Guest essay by Eric Worrall
From the “if you are upsetting Noam Chomsky you must be doing something right” department;
…
Why did you recently call the Republican Party “the most dangerous organization in world history”?
Take its leader, who recently applied to the government of Ireland for a permit to build a huge wall to protect his golf course, appealing to the threat of global warming, while at the same time he withdrew from international efforts to address the grim threat and is using every means at his disposal to accelerate it. Or take his colleagues, the participants in the 2016 Republican primaries. Without exception, they either denied that what is happening is happening – though any ignorance is self-induced – or said maybe it is but we shouldn’t do anything about it. The moral depths were reached by the respected “adult in the room,” Ohio governor John Kasich, who agreed that it is happening but added that “we are going to burn [coal] in Ohio and we are not going to apologize for it.” Or take a recent publication of Trump’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, a detailed study recommending an end to regulations on emissions. It presented a rational argument: extrapolating current trends, by the end of the century we’ll be over the cliff and automotive emissions don’t contribute very much to the catastrophe – the assumption being that everyone is as criminally insane as we are and won’t try to avoid the crisis. In brief, let’s rob while the planet burns, putting poor Nero in the shadows.
This surely qualifies as a contender for the most evil document in history.
There have been many monsters in the past, but it would be hard to find one who was dedicated to undermining the prospects for organized human society, not in the distant future — in order to put a few more dollars in overstuffed pockets.
And it doesn’t end there. The same can be said about the major banks that are increasing investments in fossil fuels, knowing very well what they are doing. Or, for that matter, the regular articles in the major media and business press reporting US success in rapidly increasing oil and gas production, with commentary on energy independence, sometimes local environmental effects, but regularly without a phrase on the impact on global warming – a truly existential threat. Same in the election campaign. Not a word about the issue that is merely the most crucial one in human history.
Hardly a day passes without new information about the severity of the threat. As I’m writing, a new study appeared in Nature showing that retention of heat in the oceans has been greatly underestimated, meaning that the total carbon budget is much less than had been assumed in the recent, and sufficiently ominous, IPCC report. The study calculates that maximum emissions would have to be reduced by 25% to avoid warming of 2 degrees (C), well above the danger point. At the same time polls show that — doubtless influenced by their leaders who they trust more than the evil media — half of Republicans deny that global warming is even taking place, and of the rest, almost half reject any human responsibility. Words fail.
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In my opinion Noam Chomsky has a track record of noisily criticising the alleged “crimes” of the USA and right wing leaders, while glossing over serious failings of the left.
In 1980 Chomsky was accused by fellow left wing academic Steven Lukes of providing cover for Pol Pot’s genocidal Cambodian Communist Khmer Rouge regime, a charge Chomsky denies.
Because you should always get your science from has-been linguists.
What sort of linguist concludes with: ” Words fail”?
A cunning one?
^^^ thread winner
Rather, one who can’t hear!
Or one who can’t form a coherent sentence because he has no comprehension of the subject.
A linguist with the ability to build the phrase ‘words fail’ from his vocabulary.
Especially not cunning linguists.
Chomsky has been on the wrong side of most major issues for as long as I can remember, so he is just being consistent on CAGW.
And he is a bit late to the party here, too. That whole “Trump / golf course / sea level rise” tirade is so 2017.
https://www.google.com/search?q=trump+%22golf+course%22+%22sea+level+rise%22
God, can you believe how desperate the Leftists were with those articles.
Back in 2014 Trump started trying to do something (anything) to stop currently happening erosion from storm surge and weather along that golf course. But every plan he put forward was shot down by local Green wackos. They even claimed that they needed to protect a ‘microscopic’ snail that, even though you can’t see it with the naked eye, is still known to be endangered.
But wow, the moment he had them put in a request to build a sea wall, not to stop the definitely happening right now erosion, but to protect from the might happen someday the models all say so CAGW Sea Level Rise, they bent over backwards to OK it.
Say what you want about the man, he knows how to get things done.
^¿^
schitzree
“They even claimed that they needed to protect a ‘microscopic’ snail that, even though you can’t see it with the naked eye, is still known to be endangered.”
