Chomsky was doing so many podcasts up to the moment he disappeared from the radar presumably due to medical issues. I've seen him going for 2 hours with some nobody with 5K followers, being asked juvenile and stupid questions and answering with the patient of a Saint. He looked quite diminished physically, elderly and frail but mentally he's always sharp and his recall and memory is scary.
I feel that in his later years he made a conscious effort to talk to young people and made them aware of the history and depth of the problems the world is facing, and he used very modern avenues to do so, like podcast interviews. I will always have the highest degree of respect for this man and an admiration for his integrity, sensitivity and scholarship.
I’ve spent so much time watching this kind of content (plus the older lectures that are available) over almost a year of chores, lunches, and walks that it’s honestly bordering on parasocial. I of course don’t regret a minute; if you check these recent videos out it’s clear that he reiterates the same points over and over, but it never quite gets tiresome. Rather it gives the impression of someone who has truly glimpsed the structure of the universe, and thus is consistently going back to those same principles.
Of course, I would recommend choosing “one half of his brain” (his terms) and not mixing the politics interviews with the cognitive science / philosophy ones lol. I haven’t looked for many linguistics talks of his from recent years, but I had the impression he was working on seriously technical stuff there right up until he couldn’t, too.
I don’t know how I hope to sleep after this comment… I guess I’ll do him the honor of trying to rationalize my emotional/ethical interests, and care less about the passing of a world-renowned twice-(happily-)married scholar than the passing of children from war and famine.
I hope he believes in us to finish his life’s work, answering the most fundamental question: “What kind of creatures are we?” He was never able to see his theories in the recent LLM breakthroughs, but we’re in the early stages of the Chomskian era of AI, philosophy, and human endeavors writ large, I think… the ChatGPT outage from earlier this year couldn’t have supported him any better without having said “colorless green ideas sleep furiously” outright!
If you go to youtube and look for chomsky interview or chomsky podcast and find the recent ones (the ones where he looks terrible!). There are hundreds I think. Some examples I had in my recent watch history
I love Noam Chomsky so much. To me he is epitome of what a rational caring intellectual should be. Number one, he strives for the truth and while can have intellectual blind spots, isn't afraid of calling them out.
We had him has a guest speaker for an internal presentation at Google and of course we had some hyper-rational libertarian eastern block swe kid who was going to take him down and Noam was super respectful, spared with the kid for awhile and then changed the subject slightly while destroying the libertarian kid's entire argument.
I don't. There are some things out there that are up for debate. But not Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Chomsky, for some weird reason, chose to take Russia's side.
Edit: To be sure, I wish him full recovery and many more happy years.
> Chomsky, for some weird reason, chose to take Russia's side.
This is a mischaracterization. He explained Russia's stated motivation for invading Ukraine, that it felt threatened by NATO's continual eastward encroachment and breaking of promises not to do so. That's different than endorsing the invasion, which he did not.
There were never any promises, and Putin barely even cared that it resulted in Finland and Sweden joining NATO.
Because Russia's stated motivation for invading Ukraine was never Putin's actual reason, which is basically an emotional desire for historical greatness by reclaiming Russia's lost empire, combined with war always being an excellent mechanism for staying in power and distracting from domestic problems.
So it's sad to see anyone falling for Putin's lies so easily. (See also Mearshimer.)
There are many many reasons for war, not just because Putin wrote a fancy paper long ago about his aspirin, or because the drought in Crimea was costing Russia tons of money since they took over and had their water cut off or the falling population and economy that purposely did not reinvest properly to keep Putin in power.
Giving a simple answer is not wrong if the long one takes much longer to explain. Multiple factors can be true, I'm sure Russia was uneasy that Siberia wanted to leave and with Ukraine gone they would have no direct access to water there. And the threat of China slowing taking over Russian land *with Russian permission of course*. Russia has attempted to do something even if extremely poorly miscalculated. That's kinda what Russia is known for, doing something and very often failing at it.
They have been lucky, sometimes clever but often terrible truly terrible at long term long planning. Ask their unpatriotic AI what it thinks, they will get mad about it too.
But how do you know so clearly that the one thing is a lie and the other is the truth?
Even if you reject the "encroaching NATO" narrative, what makes "Putin just woke up one day and decided that remaking the Soviet Union and/or the zarist Russian Empire would be a great thing to do in the 21th century" the more plausible hypothesis?
What information do you have that Mearsheimer doesn't?
There are plenty of articles by respected international relations and Russia experts you can find that explains it quite clearly.
The IR community does not share Mearsheimer's take. He is very much known to be the exception. Which is why he's the only one we're referring to by name here, because his analysis is so contrary to the overwhelming consensus of experts.
(Having both "pro-russian" and "pro-western" family members, so I'm engaged in lots of discussions currently and would be glad for new information, no matter which side)
I think it's important which countries the experts are coming from. That our own IR/Russia experts are sharing this view doesn't seem very surprising to me - it's a war situation after all. I just notice that a lot of non-Western countries seem to be at least undecided which narrative to follow, e.g. Brazil, India, Turkey, many African countries. (Ignoring China which is obviously allied with Russia and therefore also has a clear bias).
Also, BRICS membership seems to be in demand, what I wouldn't expect if it was generally believed to be dominated by an insane, warmongering megalomaniac.
Mearsheimer is not alone though (even though it's definitely a minority position here). Jeffrey Sax, Ulrike Guerot and, well, Noam Chomsky come to mind, or also organisations such as fair.org with well-documented sources.
Additionally, the court with relevant jurisdiction (composed of impartial judges from western and non-western countries) has decided that Putin should be arrested and tried for his crimes: https://www.icc-cpi.int/news/situation-ukraine-icc-judges-is...
This doesn't seem to contradict Chomsky's take, who doesn't seem to endorse any kind of war or violence at all. Hence his take seems to be a critique on western behavior that seems fair and warranted.
>They can never be invaded or conquered again, by anyone, ever.
Why does thinking about nuclear weapons cause most people to think in absolutist terms like this?
Maybe Russia was counting on getting a 15-minute warning of ICBMs approaching, but if a hostile military can station missile right on their southwestern border (523 miles from the center of Moscow) their plan goes out the window.
It wouldn't, because their SSBNs and their hidden silos would ensure the counter strike afterwards.
USA isn't counting on a 15 minute warning either, MAD is ensured via second strike capability AFTER the first strike, if you are counting for the first strike you've already lost.
Well it seems to be well-established MAD orthodoxy that if your enemy has nukes right at your border, and you don't have nukes right at their border, your deterrence ability is diminished.
In any case, even in a MAD setting every side will be constantly trying to manoeuver to a position of advantage. That's what military people do when they're not actually fighting, kind of how computer nerds play video games when they're not coding, eh?
Cuba was more of a sovereignty/sphere-of-influence problem than a nuclear-warfare problem. That ship has long since sailed with regard to Russia's borders. Moscow is half-surrounded on the west, as well it should be given its history of combining expansionist behavior with atrocities like communism and the Holodomor.
The Russians have had more than ample opportunity to join the civilized world and stop acting like dicks, but that's apparently not what they want to do. So, containment it is.
And if they feared NATO encroachment on their borders, trying to take over Ukraine was a really stupid way to discourage that. Nukes are scary enough, but nukes in the hands of stupid people are downright terrifying. Personally I doubt any of theirs still work, but that's all too easy to say.
Where are you getting your sources from here? The Cuban Missile Crisis occurred in the context of the early 1960s whereby bombers were the primary method of delivery. Since the late 1960s, the ICBM is the bedrock of the MAD strategy, and the need of a second-strike capability via SSBNs and hidden silos after absorbing a nuclear attack.
>In any case, even in a MAD setting every side will be constantly trying to manoeuver to a position of advantage.
There is no real "advantage" over having an extra few minutes or not. Russia is also building some sort of nuclear tsunami weapon, the US does not care. Because the strategy remains unchanged from threat of ICBMs. Frankly speaking, if you want to talk about what actually is a disadvantage for Russia right now, it's this war. If NATO actually invaded, they'd caught with their pants down. Hell, the US might even successfully ensure a first strike given they moved their air defences away.
The fact that Putin started this war even when knowing this should tell you that he dosen't actually view NATO as a threat. And they're not, from the Houthis, to Iran to Hamas, everbody can tell the US has no stomach for a war. This is not the result of US aggression, it is the result of US unassertiveness
>> If NATO actually invaded, they'd caught with their pants down.
The problem with that is that NATO is next door to Russia now. Nuclear deterrence doesn't work that well when it means nuking your foot.
Seen another way, Russia doesn't need ICBMs to reach London, Paris, Berlin...
But, really, try to think more carefully of what you're discussing: nuclear war. The threat to the existence of human civilisation from that is too big for macho politics and "we're stronger than them" braggadocio. As Chomsky pointed out once, and as aggravating as this is, that means letting assholes get away with murder on the international scene; which means not just Russia, but also the US, Israel, China, and who knows who else, in time.
We just funded and managed two 20 year wars across the planet from our borders, one in a landlocked country. Russia couldn't move a tank column down a highway at the beginning of this war.
Putin is definitely crushing us at manly and assertive displays, though.
Pretty much? They have logistics problems 20 miles from their borders, we had excellent logistics for 20 years in frickin Afghanistan. They built Taco Bell restaurants on the bases. These are entirely different leagues of capability.
Russians are winning now because they've figured out logistics within 50 miles of their borders compared to earlier in the war. Still doesn't mean they can project globally, and everyone knows.
Russian SSBNs stay pretty close to base. They don't range over the world's oceans like US ones do, and ISTR an expert opining that the US can probably track them.
But on second thought, I concede that the shortened warning time relative to ICBMs is probably not a major cause of Russia's anxiety about Ukraine.
> How would you go about invading Russia, as a senior NATO commander? Russia's stated policy is to deploy nuclear arms against any invading force
I'd take advantage of Russia's folly of invading a neighboring country and use that opportunity to destroy Russia's military forces, all while hampering their ability to rebuild that materiel.
Meanwhile, I'd have anti-ICBM technology in place so if Russia did try to launch, it would be largely ineffective. Besides, if Russia did try to launch, they'd lose the few allies they have, save for North Korea. It would probably also ensure Siberia leaves - and at that point Russia would be powerless to stop it.
>How would you go about invading Russia, as a senior NATO commander?
NATO would have to nuke Russia, then invade. Tank crew are protected from fallout radiation. If they have filtered air, I think they can enter "fallout plumes" right away. Soldiers not protected by tanks will be able to enter in about 3 weeks: weapons fallout is very different in character from the contamination from, e.g., Chernobyl or Fukushima. It dissipates much more rapidly. In fact, since the fallout plumes will cover only about half of the land area or less, the tanks can map out the locations of the plumes, after which the infantry might be able to enter the parts of the country missed by the fallout plumes well before 3 weeks after the end of the nuclear attack. (The fallout stays in one place after it has fallen out of the sky and has hit the ground -- or more precisely the fallout that does end up being blown around by the wind after it has hit the ground is small enough in particle size to not be deadly, though it will mess up your mucus membranes via beta radiation, hence my words above about filtering the air for the tanks.)
When Jens Stoltenberg says that a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought, his "cannot be won" is not literally true. He is saying it to emphasize that NATO would never even consider starting a nuclear war. And in fact I don't think the US or NATO ever would choose to start an intercontinental nuclear war, but it is very hard for the Kremlin to come to understand the US well enough to be as confident of that as I am (having lived in the US for over 60 years). Also, the people who run Russia and who will run Russia after Putin is dead are professional spies. They are evaluated by how seriously they take national security. Also, Russia has been invaded about 50 times in its recorded history: by the French, the Germans, a Polish-Lithuanian confederation, Sweden, the Turks many times, various groups (other than the Turks) looking to get slaves, Central Asian peoples and many kinds of steppe nomads (mostly notably the Mongols, Tatars and Cossacks). The whole country takes national security very seriously.
Of course NATO would want to evacuate its cities before it begins its attack. If it does, more than half of its population will survive the inevitable Russian response -- probably much more than half. (It's been a while since I saw the relevant papers.) Also, the US has spent many tens of billions on research into missile defense, and Russia cannot know with any certainly whether that research has born enough fruit so that the US can shoot down most of Russia ICBMs in a big war. Also, the Kremlin has expressed concern that the US Aegis system can shoot down Russian ICBMs, and now that Ukraine is good buddies with NATO, Russia has to consider the possibility of NATO's stationing many Aegis systems in Eastern Ukraine in addition to the Aegis systems already on US destroyers in the Baltic Sea.
In 1951 or so, China sent an army of about a million men against a large number of soldiers of the US Army. This Chinese army had the usual instructions from its political masters, namely, to kill as many US soldiers as possible and to destroy their equipment. They did this even though they would only get their first nuke in the 1960s whereas in 1951 the US had hundreds of nukes. Although the events I just described are a far cry from China's invading the US homeland, it does go against the notion that nukes are somehow a magical shield against conventional military attacks if even a non-nuclear military will contemplate attacking a nuclear power.
