Where I've been, where I am

[kelber at mindspring.com]

I'd also weigh in on the Chomsky side.  I'm NOT of the hero-worshipping mindset that every last word and action (private and public) of a person must be absolutely beyond reproach in order to take their views seriously.  It's not as if we have slews of prominent, intelligent, interesting critiquers of the American military/industrial/capitalist complex from which to choose.   With Chomsky out of the picture, who else would play the role of gadfly so effectively?

Laura

-----Original Message-----
>From: Richard Ryan <richardryannyc at yahoo.com>

>I'm going side with John on this one - I'm a Chomsky fan (used to get quotes from him on occasion when I was a working journalist in my 20s) - but his stance on the Balkans was "unenlightened."  Being uniformly against all American military activity or interventions is not the same thing as being a consistent anti-fascist or consistent anti-imperialist. 
>
>--- On Wed, 3/18/09, Lawrence Bryan <lebryan at speakeasy.net> wrote:
>
>> From: Lawrence Bryan <lebryan at speakeasy.net>

>> 
>> Ahh, an antichomskyite... One finds them in the strangest
>> places.
>> 
>> "Disastrously wrong" ... since no one in power pays the
>> least attention to him, hard to see that any disaster could
>> result.
>> 
>> "most shockingly" Were you really surprised? After all some
>> antichomskyites are still claiming that Chomsky is a
>> holocaust denier as well as denying the massacres in
>> Cambodia.
>> 
>> "shrill"  Hard to see how his rather matter-of-fact
>> soft spoken manner of speech could accurately be described
>> as "shrill".
>> 
>> Typical ad hominem attack. Surprised you didn't add
>> "discredited".
>> 
>> It would be interesting to see where you get your facts
>> about what really happened there and compare them with
>> Chomsky's opinion. By the way, where did you see a "recent
>> pronouncement" of his on Bosnia/Serbia/Kosovo?
>> 
>> Lawrence
>> 
>> On Mar 18, 2009, at 8:15 AM, Carvill John wrote:

>> > << not to be a gadfly, but doesn't it seem like
>> Chomsky is a heckuva good
>> > critic of social ills, but might be doing the same
>> about the
>> > inevitable abuses of an anarcho-syndicalist regime
>> if  one were in
>> > place?>>
>> > 
>> > Hmmmm, yeah, probably. Plus, Chomsky has got some of
>> his more recent pronouncements disastrously wrong - eg. his
>> *completely* screwy attitude to Bosnia/Serbia/Kosovo, and,
>> most shockingly, his shrill insistence that the Srebrenica
>> massacre has been somehow 'overplayed' in the media.
>> > 
>> > If you took Chomsky's idiocy (yes, idiocy) over the
>> Balkans, and rettrospectively applied it to all his previous
>> political views, he wouldn't be left with much credibility.
>> >