Yea, right! So the greenies said, and like micro snails haven’t endured worse than wall building in their evolution.
Agree with all your points. Trump just played all my brethren for chumps, and the suckers lapped it up.
Nothing to do with global warming either. Try coastal erosion, Mr. Chom.
The Idiot Left has a perfect 100% record of backing the wrong horse every single time. Chomsky is no exception.
How come just about everyone, male or female, whose given name starts with either Naom or Noam, is a complete fool and leftie idiot?
“As I’m writing, a new study appeared in Nature showing that retention of heat in the oceans has been greatly underestimated…….”
Would that be the study that made the insane comparison of the average depth of the worlds oceans at 30′ deep?
I’m not educated but even I spotted that whopper was designed simply to grab headlines, and Chomsky fell for it. What’s education for if not to enable sorting the wheat from the chaff?
Who’s the dummy between him and me?
Him, for sure.
Noam Chomsky once wrote for Webster’s Dictionary that he considers English spelling the most perfect
spelling system of them all. Of course, we non-linguists have always known that English spelling is the world’s worst system (if one can even call it a “system”). Here are his two pieces of “evidence” to prove his point:
1) word fragments sometimes have meanings – thus the meaning of a word can sometimes be adduced by knowing the meanings of those fragments. Of course, no one learn the meanings of words in this way,even if they were able to recognize the meaning of a fragment,which few can. 2) By spelling words, such as “their” and “there” differently, the reader can more quickly scan text. The problem with this idiotic claim is that, if this were true, then when hearing spoken text containing the word that sounds the same as their and there, the listener should have to stop and think about which of the two same sounding words was spoken, a complete inability to realize that the context made the word heard to be obvious.
kent beuchert
1) I don’t believe that’s true, many words can be broken down into their constituent parts and the derivation then becomes obvious.
2) But Americans spell their, there and they’re the same way as we British. Not sure I get your objection.
English is a predatory language. It uses a rich mixture of influences from many different languages, and those influences can be detected from the classic spellings. Change the spelling and the origin is often lost.
English is comprised of Latin roots joined together to make words, easy to work out a word if you know the latin roots. Then there are the borrowed words from almost every language in the world.
Recently in Oz a study was made of people came to Oz to live without a knowledge of english and how they coped. One woman I saw interviewed came as a young girl with no english,she was totally enthused by english. Her main statement was “I love english you have a word for everything”
Most languages are closed, english is open to new words if we need them.
Was he talking about English spelling (i.e., OED) or American spelling (i.e., Webster)? Or did he fail to specify?
kent beuchert – November 6, 2018 at 7:23 am
Like HotScot, I’m not quite sure what your objection is.
Anyway, the last portion of your last sentence above (my boldface), would be correct if re-written to state, ……. “it is a nurtured fact that causes us humans to subconsciously realize that the context (of the verbiage proceeding said word) made the (meaning of the) word which was read or heard to be obvious”.
Here is a “simple” reading test that proves my above conjecture. Read it quickly without pausing.
Your subconscious mind does all of the interpretations of the verbiage you hear or read ….. and then informs your conscious mind of what it determined.
Explains why it’s hard to spot typos and why Chinese writing is readable yet seems indesypherable at first glance.
Don’t forget the letters that are not for your mouth, but only for the paper. Through…debt…pneumonia…mnemonic…receipt…doubt…etc etc…
Kind of a waste of paper eh?
Remember Bernhard Shaw who suggested that “fish” really should be spelled “ghoti”?
f like in “tough”, i like in “women” and sh like in “nation”.
Actually english spelling is so ambiguous that I know of a linguist who was studying Polynesian language history that made extensive use of notes of pronounciation made by Solander, Sparrman and Foster (Swedes and German respectively) who were naturalists on Cook’s expedition. The notes made by english speakers were so ambiguous and garbled as to be virtually useless.
The guy sounds like a sociopath. Just like representatives of the Deep State that were caught in hearings about Russian election intervention, human trafficking, child porn, narcotics, money laundering, proliferation of military tech and treason, leadership of the Democratic Party and at least 4 elected Presidents and Presidential candidates talking nonsense about Global Governance and Global Warming pipe dreams. It’s all a state of mind you know.