By the way, consider the motive of Beijing in 1951: the reason they risked getting nuked was to avoid having a regime (namely, the regime in Seoul) friendly to the US on their border. They preferred having a buffer state, namely, North Korea between them and any country friendly enough with the US to maybe agree to host US troops. They preferred it so much that they sent a million men and risked getting nuked. That is one of the data points that led Mearsheimer, Kissinger, Merkel, Sarkozy and many other security experts to criticize the plan of adding Ukraine to NATO. (Merkel and Sarkozy stopped their criticism because Paris and Berlin depend on Washington to guarantee their security, which gives Washington the last word on Paris and Berlin's security policy, so they went along with the plan even though that thought they still thought it was dumb.)
I think this doesnt really add up. Cause as soon as the US would invaded Russia, not only would Russia nuke the invading armies. They would very probably also start nuking command infrastructure. Which might or might not trigger the MADs doctrine.
Let me try again. The US has about 1400 nuclear weapons or more precisely it has "intercontinental delivery systems" to deliver that many warheads to targets in Russia. (If it is cheating on its obligations under the New START treaty, it could have more.) The US would use most or all of those 1400 warheads on Russia before it starts its invasion. It makes no sense to start an invasion of Russia (e.g., with tanks and trucks) without first thoroughly nuking it (hitting cities, infrastructure and military bases).
(And it makes no sense to nuke Russia without first evacuating US cities and advising Americans to make fallout shelters, which would mostly consist of trenches dug into the ground covered by logs or plywood covered by a plastic sheet to keep out the rain covered by 18 inches of dirt.)
All of which, mind, would be readily visible to any Russian spy satellite, essentially telegraphing intent to Moscow months to years in advance. (Those are large construction projects, of an abnormal nature, which would likely take quite a bit of industrial scale coordination to pull off).
Think about it. There would be acts of Congress involved with drumming up and establishing funding and fiscal programs devoted to the task of constructing, or making available to everyone the material to construct these types of shelters. Once it was prioritized as s National Security priority posture, you can bet your sweet rear Moscow would be on the line to Washington/the State Department, and similarly mobilizing their own interests in response to what would be a transparent act of escalation in the abscence of any reasonable explanation. It would also be a clear signal to someone who actually had some intent to initiate or chance a strike that somehow, news of that had leaked to their adversaries as well, even if they vehemently denied any such intent up to zero-day.
You don't just mobilize on that kind of scale, militarily, or civically without sending very clear and obvious signals to other nation states with even a modicum of interest in self-preservation in the face of external threats. Especially in today's highly interconnected world.
And because that whole Tom Clancy scenario hinges critically on whether the initial NATO missile attack is launched from 523 miles away or 1500, Ukraine should run the white flag up the pole, accept Putin's terms, and get over themselves, already.
There's no difference in distance between Latvia/Estonia (NATO members) and Ukraine.
NATO threat to Russia is internal fear-mongering propaganda and I have no idea why Mearsheimer and others talk about it with a serious face. We're not in the middle of 20th century anymore.
On one hand we have EU/US/NATO intelligence saying Kiev will fall in 72 hours to the 2nd best army in the world.
And then on the other hand we must believe Mearsheimer that Putin really fears that EU/US/NATO would start a war out of the blue with a country that has 45% of world's nuclear arsenal in the middle of Europe?
Give me a break.
No one sane in Europe is interested to start a war with Russia.
Europe and especially Merkel have spent the last few decades turning Russia into an important trading partner and tying them heavily into the European market. This worked well for them with the economic union post World War 2 (that turned into the European Union) which stopped wars in Europe for almost a century.
Similar approach was taken with Russia, but sadly it didn't work.
Russia has every right to fear NATO and make plans around it. But to say Russia invaded Ukraine because of NATO (or nazis) is nonsense.
I don't believe you'll even find any Russian opposition/anti-government journalist/scientist/economist or politician talk the "NATO threat" reasoning seriously. They know what Putin has been doing to their country for the last 20+ years, and it has nothing to do with NATO.
Russia has had Baltic states right on their borders for 20 years since they joined NATO. So if this was their plan it’s out the window regardless.
Russia wants to regain its "lost" territories, started with annexation of tchetchenia (2 wars), annexation of parts of Georgia, and annexation of Crimea. Ukraine was next regardless. They already annexed the break away republics of Ukraine, and even land that they since lost.
No need for pretexts (NATO, denazification, biolabs, or protection of Ukraine ethnic Russians) to explain Ukraine invasion. Ukraine not ruling out joining NATO meant they had to invade while they could, or let go the dream of a glorious Grand Russia.
I mean, they don’t even hide it, it’s all over their state TV networks, with propagandists telling things like "Europe will be ours", "To Berlin", and "The world belongs to the superior Russian race". It’s textbook fascism, state-sponsored, casual, on modern TV shows. I find it disturbing that some still think they are the victim and it’s all about NATO imperialism. When was the last time some NATO country annexed some land?
> Maybe Russia was counting on getting a 15-minute warning of ICBMs approaching, but if a hostile military can station missile right on their southwestern border
Give me a break. You can throw a rock from Estonia and hit Saint Petersburg, look at a map of the area sometime. Estonia has been in NATO for over 15 years or something like that. Somehow Russia's been ok with that situation so far as to not start a shooting war over it.
This war with Ukraine is purely a war of aggression based on a Russian chauvinistic narrative of history. Putin explicitly says so in his writings, e.g. "On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians".
Mearsheimer "has" all the information; it just doesn't fit his preferred narrative ("The U.S needs to stop picking on Russia so they can team up together against China"), so he discards the parts get in the way of that narrative. Such as the long and deep history of Russia's colonial attitude toward Ukraine, for example.
As to a more realistic narrative -- it's a bit more nuanced than the formulation you suggest, but even so -- is pretty much obvious once we look at the things Putin and key people around him have been saying, along with the last 350 years of so of Russia's history vis-a-vis its neighbors and Belarus and Ukraine in particular.
The links in the short comment tree below (which answered essentially the same question from just a few weeks ago) might be useful here:
One of Putin's stated goals when he came to power was joining NATO. He did not feel threatened by it until he needed to justify his imperialistic behavior.
Or until the European stance changed, under the influence of the US, from one of including Russia to excluding. At least that's what Ulrike Guerot claims to have experienced.
I have no idea if this is true. I also don't want to say that Russia always tells the whole truth without lies and propaganda. But I'm finding it rather that our own side doesn't behave in the Ukraine conflict as we behave in other conflicts between third countries. We also engage in a lot of propaganda and biased reporting, especially on the topic of Ukraine and Israel (as shown by fair.org), so I've become careful too quickly deciding what the truth is.
(I do disagree in at least one point with all the russia apologists though: Whatever may have happened in Ukraine before the war and whatever the larger context is, what is happening right now there is driven by Russia and is absolutely devastating for Ukrainians. That Ukrainians hate Russia is absolutely understandable.
So I think we should continue to support Ukraine. Nevertheless, if there was some hidden context in the lead-up of the war, it would be in our best interests to expose this.)
>> So it's sad to see anyone falling for Putin's lies so easily. (See also Mearshimer.)
Mearsheimer can be a bit too convincing for his own good, surely. What he has argued that is certainly convincing is that Russia was ready to negotiate a peace at the start of the war, when Russians and Ukrainians met in Belarus and then in Istanbul. If Putin wanted to recreate Imperial Russia, or the Soviet Union, then why would he negotiate for peace?
That's Mearsh's argument, which he articulates, e.g. here in Lex Friedman's show (sorry, I couldn't find a better source):
Exactly. Both 1st + 2nd order thinking are needed when evaluating the PR efforts of leaders, particularly when their messages go against their actions.
I don't know, maybe? All those sound plausible but then you have to try and justify each of them with some kind of evidence of some sort, otherwise you're just playing the guessing game.
Now, I don't like guessing. When Russia entered negotiations the war was clearly not going its way, so the obvious explanation is that Putin wanted to disentangle from it with the least damage to his image as possible.
The question is why the negotiations failed, if they were really as advanced as suggested in the articles I linked above. Since the name of Boris Johnson has been brought up (in the context of being one of the Western representatives that told Zelenskiy to drop the deal) I tend to believe that a peace deal failed because at least one side in the negotiations was incompetent fools who should have never made it in power. That the other side is probably the same makes no difference.
This is wrong. Completely. Russia never negotiated in good faith. The only goal of these negotiations were an attempt to force very unfavorable terms on Ukraine - taking Ukrainian land and forcing them to destroy all their defence capacity without any warranty of no future invasion. Ukraine was never going to take such deal - no Westerner was needed to tell that. This is what people actually knowledgeable about the negation have revealed.
The problem is that Western media picks too easily up even the most stupid Russian narratives.
If Putin wanted to recreate Imperial Russia, or the Soviet Union, then why would he negotiate for peace?
Because as he keeps saying over and over -- the only "peace" he will accept is one in which his claims to sovereignty on the territories he is currently sitting are recognized by Western powers. This was his core demand during the Istanbul talks, and it's his current demand now (though he's upped it a bit recently to include regime change in Kyiv).
For a serial territorial aggressor like the modern Russian state, "peace" is simply another mechanism for arriving that same the desired end state.
It's also useful as a propaganda tool, to mollify the opposition to what he's doing ("See, Putin just wants peace -- he even says so!"), get people to start talking about how costly the war is, how the West is the real aggresor and so forth. That's where Mearsheimer et al come in.
That's probably because the wars started by "the West" (US and allies) are significantly more than the wars started by Russia or the USSR. See: vietnam, Korea, Iraq, Afghanistan. Not that Russia is some big supporter of peace, but the US and its allies are the current global bully. And you don't need Mearsheimer to tell you that.
So if Russia wants to get to play the top bully too, for a while -- well, we should just cut them some slack and let them have their way for a while? Because fair is fair, right?
That seems to be the essence of your argument here.
(None of those wars are directly analogous to what Russia is doing to Ukraine right now of course; but never mind that for now).
Who is "we"? I'm not American. Why should I treat American and Russian aggression differently?
And yes, the wars were not directly analogous but the stark reality of the matter is that the US and RUssia are two of the world bullies that are capable of invading anyone they like, and nobody can do anything about it. Again: why should I like one more than the other? Why should anyone, who is not their citizen?
Just to be clear, I did not "apologize" for anyone. I think you mean that I'm an apologist for someone or other? I should also clarify that, no, I am not. I am a peacenick and a anti-nationalist and I dislike all nations equally, especially the ones that go to war over perceived threats to their territorial integrity or their national interests etc. None of those things are more valuable than human lives.
To be even more clear: those nations include Russia, the US, China, and basically every other national entity with an army that you might want to propose.
For the record, I also dislike, strongly, people on the internet who cannot hold a conversation without insulting their interlocutor, or accusing them of some perceived mind crime.
I meant in terms of apologetics, in the sense of "vigorous defenses". Which seemed to apply to the first two comments of yours that I responded to.
If that's not what they were, then I misread them. In regard to the peace negotiations -- it does seem (from some of the sibling threads) like you're very quick to grant the Russian side a pass, and to assign an unduly high a likelihood to the possibility that the Ukrainian/Western side simply botched their end of it (because Boris, etc). An assessment that just doesn't hold up in view of how the Russians conducted themselves during those negotiations, as the person responding to you pointed out:
Check also: Germany, South Korea and Japan have more American militiamen stationed there than the active duty personnel of the majority of the countries in the world.
> That's probably because the wars started by "the West" (US and allies) are significantly more than the wars started by Russia or the USSR. See: vietnam, Korea, Iraq, Afghanistan.
Korea was started by a USSR ally (North Korea invading South Korea), the UN Command (led by the US) was a defensive response.
Vietnam is...well, the whole post-WW2 situation in the region is complicated, but it's reasonable to view it as started by Western allies of the US, particularly France.
Iraq 1990- was started by Iraq.
Iraq 2003 was started by the US.
Afghanistan 1980 was started by the USSR
Afghanistan 2001 was started by the al-Qaeda, a force intimately connected to and defended by the Taliban and based in Taliban-held territory, attacking the US.
Your list of examples doesn't really make a strong case for your thesis.
Fine, I stand corrected: I forgot about Czechoslovakia (I don't think you're right about Korea though).
In any case that still leaves Russia aggression on par with US aggression. My point in this thread is that I don't see the reason to prefer the US and "the West" to Russia. Or China. I would certainly not want to be a citizen of any of those three.
"The Korean War was fought between North Korea and South Korea; it began on 25 June 1950 when North Korea invaded South Korea and ceased after an armistice on 27 July 1953. North Korea was supported by the People's Republic of China and the Soviet Union while South Korea was supported by the United Nations Command (UNC) led by the US."
