CDR: Re: Niiice kitty....

[James A.. Donald]

     --
At 02:23 AM 10/3/2000 -0400, Steven Furlong wrote:
 > But if Chomsky were in the habit of making up or "massaging" quotes,
 > perhaps he wouldn't give full reference information even for real
 > quotes. That way, when he did make up a quote, the lack of full cite
 > wouldn't count as a datum supporting the "made up" hypothesis.

Chomsky gives what sounds like full reference information for citations, 
but often these citations turn out to be unverifiable or highly misleading.

My favorite example is of course "repeated discoveries that the massacre 
reports were false".  (No one has been able to find these discoveries)

Charles Kalina's favorite example is Chomsky's fabricated quotes supposedly 
from Shawcross attributing ridiculous views to Shawcross.

However I am not much interested in those.  Charles Kalina seeks to argue 
that Chomsky is a cult leader, not a legitimate scientist, so the example 
of a lie that has the effect of libelling those of Chomsky's fellow 
leftists who failed to follow Chomsky's leadership serves Kalina's purpose 
well.

My purpose is different from Kalina's.  I seek to show that "anarcho 
socialists" are for the most part merely Marxists who have escalated the 
rhetoric about the state withering away, so the example of a lie that has 
the effect of serving the then Moscow line serves my purpose 
well.   Chomsky's pre1979 lies on Cambodia serve my purpose particularly 
well because the Moscow line on the Khmer Rouge changed abruptly in January 
1979.

Since nearly all today's anarcho socialists are incapable of issuing a 
statement that differs from the Moscow line as it was in 1987, they are 
severely handicapped in defending Chomsky.  They cannot say that what he 
said then about the Khmer Rouge was true, since after 1979 it became 
officially untrue.

     --digsig
          James A. Donald
      6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG
      z53ZKZUN3B2Ev4r0h6bnHrb16EHfH+WcY8O6DvZC
      4/CssZ9J/joHF24TL2z55D2+xp6uWfYgChGl4yeyb