Where I've been, where I am

[Carvill John]

You're teh one that seems to be launching ad hominem attacks. I am not an 'anti-Chomskyite', I used to enjoy his stuff. But he is dead wrong on the Balkans, and that's an area I (unlike you or Chomsky) happen to know something about, first-hand, so it's hard to ignore.
 
< 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?>>
 
I 'got my facts' from reading the newspapers, reading books, watching documentaries, visiting Bosnia, Croatia, etc., having numerous Bosnian friends, marrying a Bosnian woman, etc. etc. Ok? How about you?
 
 
I don't know if 2005 is 'recent' enough for you, but in November of that year, Chomsky and Diana Johnstone (rabidly pro-Serb author and friend of Mira Milosevic) forced the Guardian newspaper in teh UK to retract and apologise for a story which claimed that Chomsky had, in referring to the Srebrinica massacre, "placed the word 'massacre' in quotes". Chomsky may not have *literally* placed the word 'massacre' in quotes in the cousre of the disputed interview, but neither did the journalist involved actually claim that he had literally done so, she was merely making a point about CHomsky's general attitude to teh matter, which includes supporting Living Marxism magazine in its claims that ITN's footage of Serbian prsion camps was faked (but lets not dig up that old story please).
 
Here's an excerpt from that article (now deleted from teh Guardian website after pressure from Chomsky):
 
These days, [Chomsky's wife] Carol accompanies her husband to most of his public appearances. He is asked to lend his name to all sorts of crackpot causes and she tries to intervene to keep his schedule under control. As some see it, one ill-judged choice of cause was the accusation made by Living Marxism magazine that during the Bosnian war, shots used by ITN of a Serb-run detention camp were faked. The magazine folded after ITN sued, but the controversy flared up again in 2003 when a journalist called Diane Johnstone made similar allegations in a Swedish magazine, Ordfront, taking issue with the official number of victims of the Srebrenica massacre. (She said they were exaggerated.) In the ensuing outcry, Chomsky lent his name to a letter praising Johnstone's "outstanding work". Does he regret signing it?
 
"No," he says indignantly. "It is outstanding. My only regret is that I didn't do it strongly enough. It may be wrong; but it is very careful and outstanding work."
 
How, I wonder, can journalism be wrong and still outstanding?
 
"Look," says Chomsky, "there was a hysterical fanaticism about Bosnia in western culture which was very much like a passionate religious conviction. It was like old-fashioned Stalinism: if you depart a couple of millimetres from the party line, you're a traitor, you're destroyed. It's totally irrational. And Diane Johnstone, whether you like it or not, has done serious, honest work. And in the case of Living Marxism, for a big corporation to put a small newspaper out of business because they think something they reported was false, is outrageous."
 
They didn't "think" it was false; it was proven to be so in a court of law.
 
But Chomsky insists that "LM was probably correct" and that, in any case, it is irrelevant. "It had nothing to do with whether LM or Diane Johnstone were right or wrong." It is a question, he says, of freedom of speech. "And if they were wrong, sure; but don't just scream well, if you say you're in favour of that you're in favour of putting Jews in gas chambers."
 
Eh? Not everyone who disagrees with him is a "fanatic", I say. These are serious, trustworthy people.
 
"Like who?"

etc. etc.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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