Trump’s name of course isn’t on that list.
Come Trump’s military tribunals, pending on the outcome of the current mid term elections, the entire list will be known to the public.
Isn’t his language of bile and dehumanising of his opponents by referring to them as evil and describing them as criminals an example of the real source of division in the USA today rather than anything Trump has said or done?
Trump’s sometimes intemperate comments could be regarded as just a graded reply to even more scurrilous words emanating from his leftist opponents.
Stephen Wilde
And so far, Trump hasn’t waged a new war with a foreign country. He’s manned up to a few, which Obama wouldn’t do, and strangely enough they’ve all backed down.
Trump uses Twitter to communicate directly with anyone who cares to subscribe, historic Presidents (and Prime Ministers) have used their henchmen to deliver the messages so they get the chop when things go tit’s up. Trump fires people who are not performing, the British do a sideways shuffle and let the incompetence perpetuate.
So far, he’s not waged war, he’s sacked a few people, he’s delivering his manifesto promises, he’s adopted a stance on the middle eastern issue, adopted a stance on America’s involvement in the Paris agreement, increased US employment and productivity, and he’s upset a few people.
I really don’t see what the guys done wrong?
HotScot,
What has he done wrong? He hasn’t failed miserably like the left predicted. He hasn’t resigned, been impeached, been indicted, or caught with his hand in the cookie jar. The economy has not tanked, and as you have pointed out, he has not started any new wars. So of course, they hate him.
One reason for the Trump Derangement Syndrome is that Trump is not “owned” or beholden to anyone. He cannot be controlled like any regular politician. Which drives them nuts.
The advantage of labeling your enemies as “evil” is that you don’t have to afford them any of the normal protections. They can and must be crushed without due process or any kind of mercy. Their guilt is so obvious that no trial is necessary; just advance to the execution phase.
And people wonder why public discourse is so uncivil today.
Stephen Wilde,
There is NO “could be regarded” for anyone to consider
The literal fact is that the liberal leftist Democrats and their partisan Press started their badmouthing and berating of Donald Trump via their dastardly, devious, dishonest, scurrilous comments and claims as soon as they realized that Trump had announced his candidacy for POTUS …… and that same bunch of liberal misfits have been “screaming-like-a-stuck-pig” every time Trump “responded-in-kind” to their badmouthing of his person or family members.
Like playground “bullies”, ….. they love to dish it out, …. but they cry like a baby when a bigger helping is served back to them.
So your complaint is about his STYLE, not substance. You want him to be more like his predecessor, the jive turkey, talking smack about the police in dulcet tones, weaponizing ALL government agencies against his political foes, Iran run rampant across the ME and in this hemisphere, changing the Consttution wth his “Pen and a Phone”?
I’ve long enjoyed pointing out to Progressives that by their stated objectives, Pol Pot was an environmental hero.
I’ll bet he’s still driving his car, heating his home, using electricity, plastic, high-tech goods, modern health care, and eating. Also will bet he’s not doing all that on his own solar/wind farm. What an idiot.
‘Criminal’. AND ‘insane’. Boy, these guys are pretty much by the playbook aren’t they?
And again, highlighting what they actually are by labeling others with it.
Noam, what have YOU done to promote adoption of nuclear power during your lifetime? We have exactly ONE near-zero carbon energy source capable of meeting our energy needs, and the reason it has not been adopted more widely is because of political opposition from activists over the last 40 years. Who are these activists? Are they not putting mankind at risk?
Steve O
The western world is overrun with minority groups and public policy is being dictated by them.
There are minority groups against:
Coal
Gas
Nuclear
Oil
ICE vehicles
Plastics
Industry
Banking
You name it, they are all minority groups and they are undermining democracy, or at least the politicians who listen to them are. The majority is being subverted by the minority which includes muppets like Chomsky.
They are anti everything. Spreaders of Chaos. Angry Zombies.
Police force
Constitution, separation of powers. End of rational government.
Borders
Military
You forgot humanity in general.
Classic psychological projection on his part. His is the side of pure evil.