How many wars post-WWII can you name that were started by US allies? Other than Israel, and excluding domestic terrorism issues (Italy, Germany, UK), I'm drawing a blank here.
Because those negotiations werent about peace, but about the surrender of the Ukrainian armed forces and the legal transfer of territory to the agressors.
Maersheimer and Chomsky are useful idiots of the Kremlin
This is laughable. Russia cannot give any credible security guarantee to a country that it has just invaded! The war has shown precisely that Russia still believes that it has the right to control Ukraine and that any negotiated peace is nothing more than a temporary pause in hostilities in anticipation of a more opportune moment for Russia. Putin is a cypher and no-one really knows exactly why he wants to invade and conquer Ukraine, but as it is enormously plain at this point that he does want to do so, this entails that there is no really workable negotiated settlement.
Ukraine is in no need of further security guarantees from Western countries save the one guarantee that Russia will never accept: NATO membership. Without that – and the associated obligation to offer a direct military response to Russian aggression – it's difficult to see how any security guarantee could possibly extend beyond what Western countries are already providing.
Russia's key conditions for the supposed "deal" that you refer to were that (i) the size of the Ukrainian army would be heavily constrained and that (ii) Russia would have a veto on any response to future aggression against Ukraine. Ukraine rejected the deal because it would have been worthless.
> There were never any promises, and Putin barely even cared that it resulted in Finland and Sweden joining NATO.
you don't know for sure. The only evidence is some notes from brit diplomats I think which refer on such promise..
Also, Ukraine is much more considered as Russian inner territory than Finland and Sweden, and Putin likely got freaked out that pro-western movements will move to actual Russia and kill his regime.
Exactly. I think it's worth considering that people are using "threatened" in two slightly but meaningfully different ways in these discussions. It seems superficially reasonable to defend yourself militarily when "threatened"; but that's only true if that threat is military. However, it seems pretty implausible that either Putin's regime was threatened, or that they thought they were militarily threatened. However, as you point out, it's a lot more plausible they feared cultural contamination.
Putin's regime wanted heavy-handed control over its neighbors; and the Maidan revolution demonstrated not only that this control wasn't as strong as it appeared, but also that it might be possible to break free from that oppression for others too, including perhaps Russian's. That example was the threat from which Putin was "defending" himself.
As much as Chomsky's well-reasoned talks are worth respect, he never really addressed that well. Putin's defense vs. the NATO threat was about as reasonable as a colonial power's "defense" vs. their subject's freedom; and it's also being executed about as reasonably, too. But to hear Chomsky describe it this is basically irrelevant; anything opposed to American overreach is reasonable - even when it's clearly not, and it's not even clear there's any overreach in the matter at hand.
Chomsky, even in recent years, speaks in very clearly and well-thought out, structured arguments.
The way he phrases it, NATO was essentially at fault and the Russian response followed from that. I don't buy that he misspoke or we misheard; the line of reasoning was very clearly stated. We can quibble about what "taking sides" means, but the message he meant to convey was that the current outcome was the US's responsibility.
Chomsky's line of reasoning was clear, but it's always been very weak on this matter (he's said this quite often). It largely ignores the Kremlin's agency; it hardly matters what the US did here since the Kremlin had choices too and those mattered much more. Even more problematically, it ignored both Ukrainian and the wider post-Soviet region's agency as well. NATO expansion was never forced on anyone; to the contrary, it was eagerly sought after, and why? Because the Kremlin wasn't to be trusted, which turned out to be an accurate prediction.
It didn't have to be so; the Kremlin's institutional mistreatment of its neighborhood _caused_ that mistrust and sustain it to this day. The Kremlin could have acted in good faith, and would have continued to receive the warm welcome from western governments that the initial post-Soviet governments did. It could have mended the Soviet-derived mistrust in eastern Europe, and likely easily so given it's richness in natural resources, and the logistical centrality that attracted trade between former USSR nations via Russia, and it's initially warm reception by western powers.
The hint of far-future NATO membership was a "threat" to Putin the way mere talk of bolt-cutters are a threat to a kidnapper. That threat might well have been real, to be clear, but framing it the way Chomsky did isn't helpful; it obscures Putin's (or the Kremlin's inner circle's) choice to be an oppressive, almost colonial power ruling over it's neighbors.
The problem never was talk of bolt-cutters, the problem is that people _wanted_ those for a reason.
Which is basically Russian propaganda. NATO is an invite-only alliance. Ukraine has been begging to be in it, but Russia creates alliances the old-fashioned way - by invading, then raping and pillaging. Name one country that NATO "forced" into the alliance, I'll wait.
All this talk of "poor Russia and its thirteen timezones felt threatened by a defensive alliance" is complete bullshit. It's the "she looked at me wrong so I stabbed her" defense, and the fact that Chomsky could not see right through this is telling.
The explanation is much simpler - Putin wanted to add a slice to the empire, and miscalculated that the West would do nothing, like it did before. And then the bitching and moaning ensued.
Did the neutral Sweden consider joining NATO before the invasion? No. Poor Russia, besieged by all sides by the neighbors who do not want to die defending against Russian recidivist meat waves and in torture cellars.
> He explained Russia's stated motivation for invading Ukraine, that it felt threatened by NATO's continual eastward encroachment and breaking of promises not to do so.
That is a total nonsense that has been called as such by people who were in key positions of power in the USSR and pre-Putin Russia. Out of their irrational anti-american hatred, "intellectuals" like Chomsky choose to blatantly ignore when people like Gorbachev directly say that the sob story about NATO promising not to accept Eastern Europe into the organization is a myth that even theoretically isn't plausible and couldn't be true.
> Chomsky, for some weird reason, chose to take Russia's side.
Chomsky's foreign policy views can somewhat accurately be reduced to "everything is either American imperialism or reactions against it," to a degree that he ignores the imperialist tendencies (and other unpleasantries) of countries that aren't the US because they're against the US. For example, his denial of the Cambodian genocide essentially boiled down to "well, the US doesn't like the Khmer Rouge, so therefore everybody criticizing the Khmer Rouge was overselling the criticism, how was anyone at the time to know what they were doing?"
"...it would be a credulous fool who swallowed the (unsupported) word of Osama Bin Laden that his group was the one responsible. An attempt to kidnap or murder an ex-president of the United States (and presumably, by extension, the sitting one) would be as legally justified as the hit on Abbottabad. And America is an incarnation of the Third Reich that doesn’t even conceal its genocidal methods and aspirations. This is the sum total of what has been learned, by the guru of the left, in the last decade."
This is a serious mischaracterization of what Chomsky said. He didn't argue that Osama bin Laden didn't do 9/11, he argued that the American government denied him the right to be innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.
While not fresh on the specifics of this controversy, my implicit understanding through Manufacturing Consent was that the Cambodian genocide was more likely a consequence of the United States bombing Cambodia's arable farmland into a booby trapped hellscape, which caused many people to flee to the capital. After some geopolitical games the US played, a psychopath became head of state for Cambodia, and one of those initiatives was ordering those starving people to suddenly leave the capital and go farm, and another was to unalive people at death camps. I don't think he denied the genocide. It makes a lot of sense that many people died of famine as a direct consequence of US destruction of arable farmland, and that the US would create a narrative to hide that and did not let the tragedy of Pol Pot "go to waste".
Assuming that small percentage were most of the arable farmland in Cambodia, would it make more sense? That is to say, if you were misled to believe the impact was smaller than reality would it make you think differently? Small being a relative term. IIRC, IT WAS 25% of Cambodia's landmass and most of its good farmland.
Rather he chose to understand the point of view from their side. It is extremely difficult to do so and only a few public facing individuals is able to do ( Jeffrey Sachs etc. )
That's kind of the problem. He should have been trying to understand it from the Ukrainians side more than seeing the thing as US vs Russia.
It seems a bit of a historical change - in the 19th century view it would be ok for the Russians to get pissed off with the US trying to steal their Ukrainian peasants and associated property. These days you're supposed to let sovereign democracies do their own thing even if they have smaller armies.
Is that how it works? How about letting your ally wipe out a sovereign nation in the ME? Does that count as these days? Or casually kill 2+ mln civilians in Iraq.
“These days” also apply to us and our allies and it is an unfortunate part of how things run.
If he watched this narrative for two decades, he’d know the dynamics. What he understood instead is the official media position of the day, in which the bad guy is the main actor. That is still impressive for a foreigner, but of no use. Even a half brained dog can see through it here if lived long enough. Sadly our population is heavily handicapped in this regard because it was never exposed to rational argument, which itself is (IMO) the root of all our evils. All our opposition always sucked at politics and literally died out. Good politicians don’t die.
This is much like trying to understand the US invasion of Iraq from the neoconservative point of view, and parroting it uncredulously. This necessitates dehumanizing the invaded population.
It is probably needless to say, but you do not have to agree with someone on everything, especially to admire someone's knowledge or contributions in specific fields.
Chomsky regularly and rigorously defends genocidal regimes. Look up "Cambodian genocide denial" on wikipedia and you'll find an entire section devoted to Chomsky. This isn't anything new, and I'm surprised how much sympathetic support he's getting in this thread.
> But not Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Chomsky, for some weird reason, chose to take Russia's side.
Taking sides is a sign of emotional, not intellectual approach. And Russia/Ukraine conflict is way far from good fighting evil simplified construct.
I don't like leftists in general and Chomsky in particlar, but I give him huge respect for intellectual and independent position, which will cause him losing appreciation from people like you.
I'd say rather than emotional he has the usual academic thing of being up in one specialist area - in this case US imperialism and not up on another speciality like Russia's history of invasion, expansion and the like.
Its my poor wording to blame - when i said emotional i was referring rather to the commenter who attributed Chomsky position to taking sides.
I agree its well thought position. As much as I disagree with him on many matters, he is absolutely right here. Besides being right, it takes immense courage to go against mainstream (which he apparently did all his life) and that’s something i can’t avoid admiring.
Noam Chomsky had some financial money transfers and a series of meetings arranged by Jeffrey Epstein. At least one meeting with Ehud Barak (former PM of Israel). And he refused to explain himself.
This got quickly swept under the rug. But it's there even on mainstream media if you bother to search for it.
Considering he’s significantly anti-Israel I’m curious even if there were nefarious purposes behind his meeting with Barak what direction do you think it swayed him in?
In addition a LOT of academics met with Epstein. The whole point of Epstein was that he clawed himself up the social ladder by schmoozing with money people and raising funds for academic work. It would be entirely shocking if Epstein raised all this money for academia and didn’t even try and meet probably the only famous academic in the world.
If I recall, he did explain himself… it boiled down to it being none of your or my business. I despise Epstein, but as he was heavily involved in finance, I am sure many people had dealings with him that were not sexual in nature.
You can find many things that Noam missed the mark on. To err is human. But this is conspiratorial and not fair. If you were judged by all the people you had financial or social dealings with I’d imagine you would share a similar sentiment.
Jeffrey Epstein was sus ever since he appeared because of the way he suddenly rose up in ranks, got handed billions of dollars without having done any significant deals himself. His connections to Mossad and US elites should've raised red flags for someone like Chomsky. I see no reason to give anyone dealing with Epstein the benefit of the doubt.
> We had him has a guest speaker for an internal presentation at Google
Would have loved to be a fly on the wall had he been able to do a guest spot at Google recently.
I'm willing to bet he would've gone off-script and given Google hell for their engagements with Israel and treatment of their own employees who protested.
He is such a terrible person he has his own section on the Wikipedia page for "Cambodian Genocide Denial"[1] and is heavily featured in the page for "Bosnian Genocide Denial"[2]. Chomsky is a disgusting hack who runs cover for any genocidal freak that pays lip service to the hammer and sickle.
There's a difference between being wrong on a few things, and being consistently wrong and so far up your own ass that you have Slavoj Žižek and Sam Harris calling you out and the only response you have is "He's just posturing", He is a coward, he is the spinless person in the situation 99% of the time, the only thing he does is provide FUD for far-left ideology, attacking him for things he's done in the past is well deserved.
Calling a person who was arrested and put on Nixons enemies list, a spinless coward is... a likely statement of a spineless coward.
> being consistently wrong
So easy to throw grandiose statements like that substantiated by nothing and build your whole argument on it.
I was only aware of the Sam Harris clash, at the time that it actually happened. As I read both of them. Harris was a child with a chip on his shoulder, desperately trying to 'win'.
I had to read about this Zizek clash and again more of the smoke than fire. He accuses him of lack of empirical evidences, gives none in return, brings back Cambodia (a low blow, as he must be fully aware of the bigger picture) and then he tangents of to some power dynamics in academia for majority of it.
more of the smoke than fire
Again using Cambodia as only example is just boring. The whole thing of 'denial' is much more complicated as was going on at the time events were unfolding. At the time Chomsky convinced himself that this was a propaganda move to push war narrative. And he was wrong. Plain and simple. Even as more reports came in he convinced himself that he was right.
