Heh, the Chomskyite comrade here just said all this about moi! Michael Pugliese http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/archives/chomsky.html ----- Original Message ----- From: "harry kershner" <hkershner35 at LYCOS.COM> To: <CHOMSKY at MAELSTROM.STJOHNS.EDU> Sent: Wednesday, October 10, 2001 12:50 AM Subject: Re: [CHOMSKY] THE CHOMSKY-LACOUTURE CONTROVERSY
This repulsive dimwit Pugliese has hijacked this group. I recommend that serious progressives join znet and read what Chomsky actually has to say. Pugliese's malicious diatribe cannot be taken as representing Chomsky's arguments accurately. Just as Christopher Hitchens', Pugliese's rants reveal a perverse and malignant form of racist contempt for third world people. His debate over exactly how much Sudanese medicine (and lives)were destroyed are like the contentions of holocaust deny-ers. On Tue, 9 Oct 2001 10:45:01
John Woodford wrote:
>You've got that right, Frank!
>What will they do next? Post Jane Fonda's latest Self Criticism to club
>Chomsky with?
>
>frank scott wrote:
>
>> There seems to be a concerted effort to get-nail chomsky, and much of it
>> comes from lefties and pseudo lefties, more liberal than left, who seem
>> to just hate the guy...this academic thing is much too long for me to
>> bother with, especially after picking up the tone, and the ridiculous
>> citing of Joan Baez...JOAN BAEZ?...and her full page ad in the NYtimes
>> about (gasp-horror) political prisoners in Viet Nam...wow!
>>
>> as I recall, her expose was based on a prisoner who smuggled "secret
>> information" out of the nam slammer...how? he stuck it up his butt!
>> double wow!
>>
>> for the benefit of people who live in the clouds, I suppose it is an
>> expose to find out that some leftist foreign movements were not composed
>> of collegial debate teams from affluent western families who majored in
>> philosophy and inactivity...for me, this is tired bullshit inspired by
>> people who should have better things to do than relive -in part
>> according to fantasy and bias - past history in order to "get" someone
>> they can't stand because he is...smarter than they are? what the hell is
>> going on? this is the most important stuff to deal with at this time??
>>
>> fs
>
----- Original Message ----- From: "John Woodford" <johnwood at UMICH.EDU> To: <CHOMSKY at MAELSTROM.STJOHNS.EDU> Sent: Wednesday, October 10, 2001 11:45 AM Subject: Re: [CHOMSKY] Zizek on Chomsky
That "at least until 1991" for the timeline of the West's fostering of Yugoslavian unity is the little sneakily bent card that brings down most of his deck. He doesn't understand social dynamics--versus economics or whatever--any more than most people. A lot can--and did--happen in just a few years post-1991. Not to mention before then. The notion that the West either did not spark the secession of Slovenia (or that even if it did the West's actions were inconsequential) is poppycock and does not testify to an understanding of "social dynamics." It smells more like petty-bourgeois Slovenian nationalism. But it is the kind of assertion--if it is Zizek's (can't tell who is talking) that can get one invited as a well-paid visiting fellow on many a Western campus! But he is right about the fact that "just knowing" that the CIA did in Nicaragua is not enough. I don't know, though, that Chomsky ever said that "just knowing" is enough. As far as I can tell,, neither of the debaters is out there organizing a political movement. But a lot of people have to know about something and care about it before they'll go farther in mobilizing against the perpetrators. With the looming pauperization of many millons of Americans, perhaps many more can be convinced that the nation is threatened more by corporate proto-fascism than by the godless and UN in black helicopters ful of Jews and Blacks desirous of corrupting morals and genetic pools..
Michael Pugliese wrote:
> From Doug Henwood's interview with S. Zizek forthcoming in Punk Planet.
> Michael Pugliese
>
> A lot of readers of Punk Planet read Chomsky and Zinn, and the stuff
> coming out of small anarchist presses. What would they get from
> reading your work that they might be missing?
> Martin Heidegger said that philosophy doesn't make things easier,
> it makes them harder and more complicated...
<snip>