If memory serves, Dr Chomsky was a professor of Psycho-linguistics at MIT.
Yawn….. Zzzzz………..
How is it that people as “intelligent” as Mr. Chomsky always forget that it’s the ones who crow loudest for the “revolution” are always the first to be branded traitors and lose their heads? Yet, here he is shouting from the roof tops to anyone that will listen as if he’s certain of his “spot” among those elite…
Chomsky revealed himself to be a turncoat regarding the 9-11 Truth struggles of the early 2000s. In intelligence parlance, apparently his role has been to serve in delivering a “limited hangout.” This is a partial, probably authentic, revelation of facts (which may or may not) be truthful in their exposition. They may include certain thoughts and opinions to surreptitiously “guide” the thinking of the recipient with casuistry (always likely since the motive is to deceive) – and possibly excluding other important details. Although difficult to overcome, it is possible to develop a sense of when you’re being “shined on” by such masters as Professor Noam, by reading rather heavily. The point is, a liar and deceiver is a liar and deceiver. Once their integrity is thus shattered, as was the Professor’s regarding the 9-11 tragedy, his opinion cannot be fully trusted in any other venue. This latest preposterous assertion is only more evidence against his integrity and nothing more. Sad isn’t it. Sometime in the early nineties I was a devotee, only to discover that his violations of honesty rank him among perverts of any kind.
Could you repeat that. In English this time.
Translation: Noam Chomsky is a propagandist that cleverly weaves a few small truths in with his colossal lies in order to make them more believable. But in the end he is still just a liar. Educated and obviously skilled, but still a liar.
I’ve checked Chomsky’s use of references at the Stanford University libraries, across 35 years of his work starting with his 1967 “The Responsibility of Intellectuals” in the NY Review of Books.
I found that Chomsky misrepresents quotes, truncates quotes, juxtaposes unrelated quotes, and otherwise uses texts to assassinate the character of his targets.
I give a couple of examples in my on-line article, here
Chomsky tells the truth when it suits him, and dissembles and manufactures otherwise. He, in short, lies systematically.
It’s nothing short of ironic. In his 1967 “Responsibility of Intellectuals,” Chomsky wrote that it is the responsibility of intellectuals to speak the truth and to expose lies. He has made a career of telling lies and hiding the truth.
Pat Frank
I’m not educated but I have just read your essay. It is beautifully written, I suspect impeccably referenced (I didn’t reference check it), logical, sensible and, importantly, very readable.
Thank you for that.
Thanks for your interest and for taking the time, HotScot. Really glad you found it worthwhile.
Pat Frank’s linked article is excellent and well worth a brief foray away from this main thread.
I consider Noam Chomsky to be a kindred of Paul Erlich. These two misanthropes are peas of a pod, always wrong, with plenty of embarrassing publications to prove it. It’s gotten to the point where disbelieving everything they say as a heuristic, and forcing them to actually make a successful prediction before ever believing them again, will save the average college freshman a lot of time and aggravation.
Thanks, Mickey. I first tried publishing that article in “Free Inquiry” and “The Humanist.” They advertise themselves as bastions of Humanism. Both turned me down.
Tom Flynn, the editor at FI, was very candid about his reason. He said the article was “harsh” and would upset FI’s progressive readership.
Flynn’s response was my experience trying to publish papers critical of climate modeling, writ small.
James Corbett has a good piece on Chomsky, concurring with your opinion that his role as a critic of aspects of the status quo gives him some credibility when executing a “limited hangout” or disparaging those skeptical of the “official line” on matters ranging from CAGW to 9/11.
https://youtu.be/EEDf7OkRCxk “Meet Noah Chomsky, Academic Gatekeeper”.
Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth have published serious, credible refutations of the official conspiracy theory and torn apart the puerile defense by Popular Mechanics:
https://www.ae911truth.org/evidence/technical-articles
Chomsky himself is insane…..and those who listen to that Marxist imbecile are worse.
There must be a human gene responsible for accepting the global warming and climate change religion. Why else would two people of equal intelligence have differing conclusions?