But still US was using the genocide as a drum-beat for war across SE Asia.
Analogously, if he was saying that Saddam didn't have weapon of mass destruction - that its a hoax of CIA to gain casus belli - and US Army did find some. And then be forever chastised for everything you say because of a misjudgement.
But its much easier and convenient for right wing hawks to just bash 'Chomsky denies KR genocides' a black and white narrative.
I don't fully agree with Chomsky worldviews, but he definitely shaped a lot of them. And help to create a counter narrative to US propaganda. He absolutely leans in too much into US imerialism bad angle.
But this in itself is a great tool to forge your own opinions against.
Nobody ever mention his takes on power affecting press and free speech and takes on neo-liberalism. Because I find it hard to argue with those, and never found any worthwhile critism of those.
But again all you hear is smug morons like you screeching 'Chomsky bad cuz Cambodia'
He is a genocide supporting cancer. The only thing that he cares is to be against US, so he supports Serbia and Putin. He has no problem to lie and deceive.
I actually emailed Noam Chomsky asking questions about Manufacturing Consent and actually got a reply. I always thought he was really cool for being so accessible to those who just had honest questions. I really hope he gets well soon.
When I was young I emailed him with a question something like "I am too young to have witnessed the events of the Vietnam War, can you please recommend me some reading material or push me in the right direction?"
That question turned into 5 or 6 (long) emails back and fourth that i'll always cherish that delved into his unique perspective on what the war was like as a protestor from the West, which papers got released that actually had some truth in them, among a lot of other valuable insights into the time period I had no access to myself.
At the end of our conversation he advocated finding a group that needs volunteers and effort. He didn't care what group that might be, he only cared that individual political concern of individuals be empowered by the necessary groups and collective effort.
I think that kind unequivocal support of 'being political' is something that is truly special.
I hope the best for him -- I view him as one of the only 'truly accessible' academics in this world; just as happy to slowly and carefully explain his thoughts to 'the rabble' as he would be while explaining the same thoughts to high academia and the press.
Same. I emailed him about whether he'd ever met Margaret Mead, John C. Lilly, or Gregory Bateson in the 1960s while researching my book. I got this reply within hours:
"Afraid I never met any of those you mention, though I’ve followed their work for many years.
I’ve never been close to intellectual elite circles, including people I very much admire."
The time stamp for my email was Tuesday, Nov 26, 2019 at 2:19 PM. It was answered by [email protected] at Tuesday, Nov 26, 2019 at 9:29 PM. Pretty remarkable.
Probably precludes him from accepting the invitations.
You cant be anti-imperialist and accept a dinner invitation where you will inevitably be forced to smile at and rub elbows with the same men you critique as war-criminals. The man is principled.
Where would you have him live? In an apartheid nation that rejects him so thoroughly that he might get assassinated by some right-wing hardliners for speaking out against the oppression?
Seems that by your logic one who disagrees with an evil he sees in his society should leave immediately or commit to silence.
I emailed him in ~2012 and got a response as well. Keep in mind, I was not a student at his university and I emailed him out of the blue. Incredible guy!
Same! I emailed him asking for his thoughts on robotics and anarcho-communism and he replied pretty promptly. He said it was an important subject and that he was moving offices (this was his move to Arizona), but I could ask again another time. I never quite had the time to prepare for what I would have asked for, some kind of discussion I could record, which he was doing a lot at the time, but I was very happy just to have gotten a supportive reply the first time.
For anyone curious, here is Chomsky in 1976 discussing the relevance of automation and anarcho syndicalism to modern productive economies:
https://youtu.be/h_x0Y3FqkEI
I truly believe we can build a world where everyone benefits from automation, getting the freedom and time to do what we will that every person deserves. The reason I develop open source farming robots is to explore concepts of community ownership of the means of production and community oriented engineering. Noam Chomsky’s work heavily inspired the thinking that got me where I am today.
That's definitely a big question. I asked a pretty open ended question about how he thinks the internet (and filter bubbles in specific) might have changed some of his thoughts in manufacturing consent as the main media went from TV / newspapers (broadcast) to internet (personalized). He said that basically the big companies own it all anyway.
What makes you believe this would work? Specifically any form of anarchism? Have you seen groups of people operate for large periods of time successfully like this? Anything I've looked into shows me human nature would make any anarcho-anything system fail due to infighting.
A lot of the US government would be called anarchist if it was a proposal from a radical rather than the current state of affairs:
1. Criminal trials via random lottery of jury with the charged being viewed as innocent until proven guilty.
2. Checks and balances, where governmental power is intentionally limited and weakened.
3. A system of federated governments that elect representations, with a design favoring minority members of that federation.
Anarchism is always a balancing act between legitimate power and limitations on that power. Most forms of Anarchism do not reject all forms of power as illegitimate but rather place a heavy burden of proof on the claim that legitimate of the use of power.
I disagree with a lot of what Chomsky has said but I do think his definition of anarchism was very well stated:
"Well, anarchism is, in my view, basically a kind of tendency in human thought which shows up in different forms in different circumstances, and has some leading characteristics. Primarily it is a tendency that is suspicious and skeptical of domination, authority, and hierarchy. It seeks structures of hierarchy and domination in human life over the whole range, extending from, say, patriarchal families to, say, imperial systems, and it asks whether those systems are justified. It assumes that the burden of proof for anyone in a position of power and authority lies on them. Their authority is not self-justifying. They have to give a reason for it, a justification. And if they can’t justify that authority and power and control, which is the usual case, then the authority ought to be dismantled and replaced by something more free and just." - Noam Chomsky
Lip's history. My father knew Neuschwander, so maybe i'm biased, but Lip was truly an example of what anarcho-syndicalism can and should be, and survived 5 years despite fighting both a government and all the industry leaders, because it couldn't be allowed to work.
I think US historians wrote books on it, but often fail to mention that after (or really, a bit before) Neuschwander took control, the metal and steel industry that sold them metal gave them structurally deficient steel, poor quality copper and were largely inconsistent in their metal delivery, being late for months, then giving them all the late commands at the same time, stretching or overflowing their storage. The luxury store and industry wasn't any better (one more reason to hate LVMH and never support them as a French), leaving their products in inventory and not in display, rejecting previously accepted commands, and limiting foreign exports to less than the number of exported goods than when Lip watches had to be smuggled. The courts and police didn't help and (according to what i heard: this is a biased account) refused to take any declaration.
Have you seen what the current system of bourgeoisie corporate rule is doing to us?
Is that system “working”?
In June 1888 Peter Kropotkin wrote “Are we good enough?” on the subject of human nature and anarchism. It’s well worth a listen:
https://youtu.be/jytf-5St8WU
peter kropotkin was right about the then state of things, but he missed the true solution. if i understand it correctly he is saying that in light of us not being good enough, a communist system is better than a capitalist one. and yet, communist systems largely failed.
the real solution is to fix the "are we good enough" problem and change education such that we actually become good enough. this requires moral education to a degree that is not happening anywhere yet. the reality is that as peter says in the beginning, if we were good enough, then the system would not matter. and has history has shown, as long as we are not good enough, any system remains exploitable. communism brought a temporary relief but ended up failing because we still were not good enough.
so lets forget this arguing about which system is better. it does not matter. what matters is that we learn to become good enough. that should be our goal. that's the only way to eliminate all problems.
Thanks for sharing. I don't need to think we have a great system to have questions about something else not working, I'm just curious if it has because when I read about most anarcho-* philosophies I seem to see gaps in them. It doesn’t mean I'm right, just trying to learn more. There's already two good shares to read up later :)
edit: thanks again, your linked video is perfect, I have held this exact view that "we're not good enough" for communism/anarchy, so this is the perfect challenge to my current beliefs!
Historically, there have been a few examples of radical egalitarianism in revolutionary movements but like the Paris Commune they generally are short-lived – or never even become the dominant force, e.g., the Levellers during the English Civil Wars. It was the accomplishments of the CNT/FAI in organising one million members in 1930’s Spain that inspired me to become a libertarian socialist. However, since then I’ve come to the conclusion that the more egalitarian and democratic a society is, the more vulnerable it is to external and other threats.
There's many years of evidence of other systems and how they work and their trade-offs, so you can read about them. I haven't read about a successful anarchistic system so I asked for more info in case they had it.
Grand ideas about structuring a society based on a premise or an ideology or ideal end up being disasters when attempts are made to put them into practice.
It should be pretty simple to understand why: no one person or group of people can predict all eventualities or contingencies and it is not possible to design a system based on rigid ideals that can fail gracefully.
Grand ideas about structuring society often have an egotism problem. The ego behind the ideas turns its critical lens outward without looking inward. Naturally it ends up telling the world what to do.
That sounds great but how do you deal with the fact that robots require mass-produced electronics and the infrastructure for those is currently in the hands of, well, let's say not anarcho-communists?
How about the environmental costs of all that automation?
Is there a realistic path for getting to what you propose from where we are now?
[Edit: realistic in the sense that e.g. the Alcubierre drive is possible but requires exotic matter, therefore "not realistic").
The full obituaries and reflections will come later, but the volume alone of papers, essays, books, articles, and interviews he's generated over his 95 year life is staggering.
The man writes faster than I can realistically read, but I still have a full shelf that I have dipped into over the last 32 years. Linguistics to Gaza, one of my proudest moments was once having some wingnut include me on a public list of enemies alongside Chomsky.
His view regarding the Bosnian genocide is really strange imo. I would correct you that the people perpetrating it weren't really communists, but serbian nationalists.
However, his "USA bad" take is correct because it's true. Being anti-US, anti-NATO, anti-imperialism is the only moral view to have when you look at the history and current politics of the US.
I agree, but would reword it to "self determination on a state scale is the only moral view". And in most Eastern European cases that seems to be very much pro-US and pro-NATO. After all it is not like anyone is forced to join.
They are not strange it's very easy to understand: He says that throwing around the word genocide for every atrocity cheapens the word and diminishes how bad the holocaust was.
As for the parent the "fat man" he is referring to is the man in the back, not the man in the front. And the picture is pure propaganda: as he points out (and I believe was confirmed by the actual photographer) what is depicted and understood to show a prison isn't even fenced in. I would love to know what the "false claims about what the sources he cited said". I only know of one case were he mis-cited someone and it didn't change the meaning.
Sad news. I do not agree with him on everything, but I found his work and arguments he made a good counterbalance to those who are followers of Edward Bernays and his "The Engineering of Consent".
Speaking of non-political side of him: was not he wrong about "innate grammar" necessary to understand langage? LLM do not have such circuitry, yet they somehow work well...
There have been many attempts to model and emulate human syntactic acquisition and processing, but the general consensus is that it cannot be done without presupposing some mechanism that enables hierarchical structure. The number of tokens a child needs to learn syntax is the tiniest fraction of the amount of tokens an LLM is trained on.
Humans can also lose parts of their language processing capabilities, without losing others (start at e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_disorder), which is highly suggestive of modular language development. The only question on which there isn't much consensus concerns the origin of that modularity. And humans can lose knowledge while still being able to speak and understand, or lose language while retaining knowledge.
LLMs don't have that at all: they predict the next token.
LLMs does have that, or at least it’s very likely that we will eventually be able to manipulate LLMs in a modular way (see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40429540). One point remains: humans learn language with much fewer tokens than LLMs need, which suggests presence of a priori knowledge about the world. The LLM metaphor is finetuning, so babies are born with a base model and then finetuned with environment data, but it’s still within LLM scope.
I don't think LLMs have all that much to do with "innate grammar".
"Innate grammar" are essentially the meta-rules that govern why the rules are what they are. For instance, an English phrase can be recognized as valid or invalid by other native speakers according to the rules of the language. But why are the rules what they are?
This is especially puzzling due to the dazzling variety of human languages. And the fact that, after a period of immersion, humans seem to have the natural capacity to learn all of them.
How do LLMs fit into this? Well, I think it would be interesting if we left a group of LLM to talk to each other for 1000 years. Then see if 1) they developed a new language branch 2) that could be relearned by humans through immersion alone.
It's true that LLMs have learned (have they? I suppose that's a loaded word) human languages like English. But it's unclear if they are governed by the same meta-rules that both constrains and drives the evolution of humanities thousands of distinct languages.
No. Innate grammar has always been about how humans aquire language, not how any possible system which understands human language must posses that innate grammar.
Trying to put his in an uncontroversial way: the human brain (or a brain plus paper and a pencil) can be turning complete/equivalent. Therefor a human sitting down with a pen and pencil could, in a painstakingly long time, compute the backwards and forward passes of a transformer network.
Therefor a human with no understanding of grammar/language, and using no innate biological circuits, could process grammar and respond with language.
The flaw in this argument would be how to teach a human to do this without grammar ...
But that has never been proven that this is how indeed human acquire language; it is essentially a hypothesis. We may as well do it the way LLMs do - some undifferentiated networks acquires the grammar by unknown means.
