VLVL Rex Snuvvle

[Otto]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Malignd" <malignd at yahoo.com>
To: <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Friday, January 09, 2004 5:52 PM
Subject: Re: VLVL Rex Snuvvle


> <<"Whether these estimates are right or wrong, no one
> knows, and no one cares.  There is a doctrine to be
> established: we must focus solely on the (horrendous)
> crimes of Pol Pot, thus providing a retrospective
> justification for (mostly unstudied) US crimes, and an
> ideological basis for further "humanitarian
> intervention" in the future -- the Pol Pot atrocities
> were explicitly used to justify US intervention in
> Central America in the '80s, leaving hundreds of
> thousands of corpses and endless destruction. In the
> interests of ideological reconstruction and laying the
> basis for future crimes, facts are simply irrelevant,
> and anyone who tries to suggest otherwise is targeted
> by a virulent stream of abuse. That runs pretty much
> across the spectrum, an instructive phenomenon. But
> one consequence is that no one can give a serious
> answer to the question you raise, because it is about
> US crimes."
>
> -- Noam Chomsky>>
>
> Is this quote intended to rebuke Rob's point or
> support it?  Chomsky does parenthetically note that
> Pol Pot's crimes were "(horrendous)," giving them the
> same rhetorical (parenthetical) weight as US crimes
> "(mostly unstudied)."  But, that quibbling detail
> addressed, he's back on point.
>


It was meant to rebuke it of course. If somebody calls another man's crimes
"horrendous" and "atrocities" he's not an apologist of that man.

>
> Has there ever been a writer or thinker more lacking
> in greyscale than this man?  He's like Ahab.
>

I'm not especially interested in Chomsky but I've never heard that he had
said any good words about Pol Pot. As an American Chomsky of course is more
interested in crimes committed by his own government. That's his point.

Otto