Noam Chomsky

s7ryf3925pivug · 17-02-2018 5:49pm

There is a small group of people in control of economic decisions. They use this power at the expense of the larger group. If the larger group recognise this and relentlessly push for change then change is possible, as evidenced by the rejection of slavery and the establishment of equal rights for women. That's my simplistic summary of Chomsky on politics.

It's not so much anti-Capitalist as anti-cnutist. Pretty much any social system tends to suffer from bad people gaining too much control.

I think he's accurate. I don't think many people in this country wanted to cripple themselves contributing to massive bailouts for other people's bad decisions.

Gringo180 · 17-02-2018 7:24pm

Cheerful Spring wrote: »

George Carlin was a great thinker even though he day job was being a comedian. I love his comedy about capitalism and not much has changed in 2018..

Carling is another genius.

Duckworth_Luas · 17-02-2018 7:41pm

Never understood the big deal. It's just a monkey!

51o5e6VpvJL._SX331_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg

s7ryf3925pivug · 17-02-2018 7:43pm

Duckworth_Luas wrote: »

Never understood the big deal. It's just a monkey!

Chimps aren't monkeys

DickSwiveller · 17-02-2018 7:44pm

Duckworth_Luas wrote: »

Never understood the big deal. It's just a monkey!

You should go to youtube and listen to to a few talks Chomsky gives about project Nim. He predicted it would be a complete disaster and was proved right. He had a funny line about Nim's death. Something like "Poor Nim died alone in a zoo, presumably reciting the Lord's prayer as he passed away".

Pero_Bueno · 17-02-2018 7:46pm

He's too far to the left tho, always apologising for Islamic terrorism, don't care how bad US foreign policy is, when you start making excuses for the Jihad you can just f*ck right off.

His stuff on linguistics is excellent though.

Duckworth_Luas · 17-02-2018 7:47pm

Briggs Straight Stack wrote: »

Chimps aren't monkeys

OK Dian Fossey.

Tom Mann Centuria · 17-02-2018 7:48pm

Chimps are evil, cruel cannibals. Not Baboon level evil, but still dodgy pieces of work.

ger vallely · 17-02-2018 7:52pm

Thee hee

King of Kings · 17-02-2018 8:15pm

I like him he is reasoned on foreign policy
also a jew that upsets Israel (the government and state apparatus) can't be a bad person

Wibbs · 17-02-2018 9:00pm

Ajsoprano wrote: »

He says stuff I been saying for years but people call him a genius and me an idiot.

Must be in the delivery.

I read here people talking about car finance and how if they didn’t do x people wouldn’t be buying new cars and something needed to be done.

This got me thinking.

Do not get me started AJ... I've a neighbour who bought a new hybrid Prious a good few years back and became converted overnight to how green he was and forward thinking he was. He now has a BMW battery car. In the interim he has bought new three other "green" cars and that gobsh1te is convinced he's doing his bit for the environment, with extra bragging rights of new car syndrome and green with it. To be fair he's otherwise not a gobsh1te, but on this matter and all his other consumer crap he buys he is. Doesn't begin to want to think about the environmental costs of those new cars he keeps buying, or any of the other stuff. It would be too much of a mind reboot.

Last year a mutual elderly neighbour popped their clogs and what struck me was how much of their stuff was going to end up in landfill. The vast bulk of it. Save for a couple of pieces all the furniture ended up in a hole in the ground(and most of it was near new BTW). Same for out of date electronics, decorative items, clothes etc(the charity shops will only take so much). I asked the guys doing the clearing out and they told me that these days most stuff in house clearances unless it's antique type stuff or brand new and current goes to the dump. People don't want it. They'd rather traipse zombie like and corralled around Ikea, credit cards burning a hole in their pockets buying new tat made from the finest Chinesium. And then dump that in a couple of years. Sh1t, Ikea's catalogue runs alone must be chewing up forests like wildfire.