LLMs are universal approximators and can pick up patterns in sequences that are very different from Human languages. Sure, they don't have many inductive biases and can understand language, but as a consequence require a tremendous amount of data to work. Humans don't, which implies a certain bias towards Human language built into our heads. A bias is also implied by the similarities across Human languages, though what structure(s) in the brain are responsible is not exactly clear.
It still does not proof anything, as claiming that "there is certain bias for Human Language built into our heads" is quite different thing that saying there is some universal grammar in the brain structures, as much we do not have innate abilities to comprehend calculus or play chess, yet we still able to learn it, with a lot less training information than LLMs. In fact 2 books will suffice for the both.
We almost certainly don't learn the way LLMs do, it's just too data inefficient.
And I don't see what current LLMs can say about a universal grammar in the Human brain, unless there is proof that a LLM-style attention mechanism exists in the brain, and that it is somehow related to language understanding.
Chomsky has explicitly answered this: Moro has shown in experiments that humans do not appear to be able to learn arbitrary grammatical structures in the same way as human-like (hierarchical) languages. Non-human like languages take longer to interpret and use non-language parts of the brain.
LLMs on the other hand can easily learn these non-human grammatical structures which means that they are not the way humans do it.
Compared to an LLM, how many hundreds of gigabytes of text do humans need to acquire a language? And isn’t that disparity already proof that some sort of innate structure must be going on?
Or that llm learning algos should be further improved, which will happen at some point. I remember Kasparov's tirades to the tune of I have an eternal soul therefore computers can never beat me in chess.
First and foremost (and what I think the parent comment is getting at) whether you could truly say an LLM "understands" language
As a secondary quibble in the context of the parent post, though big overall, I would argue that the whole argument is moot since a human couldn't possibly learn the way an LLM does in a single lifetime
The approach is relatively straightforward. The team began by using a computer program to recreate the network that mushroom bodies rely on — a number of projection neurons feeding data to about 2,000 Kenyon cells. The team then trained the network to recognize the correlations between words in the text.
The task is based on the idea that a word can be characterized by it its context, or the other words that usually appear near it. The idea is to start with a corpus of text and then, for each word, to analyze those words that appear before and after it.
Somehow the transformer architecture does pretty well at this task, and other architectures do not. You could say a transformer has "innate grammar", while other architectures do not.
That an LLM does well at grammar doesn't prove or disprove this possibility. A more poignant criticism of "innate grammar" would be that it's not a hypothesis that can be disproven, and as such not really a scientific statement.
I think the popular perception is that his theory is extremely important, as far as I know the academic consensus is that while hugely influential it is long obsolete.
Intellectual giant whose shadow will be cast deep into the future. I don't need to review any of his work wrt to CS or linguistics to tell you that his legacy will be massive.
I think Manufacturing Consent should go down as one of the most important books ever written in our culture. He was right about much, but wrong about much also.
His beliefs on Cambodia strain credulity and I still have trouble separating that Chomsky, so bent on drawing an equivalence(however valid) between American actions and the Khmer Rouge that he missed the point entirely, and Chomsky the visionary philosopher who I admire deeply.
His thoughts on Serbia/Kosovo, Russia/Ukraine, likely Russia/
Georgia etc have all been problematic too.
Chomsky was illuminating in my personal character development. I grew up in a pretty conservative area, and his name carried a lot of hate like Hillary/Clinton did, but i didn't know why. Later, I saw some of his writings on American interventionism, and I found myself nodding my head in agreement over the mistakes my country/we have made. Later yet, I'm in college going for the math+cs degrees and his stuff on formal languages was probably the peak of my admiration for him... but with the admiration comes research, and perhaps the most important thing chomsky illustrated to me was that you can be a genius, but that doesn't mean you can't be blind, myopic, wrong, an asshole, or ... non-credible.
I don't know why chomsky's beliefs and supported causes are so inconsistent with the morals he pushes, but it's been an exemplar for me regardless -- good and bad, functional and broken.
> I don't know why chomsky's beliefs and supported causes are so inconsistent with the morals he pushes
The obvious resolution to that paradox is either you don't understand Chomsky's morals or have mistaken what his beliefs are.
Judging by some random interview from 2022 [0] it looks like he has a position on Russia/Ukraine that is easy to defend. He describes it as a "principled, internationalist, anti-imperialist left response" and that seems like a fair assessment from what I'm reading. Looks like pretty standard fare for anyone who doesn't like war and propaganda.
He is still annoyed communism failed so epically. In his mind the Soviet satellites were to blame for wanting independence. It can been seen again with Ukraine, it's not that the Ukrainians are standing up for their independence, it is somehow NATOs fault.
He has made some good points about western politics from time to time. Even a stopped clock is correct twice a day.
NATO continued to expand right up to Russia's doorstep despite repeated promises not to, and refused to rule out expanding to Ukraine. Russia clearly called this out as a problem for years. Whether or not this is "NATOs fault", it's clear that the Ukraine invasion was motivated, in part, by NATO expansion.
> it's clear that the Ukraine invasion was motivated, in part, by NATO expansion.
Unless you mean, the only way to have prevented the Russian invasion of Ukraine would have been to accept Ukraine into NATO, I strongly disagree with you here.
Russia invaded Ukraine not because Russia is fearful of NATO but because Russia wished to recreate the Soviet empire. It's just plain old imperialism.
Yep. The US told Ukraine it was never going to happen. Originally Ukraine had wanted neutrality but Russia kept making territorial claims on Ukraine land pushing Ukraine to seek protection from Russian imperialist ambitions.
If Ukraine eventually gets NATO membership it will be because of Russian's invasion.
Heck Crimea basically guaranteed ukraine couldn't be admitted because of the whole no territorial disputes clause, and they were (nor are they now) nowhere near ready to acquiese on that.
> Heck Crimea basically guaranteed ukraine couldn't be admitted because of the whole no territorial disputes clause
There is no such clause in the North Atlantic Treaty, and many NATO members (including founding members) were admitted with territorial disputes, including with other NATO members, either admitted earlier or simultaneously admitted.
NATO members are required to pledge to resolve disputes of any kind in accordance with the principles of the UN, endeavouring to do so by means which are both peaceful and not disruptive of international peace and security, but without prejudice to any of their rights under the UN Charter including those of individual and collective self-defense, and to declare that at the time of their accession to the treaty none of their existing "engagements" violate those principles. (See, particularly, Articles 1, 7, and 8 of the North Atlantic Treaty.)
There is no reasonable reading of the Treaty which would prohibit a new member from being admitted while while some of its territory is under hostile occupation or while engaged in a defensive war on its won territory against an aggressor; it may make it more difficult to achieve the required unanimity,
but there is no "territorial disputes clause" preventing it.
> NATO continued to expand right up to Russia's doorstep
NATO was literally founded on the USSR's border ("Russia", as a top-level sovereign, did not exist), it had nothing to "expand up to", on either the Eastern or Western side.
> despite repeated promises not to
Assuming any such promises were made (which only one dubious alleged instance is ever pointed to, so hardly "repeatedly" in even the best case), they were personal guarantees between individual leaders of the USA and USSR, not durable binding commitments (note the absence of a treaty, executive agreement, public document or even mere joint contemporaneous oral statement of any kind) binding governments to their terms beyond the term of individual officials and heritable after the fall of one of the involved states by some successor regime.
And even had such an undocumented commitment existed and had validity, it was implicitly nullified by Russia's attempts to join NATO.
> Whether or not this is "NATOs fault", it's clear that the Ukraine invasion was motivated, in part, by NATO expansion.
It's not clear at all that it was. For one thing, Georgia was invaded immediately after NATO complied with the Russian request in 2008 not to extend Membership Action Plans to Georgia and Ukraine, and Ukraine subsequently abandoned efforts to join NATO until after Russia invaded and purported to annex much of the country in 2014. The Russian invasion of Ukraine has been the cause of, rather than a response to, recent NATO expansion.
NATO was literally founded on the USSR's border ("Russia", as a top-level sovereign, did not exist), it had nothing to "expand up to", on either the Eastern or Western side.
Well that's not a fair assessment. It's technically true that NATO was founded on the USSR's borders via Norway. But there's not doubt that the expansion east of Germany, to include not just nearly all of Eastern Europe but a much more sensitive position directly on Russia's border (talking about the inclusion of the Baltics here) was hugely significant, and let's face it, also clearly a snub to Russia (despite their also wanting to join at one point; but that in no way mitigates the fact that NATO being expanded to their other countries was a move fundamentally aimed at Russia from the very start).
Not that this supports Russia's "because NATO" argument in any way; it's just pure garbage, of course. One can even argue that the expansion up to countries (such as the Baltics) that have been historically victims of Russian aggression is an intrinsically good thing. But there's no reason to attempt to water down the fact that the post-1990 expansion of NATO was hugely significant, and intrinsically meant as an anti-Russian manouevre (one can argue with perfectly good cause, in retrospect -- but there's no denying that import was there).
The fact that Norway and Russia shared a tiny border that most people don't even know about is entirely incidental to all of this.
NATO is an aggressive alliance that has exclusively invaded three countries in the last 20 years, zero of whom were threat to it.
The worst one was probably Libya, because NATO pretended to engage in a humanitarian mission to gain approval from the security council and then left the country utterly destroyed state afterwards. The country was shredded.
It's a tool of western imperialism that dangles the false promise of protection. In this respect it operates with the same logic as a gang recruiting teenagers before using them as cannon fodder.
Of course you can't say these things in polite company just as I couldn't say that WMDs were a complete load of bullshit in 2003 without being verbally attacked.
In 20 years time it will be seen as obvious, however.
The invasion of Libya was fully authorised by the UNSC, and it was not conducted or approved solely by NATO. Libya was also already in a highly destructive civil war before the intervention, which is why it happened, so it’s not like they went in and destabilised a stable country. Gaddafi had built Libya’s security around himself in a cult of personality, things were always going to fall apart once his power waned.
> * Intervention in the violent breakup of Yugoslavia, invited to do so by the UN in response to the genocide going on there.
Indeed. So not an aggressive invasion but a humanitarian intervention.
> * Invasion of Afghanistan, following the invocation of Article 5 after an attack on a NATO country (i.e., 9/11).
Not quite. Technically speaking, neither of the official NATO missions in Afghanistan, ISAF and Resolute Support, were Article 5 missions.
When the US triggered Article 5 in October 2001 it explicitly did not request a full NATO response, but initially only for support such as NATO AWACS aircraft in US airspace. When it invaded Afghanistan, which was entirely justified in international law as an act of self defence, a handful of NATO countries opted to send support contingents, like SOF, as a way of showing solidarity. But it was not a NATO mission under NATO command: Operation Enduring Freedom was American-led and commanded from the beginning. At best you can say several NATO allies invaded. Later, NATO launched ISAF and Resolute Support and became more involved as an organisation deploying forces, but that was post-invasion.
The invasion of Afghanistan was as much self defence as the invasion of Ukraine. Probably less, actually.
The idea that it was any kind of self defence is kind of pathetic, and mirrors Putinesque propaganda. It was occupation pure and simple.
America really wanted to set up military bases there. It was a black spot in the world which it lacked imperial force projection and it was right between 3 major rivals (Russia, China and Iran).
Afghanistan did not knock down the twin towers. It actually offered to hand over bin Laden if the US provided evidence of his involvement and tried him in a neutral country.
That wasn't good enough for the US, who were itching for a military invasion anyway, and were keen to build some military bases in a spot where they didnt yet have any.
The idea that the US follows international law is a sick joke. The idea that the country that created the Hague invasion act has nonzero respect for international law is laughable.
First, the Taliban ‘offer’ was so full of caveats as to be worthless and, most importantly, they refused to do anything about the rest of the Al-Qaeda organisation that they hosted and shared power with and which attacked the US. Putting Bin Laden on trial in some supposed neutral third country would’ve done nothing to remove the clear and present threat to the US that Al-Qaeda at the time presented. So, yes, the US’s actions were legal under international law.
None of the major powers outside Europe have acceded to the ICC. Neither the US, nor India, nor China, nor Russia.
The caveats were exactly as I described and were entirely reasonable, but the US had a hard on for a military invasion and was not about to be stopped by such a trivial thing as due process.
Your idea that he should be handed over without question for trial does not follow any legal logic but is simply the logic of an imperialist.
The same logic is what led to the Hague invasion act, Guantanamo bay, the imperialist invasion of Iraq and, of course, the various attempts to push NATO further and further up against the more vulnerable parts of the Russian border.
As I said before, a Putin supporter would have broadly similar views to you - in reverse.
Again, that’s quite absurd. You’re acting as though Bin Laden was solely responsible for the attack, rather than being the head of an organisation that carried it out.
