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[mainiac]

Mainiac, my impression has been that's how you feel about anyone who thinks negatively of the dominant political/economic establishment.

I feel highly negative about the dominant policitical/economic establishment.  I just dislike critiques that last any substance.  They distract from the meaningful criticisms.

Noam Chomsky's is someone who will never feel happy.  That's well and good, discontent makes for improvement.  But he doesn't point in the direction of betterment, he just throws shit like a monkey in the zoo.  It's taking a productive impulse and directing it in a childish direction.

[RedKing]

Whereas you're just an optimistic bucket of sweetness and light. 

Its one thing to disagree with someone's views. Its another to say "the world will be better off when that useless sack of lies dies".

TBH, I've mostly started ignoring you when it comes to political discussion because you've gotten increasingly shrill and caustic the last couple of years.

[SalmonGod]

What this thread needs right now.  Precision strike!

[Angle]

"Notice me, Senpai!"

...

*flees*

[mainiac]

Its one thing to disagree with someone's views. Its another to say "the world will be better off when that useless sack of lies dies".

Yes it is.  One should only be used for the scum of the earth.

[Helgoland]

Its one thing to disagree with someone's views. Its another to say "the world will be better off when that useless sack of lies dies".

The difference is merely one of power held b the person in question.

[scriver]

I'm sad the picture of Buddha getting friendly with a biker chick while her friends looks like they're one flirtatious love away from beating him up was in there.

[GreatJustice]

It's worth mentioning that a lot of Chavez's policies had a bit of a delayed effect on the economy, or were partially dependent on oil prices (on which nearly the entire Venezuelan economy depended). For example, when he first power, Venezuela was modestly wealthy and thus socialistic policies were semi-viable in the short run, but by the time he died such policies had wrecked capital accumulation and left Venezuela in a position to collapse at the slightest disturbance (as it indeed is now). That isn't to say the people preceding him were any good, of course. Hell, he kind of worked like a reverse-Pinochet. People weren't abducted in the middle of the night and dropped into the Pacific Ocean via helicopter, but the economic groundwork laid by him led to Chile becoming the most developed country in South America, so take your pick.

Also, Chomsky isn't a total hack, but he isn't completely trustworthy either. He definitely has an agenda that he sometimes pushes to the point of ignoring the truth. I distinctly recall him trying to argue that the Khmer Rouge were perfectly reasonable people who were being viciously slandered by media and that the killing fields weren't a thing.

[Reelya]

Well, when Chavez came to power per capita gdp was under $US-4000 and it's now sitting at over $US-14000. Even with hiccups (which can be better explained by the rapid growth bubble and not socialism) people are still a hell of a lot wealthier there today than 14 years ago, in US dollar terms. The minimum wage today is valued at almost $US 10000, which is significantly higher than the per capita GDP of 1998. Things may be a bit rocky, but by no means are people worse off after Chavez than before.

One example of looking at things differently (i.e looking at data and not opinion) is shortages, e.g. beef shortages are reported. But if you look at USDA figures on Venezuelan beef consumption, there was a massive increase in per-capita consumption during the Chavez years. People are definitely eating better there now than before, and that's based on US government data, not Venezuelan data. Rising wages have driven up consumption very rapidly. Due to oil industry reliance Venezuela had a very underdeveloped agricultural sector to begin with. This is a known economic issue that plagues unbalanced economies exemplified by oil rich nations - chronic under investment in other sectors. That didn't start with Chavez.

Meat consumption per capita doubled in Venezuela during the Chavez years:
http://gain.fas.usda.gov/Recent%20GAIN%20Publications/Poultry%20and%20Products%20Annual_Caracas_Venezuela_7-7-2011.pdf
I'll forgive them for not being able to also double production at the same time. Shortages are therefore at least partially driven by much higher per-capita consumption compared to the 1990's.

[Zangi]

Nominating Joe for best US VP ever.

@Chavez, I'm pretty sure the US has had him on their shitlist for awhile now.

[Rez]

I like having a sexual predator for a VP, too.  It's better than having a sexual predator for Pres.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Generally sexual predators don't cause the women they wispier at to smile and giggle.

[Reelya]

Also, Chomsky isn't a total hack, but he isn't completely trustworthy either. He definitely has an agenda that he sometimes pushes to the point of ignoring the truth. I distinctly recall him trying to argue that the Khmer Rouge were perfectly reasonable people who were being viciously slandered by media and that the killing fields weren't a thing.