I pointed this out to battery buggy boyo and the sheer criminal fcuking waste involved repeated throughout the western world and the penny started to drop with him, but he could only take it so far. Bemoaned the folly of it and then went off to work to help him buy more tat on his credit card, because the headspace wouldn't take a major shift and he'd find it hard to forego the dopamine hit of the smell of new Chinesium. He's the norm pretty much. I know right on vegans who will protest about the environment at the drop of a ethnically sourced organic bobble hat while buying two new phones a year, filling their gaffs with tat from Amazon and flying to far flung places to chant Ommmm with their fellow smelly fart brigade. Rinse and fcuking repeat.

I am not suggesting hair shirts and grey communist Russia here, but for god's sake there is a balance and we're well past it. That's the joke; we're about the most environmentally aware generation ever, yet it's all surface, as we're the most consumerist generation too.

Greentopia · 17-02-2018 9:05pm

Love his work on anarchism and American foreign policy. His books are the reason I became interested in anarcho-communism and anarcho-syndicalism.

Very down to earth and accessible too. Lots of anarchists email him with questions at his office in MIT and get personal responses.

Sand · 17-02-2018 9:06pm

I'm always bemused that people think anything new can be learnt from the political insight of a linguist. Chomsky has a certain audience who wants to hear bad things about America, and in fairness he has become a millionaire by giving people what they want. So I guess I cant criticise him for following the money.

Ajsoprano · 17-02-2018 9:14pm

Sand wrote: »

I'm always bemused that people think anything new can be learnt from the political insight of a linguist. Chomsky has a certain audience who wants to hear bad things about America, and in fairness he has become a millionaire by giving people what they want. So I guess I cant criticise him for following the money.

Man is so smart he changes the whole landscape of his profession.
Man is so close minded he refuses to listen to his views on anything else.

BuilderPlumber · 17-02-2018 9:25pm

I agree with Noam Chomsky on a lot of issues but one cannot help feeling he made a career out of just how awful American foreign policy is in a VERY CAPITALIST way! The 2003 American invasion of Iraq made hating America mainstream and as all anyone had to do during that time to make money was to write an anti American book.

American foreign policy rightly deserves as much criticism as possible. It has directly and indirectly lead to all the problems we have today especially the Frankenstein's monster we know as 'militant radical Islam'. But hating America and been obsessed with it is as bad as those horrible members of America's government who hate and stereotype the Middle Eastern nations.

Chomsky has written many good articles and has talent. But he also is a biased commentator. In all the pandering to audiences, sometimes the truth gets lost or distorted. He does though sound much better than the likes of Mark Humphrys who is supposed to be a teacher (his views do not sound like those from an educated person) but shares very biased, pro-American war views. Anyone who still supports American foreign policy warmaking does not understand that it is this very policy that has resulted in the mess the world is in today.

20Cent · 17-02-2018 9:27pm

Not everyone is motivated by money some want to make the world a better place.

Chrongen · 17-02-2018 9:35pm

Gringo180 wrote: »

Have been listening to alot of his stuff on youtube recently and I seem to agree with most of the stuff he says, especially about U.S foreign policy and Capitalism in general. Why is it that one of the greatest minds and most cited scholars in history never gets any air time on the big news channels in America? Is it because he speaks the truth about American society and its moral decline in recent decades or do yous think hes just too far to the left?

Hes a genius in my opinion.

Chomsky doesn't appear on TV or is rarely referenced because he tells the truth.

That makes him a dangerous man.

Why endanger the status quo with a scholar like Chomsky when you can numb people's senses with the verbal diarrhoea from the likes of Tom Friedman.

Hector Savage · 17-02-2018 9:45pm

Greentopia wrote: »

Love his work on anarchism and American foreign policy. His books are the reason I became interested in anarcho-communism and anarcho-syndicalism.

Very down to earth and accessible too. Lots of anarchists email him with questions at his office in MIT and get personal responses.

Anarchists ?
So what it's a good thing that he engages with this absolute and utter scum ???