Afghanistan under the Taliban were hosting Al-Qaeda, protecting it, supporting it, and refusing to dismantle it when it attacked the US. It was in all the ways that matter basically part of the government. Under international law this means that they were responsible for its actions and therefore that the attack on the US was effectively an attack from Afghanistan. This is ‘due process’ at the international level.
Given this, international law is extremely clear on the rights of self defence in response to an attack. There’s no requirement to merely put the leader on trial in a third country, because everybody involved in drafting these conventions and treaties knew that would be nuts, would not achieve security, and would be unenforceable.
So, no. These are not ‘imperialist’ views, they’re ones any scholar of international law would describe in the same way. The US was fully justified in attacking Afghanistan and dismantling the threat from Al-Qaeda under international law.
See my other reply. In any case, that you can refer to these as ‘aggressive imperialist power plays’ shows you’re both not to be taken seriously and are not willing to engage in a good faith and informed discussion.
The Serbian campaign was ethnic cleansing on a massive scale, forcefully and methodically expelling over a million Kosovar Albanians from the area by the time they were stopped by NATO’s intervention. That does, arguably, rise to the level of genocide under the standard definitions.
Just because someone can claim something doesn’t mean it’s right. That determination is up to independent observers, experts, and courts, and tribunals.
Russia tried to claim at the ICJ that it was invading Ukraine under the Genocide Convention. The court ruled that it had to end to the invasion immediately, which Russia ignored.
What do you expect him to believe? If you go in with an anti-imperialist anti-war bias, then NATO expansion is a bit of a beacon when asking questions like "why is their an active land war in Eastern Europe?". I don't actually remember if there is a serious counter-proposal; most people tend to rely on the theory that Putin suddenly went unhinged - which is obviously not the belief a thoughtful leftist would come to.
No, the alternative liberal internationalist view is that the preservation of imperial-like spheres of influence and ironclad regional hegemonies is unfair, u democratic, and at odds with the rules-based trade-oriented order we’d like to see the world continue to adopt.
No country was forced to join NATO. In fact, it took years and years of lobbying from Eastern European countries before the first new members were allowed to join in 1999. Even then, plenty of care was taken to signal to Russia that it was strictly seen as a defensive measure, from allowing the Russian government in as an observer at all levels, to limiting the military capacity of the Baltics and putting a very low cap on the number and type of NATO assets that could be deployed in countries bordering Russia.
The intellectual mistake that Chomsky and many who share his ideas make is to believe that just because Russia might reasonably feel aggrieved at no longer being able to politically and economically dominate the countries around it through the use of military force as it could as the USSR, that it somehow has a right to have that situation reversed and is therefore justified at launching an unprovoked attack on a neighbouring democratic country to gain back that power. There should be no such right in the modern era, and believing in it is a betrayal of traditional left-wing ideals.
Ironically, returning to a might-makes-right global order as envisioned by Russia would mean the United States could behave far worse in future, pulling off the same kinds of annexations and similar as it did as a young power, and when it was far less powerful than it is now.
I don't disagree with any of that. But you didn't deal with the "why is their an active land war in Eastern Europe?" question; which is what Chomsky was picking at to get to the NATO expansion point.
> Ironically, returning to a might-makes-right global order as envisioned by Russia would mean the United States could behave far worse in future
The US could act much worse in the present if it wanted. Only China is really in a position to stop them and even there only in a geographically limited area of Asia. The reason the US often doesn't bother with a might-makes-right response is because it isn't effective, not because they're purposefully holding themselves back from useful options. It is more effective to have the rule based order where, famously, the US makes the rules and gives the orders.
> I don't disagree with any of that. But you didn't deal with the "why is there an active land war in Eastern Europe?" question; which is what Chomsky was picking at to get to the NATO expansion point.
Fair enough. To answer that, I’d say the actual trigger wasn’t NATO but the EU, and Ukraine wanting to join it and move out of Russia’s sphere of influence. This was coupled to a wave of new leadership who wanted a more western and central European alignment. That’s what the Maidan was all about, when Yanukovych unilaterally refused to sign the European Union–Ukraine Association Agreement and brutally cracked down on the resulting protests.
That desire for closer ties with western and central Europe played out economically too, with the Ukrainian tech sector in particular being promoted as an outsourcing hub for European companies and holding conferences like Devoxx.
Russia invaded because it knew it either subjugated Ukraine now, while it was still relatively weak but growing fast, or it lost the opportunity altogether. And in Russian strategic thought the idea of not being able to control Ukraine, which they see as an integral part of Russia, is anathema.
> The reason the US often doesn't bother with a might-makes-right response is because it isn't effective, not because they're purposefully holding themselves back from useful options. It is more effective to have the rule based order where, famously, the US makes the rules and gives the orders.
On some level, sure, but as China’s rise has shown the rules based order does not prevent competitors from rising up and eventually eclipsing US power. While the rules based order allows the US to use economic coercion, it also allows China to do the same.
A might-makes-right approach can be effective, but it can also lead to world wars which are immensely destructive and which the US wants to avoid.
It’s not just the US though, the EU is similarly in favour of substituting diplomacy and trade for military power.
Well, point 1 is NATO and the EU are almost the same entity. Difference of sets and there are only a couple of countries left. The non-EU NATO countries are generally involved in the war (maybe not Turkey? I don't keep an eye on the Turks).
Point 2 is more an observation. Russia is currently taking significant casualties - we don't really know how many - from Ukrainian forces armed with NATO weapons, NATO ammo, NATO intelligence, NATO training in some cases. These NATO activities are being done in service of NATO strategic concerns and appear to be coordinated through NATO headquarters. The CIA - most certainly not an EU institution - has 12 bases in Ukraine [0]. Biden is the person who turns out to have the authority to green light strikes on Russian soil [1]. It would appear superficially that Ukraine is going to join NATO [2].
If the trigger was EU expansion then the Russians made a pretty basic mistake and should have hired Chomsky as a military advisor to warn them about the rather obvious threat to Russian interests posed by NATO and its expansion. Putin obviously figured out that mistake fairly quickly because I'm pretty sure I've read about him talking about NATO in a couple of speech transcripts. The threat to them is NATO #1, EU #several - taking its spot in the queue with China, Russian winters, and coups and whatever other problems might materialise for them in a decade's time.
> A might-makes-right approach can be effective, but it can also lead to world wars which are immensely destructive
That doesn't sound effective. Effective is getting what you want with minimum fuss.
NATO isn’t the only supplier to Ukraine, and NATO has no command authority over Ukraine and its forces. The idea that this is a ‘NATO’ proxy war is ridiculous and denies the agency of a democratic nation.
The US could only green light strikes on Russian territory with American-made weapons like ATACMs, it had no authority over those supplied by others or produced by Ukraine. This is clearly shown by the fact that Ukraine was hitting Russian territory using its own domestically produced drones long before the US gave the green light to do the same (albeit only in Belgorod) using US weapons.
This isn’t unique to the US: Countries routinely place limitations and restrictions on the uses of their weapons as a condition of sale, especially Western countries. For instance when Switzerland sold Pilatus trainers to South Africa it required a legal commitment from South Africa to never arm them and use them in combat missions. Countries also usually forbid retransfer or resale without their permission. These are often stipulated in the End User Certificate.
Putin and other Russian officials have made many claims to many audiences, often contradicting each other. But when you analyse the most consistent and those that align most consistently to codified doctrine you’ll find that it’s all about Russian hegemony over the former USSR territories, and its revanchist aims to regain lost power. Once again, former empires have no right to their former colonies, and that includes Russia regarding Ukraine.
Ukraine was not anywhere near close to joining NATO in January/February 2022, its request for admission was stalled and key NATO countries had made it clear that it wasn’t going to go anywhere. Ironically, it’s Russia’s invasion that provided the impetus for the Ukrainian accession to NATO to move forward, even though it’s still a long way away.
Joining the EU was much more likely and was a key foreign policy goal of the Ukrainian government before Russia invaded. It remains one now.
As for the US, its economic and political power is declining much faster than its military power. If it really was such an imperialist state it would seek to use that military power to restore its economic and political power, aiming for full hegemony rather than just influence. It doesn’t because American society would not support that kind of approach, having moved past the age of annexation by force.
Alright. So just jumping back to "why is there an active land war in Eastern Europe?"; is it fair to characterise your position with these 3 points?
1) Russia was worried about EU expansion into Ukraine [0].
2) They've invaded Ukraine and are encountering heavy resistance from the EU.
3) The US is barely involved in either of the other 2 points.
Because it doesn't look like an EU war effort to me. It looks like a NATO effort. Russia seem to be talking about the NATO-ish aspects of the struggle when they try to justify themselves and the bulk of the materiel seems to be being directed by the US if the stats are to be believed. The US aren't bit players in this one [1].
I'm not seeing a strong counter to my basic understanding of the situation (which is pretty close to what Chomsky seems to have come to). It looks like a "Russia were worried about NATO expansion in Ukraine and discovered their worst fears being realised when they tried to resist said expansion militarily" situation. I'm not seeing a strong argument here for why Chomsky should have come to a different opinion, it seems to rely on the EU having an independent military presence that they just don't have.
> NATO isn’t the only supplier to Ukraine, and NATO has no command authority over Ukraine and its forces. The idea that this is a ‘NATO’ proxy war is ridiculous and denies the agency of a democratic nation.
Why would Ukraine's form of government have anything to do whether this is a proxy war? They are democratic, they have agency, and this is still a NATO proxy war. If NATO wasn't involved Ukraine would have folded in the first month and the conflict would have ceased years ago.
[0] Although I am still a bit confused about why this is supposed to be a misread by Chomsky or myself; the only major difference I see between the EU and NATO is whether the US is involved. And I obviously think the US is involved.
No, that's not an accurate characterisation. You're confusing the cause and the response. That the support to Ukraine has been predominantly US-led, in no small part because it had stockpiles that Europe does not, does not tell us anything about Russia's motivations for invading a sovereign neighbour. It's also possible for countries to support what they consider an ally without it being a 'proxy' war. For it to be a proxy war would require that NATO caused the war, but all the historical evidence shows that NATO countries like the US, France, the UK, Germany, and others spent months in advance of Russia's invasion trying to convince Putin not to invade. There's even a video of one of Macron's phone calls to Putin where he begs him to agree to a diplomatic summit that could find an alternative to war.
Chomsky's view, and I'm guessing yours too, is that NATO should never have expanded, that NATO's expansion was a move intended only to provoke Russia, that Russia had the right to not have NATO on its borders, and therefore that Russia's invasion of Ukraine is justified and understandable.
Yet none of those are accurate, as I've shown, but I'll address them again in brief below:
1) NATO was expanded only with initial great reluctance and the constant lobbying of Eastern European and Baltic nations in particular, who had good reason to want to be part of a defensive security alliance. However, and most importantly, Ukraine was nowhere near joining NATO and certainly was not moving closer to it in January/February 2022. There was, in fact, no activity being undertaken by Ukraine that could possibly be considered a clear and imminent threat to Russia in any form.
2) The expansion was conducted cautiously, with strict limits placed on what forces could be forward-deployed near Russia, adding Russia as a Partnership for Peace member, creating the NATO-Russia Founding Act and with it the permanent NATO-Russia Council, and creating additional official liaison offices to provide the Russians with visibility into and reassurance about NATO's operations and intentions.
3) Sovereign countries are free to join whatever security alliance they want to, it is a fundamental concept of sovereignty that countries should have their own foreign policies. Therefore Russia has no right to prevent its neighbours from joining either the EU or NATO. To grant Russia a veto over that would be to accept an undemocratic imperial hegemony of the type that existed decades ago. Of course, Russia is free to use its own foreign policy instruments in response, by isolating, sanctioning, demarching, etc a neighbour that does something it doesn't like, but that's as far as it can go.
4) Obviously, given all the above it's ludicrous to claim that Russia had any kind of justification in invading Ukraine, or that its decision to do so can be viewed as an understandable or reasonable one.
But sure, if you still want to argue that it was 'because of NATO', then you have to accept that Russia chose to invade Ukraine not because it was about to imminently join the alliance in the next few months (because it was years and years away under the absolute best case scenario) but to avoid the mere possibility of it joining NATO some point in the future. That's no less unacceptable and illegal, and it doesn't make it more understandable.
Would you accept the US invading Venezuela because it was concerned about that country's close alliance with Russia and substantial re-armament using Russian weapons?
That 1) is full of holes. It is 2024, only 2 years later, and Ukraine is awash with NATO gear and as mentioned the official position of the US State Department is saying they're going to be part of NATO. They were clearly on the verge of integrating with NATO if not already doing so and close to the point where Russia was out of options. If the Russian military had waited any longer there wouldn't have been anything they could do and realistically they made a massive error not invading back in 2014 when their losses would have been much smaller. To see "nowhere near joining" we can look at somewhere like Georgia. That is a country that is nowhere near joining NATO. Russia invades in 2008. They got no support and today, nearly 20 years later, they are still not part of NATO (although they are getting there). The invasion was over and done in 16 days; night and day compared to what is happening in Ukraine.