That was back in 1977. But it's easy to point out one time someone got something wrong and ignore the fact that baseless propaganda against non-US aligned countries was a real thing, and pretty frequent.

The "yellow rain" of Vietnam. This stuff found on leaves in the jungle was claimed by the US State Department to be communist chemical weapons used against their own populations. I read about this in scientific american. several hundred samples were collected by various countries, and sent around the world, with many labs in different countries testing them and everyone that concluded it was harmless bee feces. Even the samples directly collected and tested by the US Army were bee poop. The one sole exception was labs which received samples handled by the US State Department. Those samples were a veritable cocktail of the most toxic synthetic substances known to man. Yeah, so hundreds of samples are taken, tested and verified to be a harmless natural substance across the world. What are the chances that the US State Department just happens to be the only organization which ends up with all the toxic ones? It's not a credible coincidence. It's much more likely that they doctored the samples as a propaganda attempt.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/yellow-rain/
^ I'll give you an actual citation for this: Scientific American, 1985, September 1st issue. This covers the scientific evidence and the fact that only US State Department-handled samples contained poisons. So, it's basically common knowledge that the state department was fabricating evidence against communists even if you were well-read of mainstream literature like Scientific American.

Given that examples like the above were pretty common during the cold war, I give Chomsky the benefit of the doubt, since in 1977 no-one had really verified the details. If you believed every anti-communist story that came out in the 1970s - 1980s you'd also believe in the Yellow Rain and many other fake stories. Fake stuff was common, so it's not stupid to be at least a bit skeptical when the next one comes out.

[Lord Shonus]

Look up the "yellow rain" of Vietnam. This stuff found on leaves in the jungle was claimed to be communist chemical weapons used against their own populations. I read about this in scientific american. several hundred samples were sent around the world, and many labs in different countries tested them and concluded it was harmless bee feces. Even the samples tested by the US Army were bee poop. The one sole exception was labs which received samples handled by the US State Department. Those samples were a veritable cocktail of the most toxic synthetic substances known to man. Yeah, so hundreds of samples are taken, tested and verified to be a harmless natural substance across the world. What are the chances that the US State Department just happens to handle all the toxic ones?

I'll give you a citation for this: Scientific American, 1985, September 1st issue. This covers the scientific evidence and the fact that only US State Department-handled samples contained poisons.

So you see, fabricating evidence against communist countries was something they did all the time. US is like the boy who cried wolf if you were paying attention, with constant fake anti-communist stories of the "yellow rain" type. But just one time there really was a wolf, and Chomsky got caught out.

Claims of that being "fabricating evidence" are reaching. There were multiple corpses (of the people Vietnam was fighting) examined that did show highly elevated levels of the sort of toxins being allegedly used, and refugees from the area claimed that the yellow liquid was deployed from helicopters before the US was involved in the situation in the first place. The flaw was that the toxins in question were naturally-found ones that were far from rare in the region (similar, in fact, to the algae toxins that shut down Toledo's water supply last summer), and military helicopters were a very common occurance (there was, after all, a rather brutal war going on at the time), so helicopters being in the area at the time the "yellow rain" fell may well have simply been a coincidence. What the incident looks like to me (bearing in mind that most of the US reports remain classified) is the US making an accusation on what turned out to be flawed data, then doubling down on it to save face.

[mainiac]

Is there anyone in this thread who thinks it's news that the US did bad shit in Southeast Asia or that the Khemar Rogue did bad shit in Cambodia?

Is there anyone in this thread who thinks that is ironclad proof that there is a conspiracy by major US newspapers to intentionally cover up American warcrimes in order to drive up sales of their products?  Seriously, watch the movie Manufacturing Consent, that's Chomsky's spiel.

The reason that Chomsky is a turd masquerading as a human being is not that he shouts loudly about the bad shit that a certain group of nation states did in the past.  The reason is that he has created a cultlike mindset that peddles his idiotic nonsense as the truth that the media tries to hide.  The man manipulates people for his selfish ends.

And no it's not a situation where there are shades of grey.  Chomsky peddles an absolute world view of black and white.  It's not a nuanced critique.  So dont defend him by defending him being right about X or Y obscure detail.  That's how affinity fraudsters work!  They get the easy shit right (the US did horrible things in southeast Asia and Iraq and many other places) to convince people of the stuff they are lying to you about.  Defend Chomsky on his central thesis, that there is a vast media conspiracy in the US or dont defend him at all.