I see these scum squatting in cities I have lived in, saying they are against the banks and big corps but at the end of the day they are kicking a family out of their apartment so they can live for free - absolute SCUM.

And of course they have iPhones and drink coffee in Starbucks.

Tom Mann Centuria · 17-02-2018 9:49pm

Hector Savage wrote: »

Anarchists ?
So what it's a good thing that he engages with this absolute and utter scum ???

I see these scum squatting in cities I have lived in, saying they are against the banks and big corps but at the end of the day they are kicking a family out of their apartment so they can live for free - absolute SCUM.

And of course they have iPhones and drink coffee in Starbucks.

Squatters tend to move in after bailiffs have kicked a family out of their home. Don't hear of many squatter gangs carrying out forced evictions.

BuilderPlumber · 17-02-2018 9:55pm

Chrongen wrote: »

Chomsky doesn't appear on TV or is rarely referenced because he tells the truth.

That makes him a dangerous man.

Why endanger the status quo with a scholar like Chomsky when you can numb people's senses with the verbal diarrhoea from the likes of Tom Friedman.

Chomsky is intelligent and he knows what he is talking about. America's blatant propaganda to sell its wars is something we have been seeing with years. The main way was to overexaggerate the importance and threat from a third world dictator and then blacken him as much as possible. In the 1960s, it was Fidel Castro. Then, it was Ho Chi Minh In the 1980s, it was Daniel Ortega, Ayatollah Khomeini and Colonel Gaddafi. Then it was Saddam. Each one we were told posed a threat to the entire world despite not being from a superpower. Saddam especially was blackened and he was supposed to have WMD that could be delivered in 45 minutes to hit most parts of the West. He was also said to have terrorist cells ready to attack. He had nothing of the sort. And that's why he was attacked. Chomsky and others have woken people up to the myth of America being the world's policeman protecting us from 'evil mass murderers' akin to Dirty Harry protecting San Francisco from Scorpio.

Hector Savage · 17-02-2018 10:01pm

Tom Mann Centuria wrote: »

Squatters tend to move in after bailiffs have kicked a family out of their home. Don't hear of many squatter gangs carrying out forced evictions.

Or when people are away, either way it's not their home, they shouldn't be in there the scum.

Or moving in before people have moved in after buying a place, thats another way they do it, and then takes months/years to get them out, meanwhile the hoinest working family have to pay the mortgage.

These anarchists/squatters/antifa brigade are absolute scum - amount of idiots that fall for their bull**** "noble" cause, give me a break!!!

Greentopia · 17-02-2018 10:08pm

Wibbs wrote: »

Last year a mutual elderly neighbour popped their clogs and what struck me was how much of their stuff was going to end up in landfill. The vast bulk of it. Save for a couple of pieces all the furniture ended up in a hole in the ground(and most of it was near new BTW). Same for out of date electronics, decorative items, clothes etc(the charity shops will only take so much). I asked the guys doing the clearing out and they told me that these days most stuff in house clearances unless it's antique type stuff or brand new and current goes to the dump. People don't want it. They'd rather traipse zombie like and corralled around Ikea, credit cards burning a hole in their pockets buying new tat made from the finest Chinesium. And then dump that in a couple of years. Sh1t, Ikea's catalogue runs alone must be chewing up forests like wildfire.

They could have taken what the charity shops wouldn't accept to a recycling centre? or put it on Buy and Sell, Gumtree, Craigslist or any of the other websites where you can list stuff to take away for free or for a low price. Ludicrous to send anything to the dump nowadays, especially things that will not break down and have polluting components and metals like electronics.

I agree about the lunacy of amassing so much cheaply made crap. I believe that many in the US have so much stuff they rent out storage space to put the overflow because even their ginormous houses can't fit it all. :rolleyes:

The current fashion for minimalism is a good thing, but it has to be a genuine attempt to live a more simple, less consumeristic life. Not an excuse to show how virtuous you are, while the following year you ditch all your carefully curated eco friendly homeware and clothing and replace them with all the latest versions.