He claims the banks are exacerbating the problem by investing in fossil fuels. I read recently that Australian banks are doing the opposite, despite high prices. They can’t both be right.
Why is psychological projection so common among those on the political left? There’s definitely activity surrounding climate science that can be considered criminal, but the crime is extortion and the perpetrators are the IPCC/UNFCCC.
I find it truly frightening how many people want a neo-communist world state. Based on lies and anti science.
With a world currency, ala the very British Keynes – see below…
“This surely qualifies as a contender for the most evil document in history”.
Naom Chomsky was born of Jewish parents and he has apparently never heard of , or merely dismisses, the
policy documents that came from the Wannsee conference of 1942.
Shame on him .
Shame on us for even considering him as a legitimate commentator on modern history.
If anomaly warming of +2.0C from not-really-preindustrial really *were* an existential threat, everything Chomsky wrote would be justified. Fortunately, it’s not remotely true.
Chomsky has teamed up with Varoufakis (ex-Greek FinMin) for a Very Fake “New Deal” for Europe, with a very fake Bretton-Woods ala Keynes’ then rejected 1944 world currency, to police green investment globally, ,to decarbonize.
https://diem25.org/news/
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/05/yanis-varoufakis-imagining-a-new-keynesian-bretton-woods
The “bancor”, now digital crypto “cosmos”, would credit the green paradigm globally. Sanders is in on it, and reportedly Corbyn.
FDR’s New Deal with the RFC (ReconstructionFinanceCorp) brought the US out of the Great Depression, based on Hamilton’s approach. It formed the basis for the later Marshall Plan with the KfW (CreditReconstruction agency). The Bretton Woods gold reserve system was ended by Nixon in 1971.
Now along comes a very fake Bretton Woods, Manhattan Project, New Deal, Glass-Steagall, all thoroughly green – FDR’s success appropriated.
The FDR administration most definitely did not get the US out of the Great Depression. Federal policies deepened and lengthened it. Here is a quote from FDR’s treasury secretary Henry Morgenthau in 1937:
“We have tried spending money. We are spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work. And I have just one interest, and if I am wrong somebody else can have my job. I want to see this country prosperous. I want to see people get a job. I want to see people get enough to eat. We have never made good on our promises. I say after eight years of this administration we have just as much unemployment as when we started. And an enormous debt to boot!”
That depression did not end until pent-up savings (war bonds etc), deferred marriages and productive capacity from the war years were turned to ‘normal’ civilian life after 1945. (GDP measurement during war years do not measure the same thing as peace years.)
https://tomwoods.com/ep-619-rothbards-depression-analysis-more-relevant-than-ever/
As to the popular impression that the Marshall Plan was a worthy model for foreign aid, see an informed and critical view here: https://d101vc9winf8ln.cloudfront.net/documents/28244/original/Marshall_Plan.pdf?1527192058
Actually the FDR administration most definitely did get the US out of the Great Depression.
…
“The FDR administration most definitely did not get the US out of the Great Depression.”
Be very careful of believing revisionist history written for whatever reason. Such a sweeping statement can easily be falsified without any evidence whatsoever by just asking who was President from 1932 to April 1945. Unless you don’t believe the Great Depression still wasn’t over in 1945, or that the war was responsible for everything that happened economically from 1932 to 1945. In that case, then give credit to Hitlar or the Japanese for WW2 ending the 9-10 year depression. Sounds like something Chomsky himself would write, if he wasn’t such a leftist.
Arguing Presentism to those details of history is a red herring. With historical hindsight, we can always armchair quarterback what should have been done different or better, and arguably much more could have been done quicker policy wise opposite of what was done to create those circumstances that led up to the Great Depression since the end of the First World War. But there is absolutely no doubt that by 1938/39, the tide had already turned in favour of recovery, if by nothing other than the business cycle itself correcting for global low productivity during much of the 1930’s. The war certainly sped things up, but war in itself isn’t much different than digging holes and filing them in again. Saying the war GDP is somehow different is ignoring the war GDP of WW1, which was what led to misguided global polices in the 1920’s and 1930’s.
