CDR: Re: Niiice kitty....

[James A.. Donald]

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At 03:39 PM 06/10/00 -1000, Reese wrote:
James A.. Donald wrote:
 > > Distortions at Fourth Hand
 > > Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman
 > >The Nation, June 25, 1977
 > >
 > >: : 	such journals as the Far Eastern Economic Review , the
 > >: : 	London Economist , the Melbourne Journal of Politics , and
 > >: : 	others elsewhere, have 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

At 07:56 PM 10/6/2000 -1000, Reese wrote:
 >   http://abbc.com/aaargh/fran/chomsky/cassandra.html
 >   --a 1985 essay by Christopher Hitchens defending
 >   Chomsky against such charges.


Merely a denial, not a rebuttal:

This essay does not actually claim that the people cited by Chomsky said 
the things that Chomsky attributes to them.  In particular it presents no 
actual examples of massacre reports that were discovered to be false.

It answers none of the criticisms that I or other people have made of 
Chomsky.  Instead it takes fragments of those criticisms out of context, 
without the specifics of that criticism, and simply denies the charges, 
without acknowledging or rebutting any of the evidence that Chomsky's 
accusers present.  It does not rebut a single charge, or address a single 
piece of evidence.

It does not rebut, or even address, the charges I made, or indeed any of 
the charges that any critic made.

Most flagrantly, it ignores the fact that Chomsky's position, and the 
radical left position, on Cambodia changed abruptly and radically when 
Soviet foriegn policy changed in January 1979, quoting statements that 
Chomsky made after 1979 as evidence that he did not mean the things he said 
before 1979.

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          James A. Donald
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