I don't have a position on 2 and 3 although they seem pretty reasonable. 4 I mostly agree with - the caveat to that is the last part. Russia's decision to invade is easily understandable and reasonable. We can see what NATO was planning on doing to them based on what is currently being done. If they didn't act now they'd lose their chance and the US would probably start setting up missile banks along the Russian border at some point. Realistically that might still happen, it looks quite bad for Russia right now.
This war has cost Russia a number of troops that, while difficult to estimate, is probably measured in 100,000s. Their opposition is entirely sustained by NATO logistics. Going in to the war Putin, on behalf of Russia, basically started the speech with "I am referring to the eastward expansion of NATO, which is moving its military infrastructure ever closer to the Russian border" [0]. This theory that Russia was motivated by internal conditions to Ukraine and no broader strategic concerns requires them to be ignorant of the biggest military threat to them, which turned out the be on the verge of materialising, while simultaneously pretending to be motivated by it for political reasons. It is a much more reasonable view to accept that in their military action they are probably motivated by the single biggest military threat they are facing. The one they publicly identified and that is a very realistic concern given what then happened.
We have a reference here, which is the US invasion of Iraq. It was appalling, unprovoked and the US encountered no real resistance from the rest of Asia who accepted that sometimes the big players just attack the small ones. The fact that the response in Ukraine is so different is a dead giveaway that NATO was provoking the conflict. Otherwise there isn't a reason for them to be involved. We've had more than 100 wars this century [1] and the NATO involvement and escalation of this one stands out as unusual.
And on some minor points:
> For it to be a proxy war would require that NATO caused the war
I don't expect that to be correct, but it turns out that a proxy war technically requires one of the actors to be a non-state actor [2], so I can only agree that this isn't a proxy war. But the US is using Ukraine as a metaphorical club to kill Russians.
> Would you accept the US invading Venezuela because it was concerned about that country's close alliance with Russia and substantial re-armament using Russian weapons?
Something like a reoccurrence of the Cuban missile crisis? I'd expect the US to respond with extreme violence if Russia didn't back down as soon as possible.
They were clearly on the verge of integrating with NATO if not already doing so and close to the point where Russia was out of options.
Sorry, but this plainly nonsense.
The only way you could say they were "on the verge of joining" would be if NATO had indicated that intended to offer Ukraine an official invitation to join, via a formal step known as the Membership Action Plan. But that's been famously on hold as far back as the Bucharest Summit in 2008. It was really a very big deal at the time that both Georgia and Ukraine were specifically asking to be offered MAPs, but ultimately said "no" to both countries -- largely because France, Germany and (you really won't like this) the United States were all opposed, and this in turn, out of a desire to not upset Russia.
Of course there's also been a song and dance going about Ukraine eventually, some day joining the alliance, and yes Ukraine has an article in its constitution about wanting to join some day. But the whole point of these actions is they have been second-tier, rear-guard manoeuvres. Which if anything simply underscore the fact that the fundamental decision regarding Ukraine's status was made in 2008, and that since then there have been no major motions in process to reverse that decision.
It's simply not the case that they were "on the verge of joining, if not already doing so" in 2022. Or that the Western powers were on the verge of taking any action that was an imminent threat to Russia at the time. And far from being "out of options" -- by any pragmatic assessment of the situation, Russia already had a successful containment strategy in place in regard the issue, attained by purely diplomatic means.
But of course they chose to invade anyway, for reasons that never had anything to do with NATO in the first place.
> That 1) is full of holes. It is 2024, only 2 years later, and Ukraine is awash with NATO gear and as mentioned the official position of the US State Department is saying they're going to be part of NATO. They were clearly on the verge of integrating with NATO if not already doing so and close to the point where Russia was out of options. If the Russian military had waited any longer there wouldn't have been anything they could do and realistically they made a massive error not invading back in 2014 when their losses would have been much smaller. To see "nowhere near joining" we can look at somewhere like Georgia. That is a country that is nowhere near joining NATO. Russia invades in 2008. They got no support and today, nearly 20 years later, they are still not part of NATO (although they are getting there). The invasion was over and done in 16 days; night and day compared to what is happening in Ukraine.
As the other poster mentioned, Ukraine and Georgia were both denied Membership Action Plans at the 2008 NATO Bucharest summit, meaning they weren't even on the first rung of the process to join NATO. In 2021 NATO made some positive noises but still refused to offer Ukraine a MAP, even though Russian troops were massing on Ukraine's border.
It also takes years to be able to join after a MAP starts, and most importantly a MAP is not a treaty with any legal power: Joining one doesn't guarantee membership and the process can be stopped at any point. So even while Russian troops were massing on Ukraine's border and threatening to invade NATO wasn't ready to formally move closer to a Ukrainian accession beyond some encouraging words. Nearly all of the military support to Ukraine came after it was invaded, not before, and it was committed because NATO quite understandably reasoned that if Russia was willing to invade Ukraine without legal justification or provocation it would not stop there, but would try to go for Moldova and other countries next, significantly changing the strategic picture of Europe for generations. Supporting Ukraine is a defensive action.
The idea that Ukraine joining NATO would've meant US 'missile banks along the Russian border' is ridiculous, given that none of the other NATO members that border or are near Russia received US missile banks. As I said, NATO was very careful to limit both the quantity and type of equipment that it would deploy in new members, restricting them to purely defensive measures such as the NATO air patrols over the Baltics.
Putin has also quite clearly stated on numerous occasions that he considers Ukraine statehood a myth and that it's really a breakaway province of Russia.[0]
Finally, even if Ukraine was about to join NATO, that gives Russia no right to invade it. I don't understand why you seem to believe that it would.
There has been order-of-magnitude 100 billion dollars worth of NATO gear provided to Ukraine with the express purpose of killing as many Russians as possible, let alone the intangible value of various forms of aid provided (things like intelligence are hard to assess). "Hehe, well we didn't file the proper paperwork" isn't exactly the sort of response that is going to get a good result.
I doubt the Russians are worried about whether the US followed its own self-imposed process of officially declaring the alliance. They're worried about the network of countries that the US is building up with the fairly plain purpose of destroying the Russian military followed by regime change. They respond to threats when they detect them, not when the US or whoever decide to officially declare that the threat is being made.
> ... 'missile banks along the Russian border' is ridiculous, given that none of the other NATO members that border or are near Russia received US missile banks.
The presence of all those members is why I think it might well happen. NATO has the real estate and doesn't seem worried about escalations. Why not? NATO seems to be pretty firm in their belief that a good offence is the best defence; I think technically we've never seen them fighting defensively? Although I maintain de-facto that what seems to be happening in Ukraine is the defence of a NATO country.
> Finally, even if Ukraine was about to join NATO, that gives Russia no right to invade it. I don't understand why you seem to believe that it would.
Can you name a war where the invader had a right to start it? This is war! The people purposefully starting wars are almost uniformly monsters clothed in human flesh. The best case is that they are monsters in an age of other monsters. If there are exceptions to that none spring to my mind.
You're mixing up cause and response, once again, and ignoring the timeline of events.
> There has been order-of-magnitude 100 billion dollars worth of NATO gear provided to Ukraine with the express purpose of killing as many Russians as possible, let alone the intangible value of various forms of aid provided (things like intelligence are hard to assess). "Hehe, well we didn't file the proper paperwork" isn't exactly the sort of response that is going to get a good result.
> I doubt the Russians are worried about whether the US followed its own self-imposed process of officially declaring the alliance. They're worried about the network of countries that the US is building up with the fairly plain purpose of destroying the Russian military followed by regime change. They respond to threats when they detect them, not when the US or whoever decide to officially declare that the threat is being made.
Many countries, just not NATO, have sent weapons and other resources to Ukraine for it to defend itself against the Russian invasion, and to deter further Russian incursions or invasions beyond Ukraine. They were not sending those quantities in advance of the war.
Had Russia not invaded Ukraine in February 2022 two things would be presently true: First, it would not have lost all that military personnel and military equipment, and, second, Ukraine would still not be in NATO. Once again, Western countries spent months trying to convince Russia not to invade, as they expected Russian forces to swiftly overwhelm Ukrainian forces and take over the country. It was only when Ukraine put up better than expected resistance and repelled the attempt to take over Kyiv that Western countries began supplying it in earnest.
> The presence of all those members is why I think it might well happen. NATO has the real estate and doesn't seem worried about escalations. Why not? NATO seems to be pretty firm in their belief that a good offence is the best defence; I think technically we've never seen them fighting defensively? Although I maintain de-facto that what seems to be happening in Ukraine is the defence of a NATO country.
Now you're just speculating. The actual history of NATO expansion, its actions, and the restrictions it has openly placed on forward deployment of forces have shown it to be very concerned about escalations and about Russia's fears.
> Can you name a war where the invader had a right to start it? This is war! The people purposefully starting wars are almost uniformly monsters clothed in human flesh. The best case is that they are monsters in an age of other monsters. If there are exceptions to that none spring to my mind.
Yes, the coalition attack on Iraq in 1991 to repel its forces from Kuwait is one example, but there are others. You should read up on jus ad bellum and how it applies.
80s? NATO expands. 90s? NATO expands. 00s? NATO Expands. 10s? NATO expands. 20s? NATO expands. Russia at peace? NATO expands. Russia at war? NATO expands. Russia tries anything, including diplomacy? NATO expands. Only the neutrality of Switzerland prevents me from drawing a line through NATO from the Russian border to Spain.
The pattern here is not "oh Ukraine wasn't going to join up until the Russians invaded". The pattern is NATO expands. The preponderance of evidence in the NATO response to the Ukraine invasion - and the flow of history - suggests that the US has its sights on integrating Ukraine into NATO and was probably in the process of it.
> Yes, the coalition attack on Iraq in 1991 to repel its forces from Kuwait is one example
The audacity. You spend a thread whinging about Russia panicking because the US is organising all of Europe against them [0], then as a counterexample you pick one of the US's invasions of the Middle East (of Iraq no less, those poor people) as your example of a justified war?
What is the criteria here? US aggression is OK? A quorum of European interests justifies any invasion? It is OK if we do it to brown Muslims but not white Christians? There is no jus ad bellum to be found in the US expeditions into the Middle East; they've been a disaster for the region and the world. And any time you end up siding with the Saudis it is bad news for any sort of principled approach.
[0] Which, I mean, fair enough what Russia is doing is awful but let's aim for some consistency here.
NATO is not a loaf of rising bread that expands on its own when left on a windowsill. My country is in NATO because I voted for successive governments that set it as their top priority, because I believed then and I believe now that tight cooperation with likeminded countries is the best way to deter another Russian invasion (we've had 40+ of them in recorded history).
And this is the universal view in Europe as of 2024. No country in Europe can afford on their own what Ukraine has been through, and this makes military alliances essential for national security. Even Sweden with its 200+ years of neutrality ditched it as soon as Russia invaded Ukraine. Ukraine is by now a cautionary tale of naive belief in diplomacy (Helsinki Accords; Budapest memorandum; etc) without a big stick to back it up.
Conspiracy theories about the US turning Europe against Russia are completely redundant. When it comes to national security, no responsible government in parts of Europe closest to Russia can afford to stay out of NATO. If you were the prime minister of Finland, why would you not do everything you could to join NATO and enter the mutual defense pact seeing how Russia behaves in Ukraine?
For a very long time, both Finland and Sweden had a deep belief that skillful diplomacy could prevent a war with Russia, but what do you do when Russia starts blasting that your country doesn't exist?
> If you were the prime minister of Finland, why would you not do everything you could to join NATO and enter the mutual defense pact seeing how Russia behaves in Ukraine?
Yes. My whole position in this thread has been that countries tend to do things for the obvious reason, I'm not sure why people keep expecting me to disagree on points like that. Everyone wants to be in NATO. Even Russia probably wants to join NATO. But that doesn't change the fact that the US was provoking Russia by signing everyone up and the US acting on that expansionist urge in Ukraine seems to be the major driver of this war.
> But that doesn't change the fact that the US was provoking Russia by signing everyone up and the US acting on that expansionist urge in Ukraine seems to be the major driver of this war.
???
But that's exactly the opposite of what happened. Ukraine and Georgia desired to join the NATO like everyone else. The US, Germany and a handful of others dashed those hopes in 2008 due to Russian pressure. This lowered the risk for Russia and they immediately invaded Georgia, and a few years later Ukraine, and expanded the invasion in 2022 after they saw the shameful retreat from Afghanistan as a further sign of US' weakness and unwillingness to support their allies.
Not American expansionist urge, but the utterly short-sighted belief in "we must not provoke Russia" is how we got here. Russians are not provoked by strength, but by weakness. Belief in enemy's weakness enables dangerous illusions like "3 days to Kyiv".