Wibbs wrote: »

I pointed this out to battery buggy boyo and the sheer criminal fcuking waste involved repeated throughout the western world and the penny started to drop with him, but he could only take it so far. Bemoaned the folly of it and then went off to work to help him buy more tat on his credit card, because the headspace wouldn't take a major shift and he'd find it hard to forego the dopamine hit of the smell of new Chinesium. He's the norm pretty much. I know right on vegans who will protest about the environment at the drop of a ethnically sourced organic bobble hat while buying two new phones a year, filling their gaffs with tat from Amazon and flying to far flung places to chant Ommmm with their fellow smelly fart brigade. Rinse and fcuking repeat.

Ah yes, cognitive dissonance is a discomfiting thing alright.

In fairness there are some who genuinely do walk the walk and live by the principles they preach of being an ethical consumer and making do with what they've got and wearing that out instead of upgrading to the latest shiniest gadgets, clothes, cars or whatever, but they do seem to be in the minority. Reduce should be first and foremost, but many like to concentrate more on recycle. Reduce what comes in and then there isn't so much to recycle and reuse.

I like the 'tiny homes' movement that seems to be gaining popularity alongside the minimalist one, especially in the US and Australia. A backlash against the proliferation of huge ugly McMansions there it seems. We could do with a bit of that in Ireland, but methinks we're not ready for it yet.

20Cent · 17-02-2018 10:11pm

Hector Savage wrote: »

Or when people are away, either way it's not their home, they shouldn't be in there the scum.

Or moving in before people have moved in after buying a place, thats another way they do it, and then takes months/years to get them out, meanwhile the hoinest working family have to pay the mortgage.

These anarchists/squatters/antifa brigade are absolute scum - amount of idiots that fall for their bull**** "noble" cause, give me a break!!!

Noam Chomsky moved into my house when I took the family away for a weekend break. Took months and thousands of Euro to get him out. He used up my nice coffee and ate all the after eights.

Franz Von Peppercorn · 17-02-2018 10:19pm

Hector Savage wrote: »

Anarchists ?
So what it's a good thing that he engages with this absolute and utter scum ???

I see these scum squatting in cities I have lived in, saying they are against the banks and big corps but at the end of the day they are kicking a family out of their apartment so they can live for free - absolute SCUM.

And of course they have iPhones and drink coffee in Starbucks.

They kick a family out? Never seen that. Think the police would intervene.

Franz Von Peppercorn · 17-02-2018 10:22pm

Greentopia wrote: »

They could have taken what the charity shops wouldn't accept to a recycling centre? or put it on Buy and Sell, Gumtree, Craigslist or any of the other websites where you can list stuff to take away for free or for a low price. Ludicrous to send anything to the dump nowadays, especially things that will not break down and have polluting components and metals like electronics.

I agree about the lunacy of amassing so much cheaply made crap. I believe that many in the US have so much stuff they rent out storage space to put the overflow because even their ginormous houses can't fit it all. :rolleyes:

The current fashion for minimalism is a good thing, but it has to be a genuine attempt to live a more simple, less consumeristic life. Not an excuse to show how virtuous you are, while the following year you ditch all your carefully curated eco friendly homeware and clothing and replace them with all the latest versions.

Ah yes, cognitive dissonance is a discomfiting thing alright.

In fairness there are some who genuinely do walk the walk and live by the principles they preach of being an ethical consumer and making do with what they've got and wearing that out instead of upgrading to the latest shiniest gadgets, clothes, cars or whatever, but they do seem to be in the minority. Reduce should be first and foremost, but many like to concentrate more on recycle. Reduce what comes in and then there isn't so much to recycle and reuse.

I like the 'tiny homes' movement that seems to be gaining popularity alongside the minimalist one, especially in the US and Australia. A backlash against the proliferation of huge ugly McMansions there it seems. We could do with a bit of that in Ireland, but methinks we're not ready for it yet.

