CDR: Re: Niiice kitty....

[James A.. Donald]

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At 08:10 PM 01/10/00 -0700, James A.. Donald wrote:

 >Chomsky is hardly a reliable source.  He routinely fabricates or falsifies
 >quotes.  I suggest you check his alleged sources.
 >
 >Chances are you will be unable to find his alleged source.  In the unlikely
 >event that you are able to find it, it will not say quite what Chomsky
 >claims it said.



At 03:49 PM 10/2/2000 -1000, Reese wrote:
Are there any examples of this documented anywhere, preferably on the web?


No one has been able to disprove any quotes or citations by Chomsky, (at 
least none that cannot be explained away as Chomsky giving improbable 
paraphrases or interpretations of other peoples words)  but his works are 
tightly packed with remarkable and improbable vaguely sourced quotes and 
citations that somehow no one has ever been able to actually verify:  For 
example:

: : 	To continue, high US officials cited by the
: : 	highly-respected Asia correspondent of the (eminently
: : 	respectable) Far Eastern Economic Review predicted that 1
: : 	million would die as a consequence of the US bombings. US
: : 	aid officials leaving Phnom Penh when the KR took over
: : 	predicted that two years of "slave labor" would be
: : 	necessary to overcome the effects of the bombing.


: :	provided analyses by highly qualified specialists who have
: :	studied the full range of evidence available, and who
: :	concluded that executions have numbered at most in the
: :	thousands; that these were localized in areas of limited
: :	Khmer Rouge influence and unusual peasant discontent, where
: :	brutal revenge killings were aggravated by the threat of
: :	starvation resulting from the American destruction and
: :	killing. These reports also emphasize both the
: :	extraordinary brutality on both sides during the civil war
: :	(provoked by the American attack) and repeated discoveries
: :	that massacre reports were false

Presumably the "at most in the thousands" is a highly imaginative 
interpretation of Nayan Chanda, who said nothing of the kind.  As to where 
"repeated discoveries that the massacre reports were false" comes from, no 
one has ever been able to suggest a source, although Chomsky clearly leads 
the reader to believe that the source is the Far Eastern Economic 
Review.  Obviously however it is not the Far Eastern Economic Review, which 
failed to report any such discoveries, so presumably it is Chomsky's 
fertile imagination.

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          James A. Donald
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