The present debate over scientific facts in all matters related to (C)AGW and climate change should not be compared to historical revisionism by either the right or the left, and we see what happens to climate science when we allow partisan hacks to start advancing their political interests by tinkering with the facts. Science should stand alone in finding fact. It doesn’t presently, because of politics that is now embedded into every facet of understanding. Including history it looks like.
It took FDR to turn a minor depression into a great one. His policies most definitely exacerbated and extended the depression into the “great depression” that we know from history.
Yes, some policies for sure. Absolutely no doubt many of them exacerbated the recovery. But it was a transition from agrarian society to city and industrial/nuclear modern age. They didn’t have the advantage of historical foresight that we enjoy now looking back. Or the details and machinations of how a complex economy worked over longer time scales. Some of it was figure it out as you go along. And many mistakes were made, perhaps the biggest was Big Gov’t itself.
But take a look at our present world. . . . It is manifestly not Hit-lers world, or Joseph Stalin’s world. That ghastly world self-destructed before our eyes. Nor is it Winston Churchill’s world, although he stood tall in defending it to the end. Empire and its glories have long since vanished into history. The world we live in today is Franklin Roosevelt’s world. For better or for worse, I think on balance, for the better, but always room for improvement as things inevitably change.
I once purchased a (small) Noam Chomsky book to try to understand his point of view. It was impossible to read, every sentence had a real or implied explanation point after it. It was like reading a book printed in all capital letters. It gave me headache. He may be a linguist but he is not a very good writer.
I guess this is what they mean by dangerous, scary AI. It will wipe the old “word” order and opinions faster. Truth in educational quality must be next in the productivity revolution.
Chomsky is a profoundly evil man and should be ignored and/or ridiculed by all decent people.
Chomsky is a single step linguist – language emerged fully formed suddenly.
I wonder what he thinks of Phrygian, and Pharaoh Psammetichus experiment with children raised with sheep, while a shepherd waited for their first word, bekos, the Phrygian for bread. King James V of Scotland tried the same and concluded Hebrew as the first language.
Ventris, a lawyer not a linguist, deciphered Linear B which most had written off as “phrygian”, to be Greek.
Noam Chomsky has been proven a pathological liar a thousand times over, and this is not limited to his political musings. His professional career has been one of plagiarism from its inception, and he is generally despised by his peers, one of his former students even labeling him “satanic.” For an introduction see Collier and Horowitz, editors, “The Anti-Chomsky Reader.”
For a wealth of scholarly anti-Chomsky literature start with any of (historian of linguistics) Koerner’s articles on the much hyped Chomskyan linguistic revolution. Or see any of the critiques of Barsky’s pseudo-biography of NC. NC has single handedly set back linguistic science half a century. –AGF
See also Paul Bogdanor’s The Top 250 of Chomsky’s Lies (pdf).
Bogdanor’s web site has a large number of articles showing Chomsky’s abuse of truth. http://www.paulbogdanor.com/writings.html
Thanks!
It’s all a game. How many honors students can you dupe in one setting while still getting an ovation?
Freshly entering the US from a communistic country, I happened to attend Chomsky’s talk at MIT. Shortly after he started to talk, he brought up the superiority of the communistic system. I thought my English was so bad that I misunderstood him. Eventually it dawned on me that that guy is not in touch with reality. Not being in a position to question him with my poor English I got up and left. I was not alone in doing so.
Noam Chomsky was also a big fan of Hugo Chavez. He praised his social revolution that denounced U.S. Imperialism. Why even listen to this clown? His opinions are worthless.
It’s a good buddy of Chaves who is funding the caravan headed north. Trump exposes the biggest losers!
This guy’s just a bag of sh!t. Doesn’t even know the meaning of words (criminally insane??? what is that exactly LOL) calls himself a writer, HA HA
Hold on, just a second! You mean to tell me that the shoreline does not erode from wave action? Only from a changing climate?
What’s in your wallet NC?
Did he ever find the mass graves that resulted from the U.S. perpetrated “savage, silent genocide” that killed a million people in Afghanistan over a single winter?
Ask the Generals – they weren’t counting.
Noam Chomsky is consistently wrong about everything he touches and every field that he investigates.