I’ve been in the small house movement in Ireland since I was a child.

Greentopia · 17-02-2018 10:26pm

Hector Savage wrote: »

Anarchists ?
So what it's a good thing that he engages with this absolute and utter scum ???

I see these scum squatting in cities I have lived in, saying they are against the banks and big corps but at the end of the day they are kicking a family out of their apartment so they can live for free - absolute SCUM.

And of course they have iPhones and drink coffee in Starbucks.

He's been an anarcho-syndicalist since the age of about 13, long before the vast majority of any anarchist squatters you talk about were born.

If you think that's all anarchy is about I suggest you learn a bit more before you rush to judgement. 'Demanding the Impossible-a history of Anarchism' by Peter Marshall, 'The conquest of Bread'-Peter Kropotkin, 'Anarchism'-Colin Ward, or indeed the excellent 'Chomsky on Anarchism' by said author are all excellent primers on the subject.

I don't know what families you're talking about or where that was, but I can assure you it's not squatters who force hard working families out of their homes.
And none of the anarchists I know have expensive phones or drink Starbucks. That's middle class liberals you're thinking of.

I'll let the good professor himself explain briefly what anarchism actually means:

https://youtu.be/7_Bv2MKY7uI

17-02-2018 10:36pm

It's not just your average ethnic-cleansing-loving Zionist who hates Chomsky's truth. This interview in early 1994 about his trip to the last remnant of Britain's Irish colony would, in early 1994, have upset the vast majority of journalists in Dublin, every single writer in the Sunday Independent without exception, the entire front bench of John Bruton's Fine Gael (who at the time gave us gems like "The Famine was a shared experience between the British and Irish"), Proinsias de Rossa and Michael McDowell:

I spent my time either in West Belfast, which is mainly Catholic and a very repressed area, or southern parts of Northern Ireland, within what is called "bandit country," places where the British troops can only go in in fairly substantial force and where there have been plenty of atrocities. I talked to human rights activists. I was at the Center for Human Rights talking to Gerry Adams, the head of Sinn Féin, and others, and to a lot of people. The country is under military occupation. There's no secret about that. There are armored personnel carriers going through the streets, armed blockades right in the middle of Belfast center, etc.There is plenty of killing by paramilitaries on both sides. There is open debate about the extent to which or if the British forces are connected to the loyalists, the mainly Protestant paramilitary, and there is probably some connection, but nobody knows how much. In the Catholic community, listening to the stories was very much like walking around the West Bank a couple of years ago, the same kinds of humiliation and beating and torture. There aren't a lot of ways to have your boot on someone's neck. It always turns out about the same.

Truth, buckets of it right there. Imagine that: an outsider visiting British-occupied Ireland in 1993/94 and concluding the place was under military occupation and that the British state was colluding with their British loyalist paramilitary forces in murdering the native Irish forces of resistance. You just would never, ever have got that view off the "free press" in Dublin, which was almost entirely controlled by a now bankrupt knight of the British Empire, Anthony O'Reilly.

Chomsky has always been a breath of fresh air; long may the now 90-year-old continue. From living on a Kibbutz in Israel as a young man to being repulsed at Zionists usurping his vision of Israel and consequently standing up for the dispossessed Palestinians for the rest of his life the man has a greater integrity than most would have the courage to live by.

Greentopia · 17-02-2018 10:39pm

Franz Von Peppercorn wrote: »

I’ve been in the small house movement in Ireland since I was a child.

Hah, before it was fashionable you mean? ahead of the game there Franz.

In all seriousness I know many who were brought up in small houses-my own wasn't exactly a mansion, but this movement is by choice it seems.

and the ones I see on YouTube and Instagram are all beautiful hand made wooden homes with bespoke furniture made to make the most of the small area, not cramped concrete built semi-ds or cottages.

And some are so small they fit onto trailers and can be moved around. Would love one of those myself actually!

evolving_doors · 17-02-2018 10:58pm

About 20 years ago he was saying that General Electric were the real illuminati. Is that still a thing?

