially split Europe into two spheres of influence, east and west and guaranteed Czechoslovakian borders (as a relatively young state).
Fatally for that state, the state included three million ethnic germans called the Sudetens. After Hitler invaded Austria in 1938, he turned his voracious sights toward the Czechs on the pretext of uniting all Germans under the banner of the Reich, (“Anschluss”).
He supported the assimilation of Sudetens into Germany, not a Sudeten free state – naturally, the fledgling Czechoslovakian government opposed this position vehemently.
The Czech Sudetens supported him wildly, eventually occupying two western Czech cities.
Rather than confronting the enlivened beast of German militarism, as the Czechs had every right to expect according to the 1925 treaty, the British – specifically the Tory Neville Chamberlain – did everything they could to appease the Germans to ensure Peace In Our Time, (the infamous and shameful Munich Accord in September 1939). The French, with their emphasis on defensive warfare, offered no resistance either when Hitler’s Werhrmacht poured over the Czech border. A shameful part of our history.
The details were a little sketchy earlier. Apologies.
Clive, I used the unnamed soldier quote because it’s a relatively famous and oft used quote, largely indicative of American military views toward smaller nations.
What absolute sht
one soldier compared with a leader and then the hand wrining rubbish that because they havent actually been able to, the islamists wouldnt. Pathetic frankly
Max, guess that the responce was to me, rather than Andrew??
The point of my post was to get across that technically the British and French were not obliged to protect Checoslovakian borders, when the Slovakains declared indepence. This ultimately rendered previous agreements technically void. Shirer does himself cover this in more detail in The rise and Fall of the Third Reich. The sudetenland issue is covered by a, previous, separte set of circumastances to which you refer.
Whether morally it is so easily justified is a completely different matter…….
Shirer covers this episode in the chapter "Czechoslovakia Ceases To Exist", and more specifically on the indepandance of slovakia page 440-445.
Without reading it again, I guess that he covers the Sudetenland succession in the ‘Road to Munich’ Chapter.Clive, are you telling me you have NEVER heard that quote? You surprise me. Let me repeat it so I can roll it over my tongue.
"In order to save the village, we had to destroy it". A beautiful, unhinged, almost surreal quote which seems to sum up the American military to a tee. I can almost picture Custer reciting it in the afterglow of the slaughter of the Black Kettle tribe just before Little Big Horn.Does it matter that the quote is anonymous? It’s authentic and very well known.
Anyway, you wanted some quotes from leaders about genocide. (In my experience the right always love a big, muscular, powerful, strong leader, don’t they. Murderers go down well and psychopaths, but I digress).
Here’s some genocidist quotes from the three American Founding Fathers. They all concern the Native American who – one hundred years after these quotes – were virtually extinct in the United States due to the afore-mentioned manifest destiny culture.
Benjamin Franklin (he of the kite and key). "If it be the design of Providence to extirpate these savages, then so be it…" (Franklin was known to be a supporter of the old Spanish practice of setting starving dogs on native Americans too).
George Washington (he of the wig and great victory against the British): "(the treaties) are the cheapest and least distressing ways of eliminating the Indians."
Thomas Jefferson: "In war, they shall kill some of us, but we shall destroy them" and " There are two choices regarding the Indian – extermination or driving them beyond our reach"
There are loads more from prominent American figures on the Only Good Indian is a Dead Indian roll call throughout the nineteenth century including Martin Van Buren and Andrew Jackson (the architects of the Indian Removal Acts of 1830 and the Trail of Tears in 1836).
Did you know that these big, powerful, muscular leaders you respect so much negotiated around 370 treaties with the native American tribes – and kept none of them!?
What did I say about never trusting Tories…well, you know what I mean. It’s all the same authoritarian big muscular fascist groove thang isn’t it.
Getting a bit American I know. Ask me about Colonel Aversham and the smallpox blankets, Clive. Or the brave military victories of Captain Underhill against sleeping Indian women and children of the Pequot tribe. Or the 1788 British colonisation of Tasmania. What about the dismemberment of Bengali weavers (some of the most skilled in the world), to prevent competition with British textile barons. The list of British Christian achievements just go on and on, don’t they.
Point I’m making is – I can’t find anything remotely similar in the literature about Muslim genocide. Slavery, yes (horrible slavery). Caste systems, of course. Racism, yes. Intolerance, sadly. Suppression of women? yes.
But the active removal of another race to further nationalistic aims? Genocide? Not really. The Hamas quote is just the rhetoric of the dispossessed.
Alchemist/Andrew apologies for the confusion. It’s been a long day.
But the active removal of another race to further nationalistic aims? Genocide? Not really. The Hamas quote is just the rhetoric of the dispossessed.
Beyond belief
I suppose if the BNP came out and siad that it wanted to exterminate blacks (which is doesnt…Hamas is way to the right of the BNP of course) that could be excused as the "rhetoric of the dispossesed"?
I suppose Hitler’s "rhetoric" in the 30’s could be labeled the same. Of course that came to nothing as well
The pathetic lefts constant defence of the extreme rigtht islamists is just about the weirdest and most lauighable political development (if you could call it that) in recent times. If ever there was evidence that the far left is completely morally bankrupt and so astonishingly out of touch it is the above
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