Hey Noam, chomp on this you leftist pos.
You always set aside a table at Thanksgiving for the crazy uncle.
The discussions are always better, and it makes you more carefully form your argument.
Noam Chomsky, a socialist who has squirreled away millions in a private trust which minimises tax.
Jeff
Isn’t that what pseudo socialists do?
The Interview:
HotScot; So, Noam, you’re wealthy but support socialism.
Noam; Indeed, I have worked hard for my money.
HotScot; But Noam, if you’re a socialist doesn’t that mean you believe in everyone being equal.
Noam; No, that’s communism, there’s no democracy.
HotScot; So you don’t believe in everyone being equal then.
Noam; Of course I do, it’s just that certain people need some extra money from the state to …..well….motivate people. Like intellectuals.
HotScot; Which of course includes you Noam.
Noam; Naturally. I’m a pre eminent intellectual, I know stuff others don’t, I can motivate people to be equal.
HotScot; As long as you’re at the head of the equality queue, right?
Noam; Naturally, you wouldn’t want to see we intellectuals suffer the privations of poverty, would you?
HotScot; Of course not Noam.
I will never pay any attention to a person who was an advisor and strong supporter and proponent of Hugo Chavez’s narco-communism in Venezuela.
But you should, at least try to figure out where they are coming from.
No, but I certainly know where I’d like them to go. 😉
Noam Chomsky was denied entry into Israel in 2010 when on a speaking tour in the region. For a Jewish fellow to be denied entry into Israel, well, something must be very wrong. Especially for a world famous Jewish linguistic professor. He was scheduled to give lectures in Israel and the West Bank. Israel denied him entry stating he was subverting the security of Israel and the West Bank/Gaza with his denouncement of both USA and Israel.
25-30 years ago, I listened to what he had to say and even read a few of his books. But he was such a diehard Marxist professor then, it was hard to listen to since I was interested in what he had to say about linguistics and not his views on everything else. And now, he is just foaming at the mouth in his old age. If he had just stuck to his linguistic studies and teachings, the world would have probably been a better place. The leftist hooligans idolize him while attacking everybody and everything in their way, supposedly in the name of Antifa.
Damn… you all know that Chomsky was working at the Rand Corp and complicit in forming the MAD strategy that effectively ended the Cold War… right?
During that period he was exposed to the realities of US interference in the global arena. The CIA follows him around, documents those that show up at his lectures, and basically create the appearance (in publications and planted antagonists) that he is a crackpot.
He is NOT. This man is just brilliant, and despite the bad press and intimidation strategies on behalf of our government (who would rather have their secrets kept secret) continues to speak truth to power. Just consider what he says. So far as being a brilliant linguist, I can surely attest, as a longtime student on computer science.
[????m .mod]
Silliest nonsense I ever heard.
Without regard to anything he has said or anything he has done in the past, in *this* article he’s claiming exceeding +2.0C is an existential threat. That’s approximately as likely as Guam tipping over from having too many people on it.
or the interior of the earth being several million degrees.
“…concentrate on one enemy at a time and blame him for everything that goes wrong; people will believe a big lie sooner than a little one; and if you repeat it frequently enough people will sooner or later believe it.”
This was written by Walter C. Langer, in a psychological profile of he-you-must-not-be-named!
Catastrophic global warming is ‘the big lie’! It is entirely outrageous, with completely unfounded tenants like: Warmer temperatures are catastrophic, atmospheric CO2 controls global temperature, tipping points are just around the corner, natural climate change is insignificant, atmospheric temperatures have been basically steady for the last 11,000 years until now, a few degrees warmer will cause massive extinctions on land and in the seas, a warmer world has much more severe weather, and so on.
All of these statements are clearly false, but they are being repeated again and again throughout the liberal media, and I fear that a growing number of people are starting to buy ‘the big lie’! Terrible things happen when the majority has been brainwashed into believing ‘the big lie’.
Trump may be the last high profile politician to stand up to the big lie, and now the left has seized the House of Representatives, with the sole agende of demonizing and destroying the President over the next two years. We may scoff at the words of Noam Chomsky in this article, but you will hear much these same words spoken over and over again in the months and years ahead. They will often be spoken by people who don’t really care about climate change, but they will passionately use the big lie to win political power and destroy their enemies.