Wibbs · 17-02-2018 11:15pm

Greentopia wrote: »

They could have taken what the charity shops wouldn't accept to a recycling centre? or put it on Buy and Sell, Gumtree, Craigslist or any of the other websites where you can list stuff to take away for free or for a low price.

I dunno about that particular neighbour GT, but I do know of two other folks in similar circumstances who advertised on Donedeal and Adverts to give their stuff away and not a single phone call or email after a fortnight. One of these was before Christmas. The recycling crowds will take old leccy bits(which TBH the guys clearing out would be taking them there) and cloth. Sofas and chairs and beds and that sorta thing will go into a hole in the ground for the most part.

Ludicrous to send anything to the dump nowadays, especially things that will not break down and have polluting components and metals like electronics.

I agree. Even furniture with the varnishes, glues and other treatments aren't as "green" as some can think.

I agree about the lunacy of amassing so much cheaply made crap. I believe that many in the US have so much stuff they rent out storage space to put the overflow because even their ginormous houses can't fit it all. :rolleyes:

Yep. Not just our Yankee cousins, the EU is the second largest consumer market in the world. I have found Irish folks tend to want new. I suppose there are cultural reasons for that too. Not so long ago a large chunk of Irish society was pretty short of money and didn't have much by way of quality stuff to pass on to friends and rellies after death(you see that in the Irish antique trade. Local quality stuff is almost exclusively coming down from the top percentage of the wealthy Irish of the past). What they did have had little or no monetary value once it became used/old. So when the "cheap" credit came along in the 90's it was natural for folks to do better than their parents and buy new as a mark of leaving that past behind.

There was also the mend and make do attitude almost gone today. Not just among the average or poor either, the top percentage were just as against throwing quality stuff out. One reason after all why quality antiques exist. Ironically the real old money tend to still feel like that. Buy quality that lasts a lifetime sorta thing. In many respects the average person in the 1930's was far more "green" overall with less of an environmental impact than the average person today.

The current fashion for minimalism is a good thing, but it has to be a genuine attempt to live a more simple, less consumeristic life. Not an excuse to show how virtuous you are, while the following year you ditch all your carefully curated eco friendly homeware and clothing and replace them with all the latest versions.

+1.

In fairness there are some who genuinely do walk the walk and live by the principles they preach of being an ethical consumer and making do with what they've got and wearing that out instead of upgrading to the latest shiniest gadgets, clothes, cars or whatever, but they do seem to be in the minority.

Oh they are, they do and they are.

Reduce what comes in and then there isn't so much to recycle and reuse.

Exactly.

I like the 'tiny homes' movement that seems to be gaining popularity alongside the minimalist one, especially in the US and Australia. A backlash against the proliferation of huge ugly McMansions there it seems. We could do with a bit of that in Ireland, but methinks we're not ready for it yet.

I dont think we are. Yet.

In fairness and with full disclosure I would be a hoarder. But I generally buy old stuff and recycle. About the only things I buy new other than IT gear(when it breaks and I can't fix it) would be jocks, socks and tee shirts. Even the techie stuff is secondhand. My phone is an iPhone 5 from I dunno 2013? Hell my car is eligible to vote and drink.

The furniture is all either family pieces or "antique". I needed a wardrobe many moons ago and got a fancy Art Deco one for a hundred odd quid(antique wardrobes are usually dirt cheap and often broken for their fancy woods/veneers). I needed a chest of drawers and the new stuff was over a hundred quid for anything halfway decent, so for 200 quid I got a 17th century oak sideboard. It was cheaper, because it had been cut down from three drawers to two in the 19th century when the Tudor/Jacobean revival trend kicked off and people had smaller houses. All hand sawn and held together with wooden pins, not a nail to be found. For the same price or less than a Harvey Norman special. And if I sold it tomorrow I'd get my money back on it if not a little more.

Noam Chomsky

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