We underestimate the power of the big lie at our own peril!
Logic does not appear to be among his languages. He is a blinkered idiot.
I speak on subjects in which I have expertise. These include climate and energy. It is clear to me that Noam Chomsky is entirely incorrect and his assumptions and his statements on these subjects.
As regards his other alleged failings, I have no opinion, because I have not studied him, nor do I intend to. The fact that he is utterly wrong on these two subjects suggests he is not worthy of further attention.
Your expertise in English grammar is lacking: “It is clear to me that Noam Chomsky is entirely incorrect and his assumptions and his statements on these subjects. “
Steve
Apologies for the typo, which was trivial. I am dictating this from my phone, which does not always correctly interpret my words.
Perhaps next time you will have something intelligent to say.
Correction of typo:
I speak on subjects in which I have expertise. These include climate and energy. It is clear to me that Noam Chomsky is entirely incorrect in his assumptions and his statements on these subjects.
As regards his other alleged failings, I have no opinion, because I have not studied him, nor do I intend to. The fact that he is utterly wrong on these two subjects suggests he is not worthy of further attention.
Pat Frank’s PDF has good stuff, including this quote from Paul Postal:
“After many years, I came to the conclusion that everything he says is false. He will
lie just for the fun of it. Every one of his arguments was tinged and coded with
falseness and pretense. It was like playing chess with extra pieces. It was all fake.”
– Paul Postal
(The New Yorker, March 31, 2003)
It might be noted that Postal was a colleague of Chomsky’s at MIT, one of many whose dissent Chomsky attacked viciously, only to later have his ideas renamed and adopted by Chomsky and claimed as his own.
Here’s Barsky on Chomsky, from a “biography” based on letters from Chomsky:
https://books.google.com/books?id=RKUbyYPG4mcC&pg=PA44&lpg=PA44&dq=ellis+rivkin+on+chomsky&source=bl&ots=_FUk16xwL6&sig=vxxOFE3yxdt6CVGIsv7Js1D9Ess&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiN0MuVxP_QAhXis1QKHf2zDY4Q6AEIHDAA#v=onepage&q=ellis%20rivkin%20on%20chomsky&f=false
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p.55
“Hoenigswald—and Harris, as well—likely knew that there existed another example of generative grammar (albeit a less detailed one than Chomsky’s 1948 thesis work, and limited to the phonological level) that had preceded Chomsky’s by roughly eight years. It was called “Menomini Morphophonemics,”and was published by American linguist Leonard Bloomfield in the Czech Travaux du Cercle Linguistique de Prague in 1939. It is remarkable, in Chomsky’s view, that neither Hoenigswald nor Harris revealed the existence of this text to his student. “Menomini Morphophonemics” is an extraordinary text, completely inconsistent with Bloomfield’s other writings about language and how research in the area should be done. This, Chomsky believes, was one of the reasons Bloomfield decided to publish it in Europe.
“Hoenigswald and Harris were very close to Bloomfield, and certainly knew his work. But neither of them mentioned to their only undergraduate student that he was rediscovering, more or less, what Blooomfield had just done eight years before. It’s not surprising in Harris’s case, because he didn’t know what I was doing. But Hoenigswald read it, and must have recognized the similarities, back to classical India. I learned nothing of this until the 1960s when Morris Halle found out about Bloomfield’s work. (31 Mar. 1995)”
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This denial of knowledge of what is hinted by Barsky to be an obscure publication in an obscure journal was in fact Bloomfield’s contribution to a Festschrift for Nikolai Trubetzkoy, a founder of the preeminent Prague Circle who had recently died when the Nazis confiscated the draft of his study, “On the Pre-History of Slavic Languages.” Accordingly Chomsky’s assertion of ignorance is in fact a preemptive defense against the automatic charge of plagiarism, and thus Chomsky begins his career. Critical writers give many examples showing a pattern of failure of attribution. Rest assured, Chomsky’s pervasive dishonesty extends deeply into his professional writing. –AGF