> The US, Germany and a handful of others dashed those hopes in 2008 due to Russian pressure.
That is a ruse on the part of the US and I don't know why anyone expects it to be taken seriously given what we see post 2022. NATO considers Ukraine to be part of their strategic territory. They're dumping 10s to 100s of billions of dollars into Ukraine's defence. They've claimed to have been a part of killing something like 300,000 Russian soldiers. They're explaining to anyone who'll listen that the relationship will be formalised as soon as possible. It looks like they've been working on this for years prior to the invasion in fact - unless you believe that the NATO military planners are so incompetent they didn't have contingency plans for Russia invading Ukraine. There is even the obvious pattern of behaviour on the part of the US here regarding NATO expansion.
It’s a remarkably insular and US-centric view to believe that that story was the reason the United Nations Security Council voted to eject Iraq from Kuwait. It was a piece of propaganda that merely had some air play in the US and which, while it may have been convenient to the US and Kuwaiti governments for the support of the US population, was not the strategic reason for any of the nations involved.
Fortunately we have plenty of primary sources to validate this, from the minutes of UNSC minutes to statements by various heads of government at the time. All make it clear that the war was authorised because Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait was not only blatantly illegal but destructive to the international system. That story didn’t form any part their rationale.
That particular Security Council decision was entirely driven by the US though, including getting the Saudis to pay 1B USD to the ailing Soviet Union to buy their Yes vote (and by then it was already in the final stages of Perestroika).
I wonder what your justification for Saddam's invisible WMDs is. That lie was not invented by someone at the Pentagon?
The issue with what you write is that it's most all nonsense. Your core thesis doesn't pass the smell test at all.
Because you utterly ignore Finland. It's less that it's not NATO and more that it literally can't be. Why would Putin drive them into NATO if having NATO neighbors (which, besides, was already a fact anyways) is such a threat?
He views it as his rightful property, and that's that.
The same view that is held by a plethora of senior western officials such as Obama, William Burns (Former ambassador to Russia), Gates (Former Secretary of Defence), Angela Merkle, etc.
He describes it as a "principled, internationalist, anti-imperialist left response" and that seems like a fair assessment from what I'm reading.
It's also a complete mindfuck of a piece, with obvious cognitive distortions and major factual evasions flying from every paragraph.
But because it's expressed in that calm, authoritative, rational (sounding) voice -- and it's coming from Saint Chomsky after all -- "principled, internationalist" lefties eat it up like candy.
I admire Chomsky for other things he's done. But he's got a split personality also, and in some cases his "morals" are very deeply flawed.
There is unfortunately a staggering amount of evidence of genocide in Ukraine committed by russia. To suggest otherwise, or to suggest that russia is "acting with restraint and moderation" as Chomsky said, is tantamount to Holocaust denial.
> Russia did not target (initially, now they are) major essential civilian infrastructure like power plants.
Initially, Russia was planning a decapitation strike and to take Ukraine relatively whole afterwards, either by annexation or installation of a puppet regime or a mix of the two.
They started heavily hitting civilian concentration with no military value as a terror tactic pretty quickly when the swift decapitation strike bogged down, and then started hitting civilian infrastructure where the combination of attacks on military targets and terror civilian attacks didn't produce a collapse that left them in control.
If you could dispute the casualty figures or the fact that power plants were not targeted initially in Ukraine but were in Iraq you would do so. You can't so you resort to baseless accusations.
> points out that Russia did not target (initially, now they are) essential civilian infrastructure like power plants
Oh, right, they were targeting shopping malls and residential buildings... Or, you know, nuclear power plants.
> When people are confronted with this fact they typically turn to the argument that our team are pure-of-heart so their killing doesn't count.
Yes, your side is the only one that has rational individuals.
> I don't remember where or if he talked about the claim of genocide in Ukraine but there is not a "staggering amount of evidence" unless your definition of genocide is so broad as to include a large proportion of armed conflicts
So, Mariupol, Bucha... Bucha was just a massacre, there's no justification there, but let's say you want to compare Mariupol with... Fallujah? Do you have a worse US massacre in recent history? Well, yeah, the US killed people, and they should be blamed for it, but the scale doesn't even compare. Even if you take the Russian number of casualties, it's way higher in Mariupol.
>Like I said these criticisms fall apart almost immediately when you start discussing the facts.
> Russia did not target (initially, now they are) major essential civilian infrastructure like power plants
The russians targeted major essential civilian infrastructure right from the outset of the full scale invasion. This included hospitals, airports, train stations, bridges, information infrastructure, fuel facilities, etc. They also launched wave after wave of cruise missile and drone attacks on energy infrastructure all across the country from the autumn of 2022.
I would know, because I was there.
So, what you are saying here is utter horseshit.
> there is not a "staggering amount of evidence"
There is, but clearly you don't want to see it.
> unless your definition of genocide is so broad as to include a large proportion of armed conflicts.
The definition of genocide I am using is the one provided by the UN.
They did not target power plants at the outset. As you say, later they escalated and started targeting substations (which are easier to repair). This year they have escalated even further and are targeting main power plants. How do you account for this?
Contrast with Iraq where power plants (probably the most critical of civilian infrastructure) were targeted immediately.
> The definition of genocide I am using is the one provided by the UN.
Unfortunately the "whole or in part" definition is so vague that it can be interpreted to encompasses pretty much every conflict. You cannot apply the same standard and say that Ukraine is a genocide and Iraq was not.
I grew up taking Chomsky's perspectives on the Vietnam war as gospel. After actually living there for 8 years and talking to many people about it I realized it was a lot less black and white then he paints it.
The US began arming the "Khmer Rouge" (whatever that means) in 1979 as well as protecting them in the UN, so the equivalence seems pretty valid to me.
Not to mention the US 1970 invasion of Cambodia and concurrent CIA-backed overthrow of the Cambodian government, which including shooting dead US students who protested against it at Kent State and Jackson State, or the US carpet bombing of Cambodia during and after Operation Freedom Deal.
I recall vehemently disagreeing with Chomsky on many things when I was much younger, but then I somehow stumbled upon Howard Zinn’s “People’s history of the United States” and realized the version of history I knew was basically concentrated propaganda I was brainwashed into believing. That opened the door to understanding Chomsky. “Manufacturing consent” explains our present state of affairs really well.
Reputation of historians according to Zinn: not all that great either. Read him as a counterpoint, and food for critical thought, not as the sole source of truth. He doesn’t hide that he has an agenda.
I did actually see him talk at a rally in Boston Common, around '04 or so. While his written stuff may well be better, what struck me was the gist was basically self promotion about how he know "secret" things from "secret" sources, but never really bothered to elaborate, only that the "US Govt is lying to you". Well yes but...I would say if one had such information, it is not well served by presenting oneself as a conspiratorial crank....
Yes, US Govt is routinely lying to you. That is not controversial at all at this point. Read the book. It’s a difficult read though. Might ruffle some patriotic feathers.
Think of how difficult it is today to get even remotely truthful news. And then think about how this horseshit will be written up by government funded historians once all the political scores are settled and winners are determined
Yes, but why should I even bother with Zinn especially when his talk was basically to take him at his word/narrative, over other, better sourced accounts of how the US Govt is lying to me?
(* some of which comes from other parts of the US Govt meant to keep tabs on certain other parts of the US Govt)
(*granted, also this assumes the US Govt is one monolithic entity when it is anything but)
I don't think the solution to having been taught one biased view is to turn around and embrace the oppositely biased view. Countering one form of extreme with another does not make truth, it makes people who hate each other who refuse to find common ground or compromise.
I mean if you want another perspective you can simple Wikipedia "American Empire". It'll be simple enough for another view of current state of affairs without going into politically motivated alternative history, either from communists or from milton friedman fans.
It annoys me to no end that both right wingers and left wingers like so much to tell history how it's convenient to them and always hard to get something unbiased. Even numbers of deaths can't be trusted before you check who you are reading.
But Wikipedia is also full of lies and omissions, though. You're going to have to work to synthesize some plausible version of the past from the politically motivated sources either way.
I was more-or-less a free-market, atheist libertarian until about age 16 because I didn't know any better and it seemed so righteous and freedom flag-waving. Then, I learned a few things decades since then (but kept the atheism), especially about the dark origins of libertarianism. The truth is that America is a neocolonial power that flirts authoritarianism where one can live an easy life if they're moderately rich, but on the backs of a massive, struggling underclass that has it much worse than most countries in Europe. "Socialism" is a taboo word in America that it needs much more of, but the problem is that most people have too much faith in strongmen, corruption of campaign financing, and giving corporations more money, more power, and favorable regulations including regulatory capture.
I’m starting to waver on atheism also. I’m not likely to start believing in god this far in my life, of course, but I now see why a lot of people feel the need to believe, and I no longer judge them for it. I do however judge religious organizations for shamelessly exploiting that need.
Perhaps I could sell you the idea of ignosticism: one cannot prove anything about any supernatural beings, so the whole question of existence of gods is meaningless, and can be therefore happily be ignored. Thus, all religious questions are resolved.
Even atheism is a strong stance and asserts a belief that you cannot test!
If you reread what you wrote carefully an amazing irony falls out.
You might consider your consent has simply been manufactured in another direction. Lots of Chomsky acolytes never quite reach that epiphany.
They simply follow in his footsteps of being oh so traumatized by the sudden realization that governments lie and propaganda is a thing that you could get them to opt in to an even deeper set of absurdities and half truths quite easily. To the great delight of the enemies of the US.
This is how you get college students to chant "Death to America".
Indeed. Alt-right/left/whatever. Very potent tactics as you can tell even from reading this thread.
You would think people who come to these bitter realizations would know better but many inevitably land on "the ends justifies the means" or the less sophisticated "only our scum enemies lie!" and round and round we go.
Some dudes given "secret suppressed knowledge" that is contrarian to a mainstream they feel alienated from will immediately buy in hook line and sinker and become fanatics.
1979 was after the genocide and after Pol Pot was pushed out of power. Implying the US had something to do with the killing fields defies common sense. The khmer rouges were primarily China and North Vietnam backed.
Now the US did support some incompetent and corrupt militia in Cambodia to oppose the Khmer rouges, and those did their fair share of misdeeds, to the frustration of local US officers. But given the crimes the khmer rouges ended up committing, it is hard to argue that not opposing them was the morally superior position, even with hindsight.
In April 1975, the Khmer Rouge seized power in Cambodia, and in January 1976, Democratic Kampuchea was established. During the Cambodian genocide, the CCP was the main international patron of the Khmer Rouge, supplying "more than 15,000 military advisers" and most of its external aid.[82] It is estimated that at least 90% of the foreign aid to Khmer Rouge came from China, with 1975 alone seeing US$1 billion in interest-free economic and military aid and US$20 million gift, which was "the biggest aid ever given to any one country by China"
And if you read the article, north vietnam was their main backer before.
I worded that part poorly, and did not bring up what really bothers me about it, that he tried to deny that there was a genocide in Cambodia. I agree with what you said. The idea that the US is innocent in Cambodia or really anything going on in that part of the world at that time is beyond false.
His point was always that the most inflated estimates of deaths in Cambodia were uncritically accepted by Western media and widely broadcast, while atrocities committed by friendly nations always leaned towards the very low estimates and the stories were buried.
He wrote that before the truth was known, while the genocide was ongoing and the only thing we had was scattered reports of atrocities. This was the 70s, we did not exactly have telegram livestream channels from the frontlines. It was a mistake and he recanted those views in the later stages of the regime and afterwards, when the evidence became overwhelming.
Before the truth was known? No. Before he accepted the truth after it became untenable for him to continue to reject it.
Chomsky simply rejected all the earlier evidence pointing to a genocide as an American imperialist lie.
For goodness sake, he characterized Barron and Paul's Murder of a Gentle Land as being sourced from "informal briefings from specialists at the State and Defense Departments" despite it clearly sourcing testimony of hundreds of Cambodian refugees and Khmer Rouge radio broadcasts. His characterization of it was so intellectually dishonest that it is difficult to believe it was either an intentional lie or willful ignorance.
He searched for any counter-evidence that would confirm his belief that the US was evil (and its adversaries were good or just misunderstood), no matter how questionable - a pattern he continued his entire life.
This is just false. The main piece of evidence -- the death figures published by La Couture -- which was being widely cited, had to be retracted after Chomsky fact-checked it. The author himself said in the retraction something to the effect of "it doesn't matter what the numbers are".
As for "Gentle Land" he supports his claim that "[their] scholarship collapses under the barest scrutiny". He writes: "To cite a few cases, they state that among those evacuated from Phnom Penh, “virtually everybody saw the consequences of [summary executions] in the form of the corpses of men, women and children rapidly bloating and rotting in the hot sun,” citing, among others, J.J. Cazaux, who wrote, in fact, that “not a single corpse was seen along our evacuation route,” and that early reports of massacres proved fallacious (The Washington Post, May 9, 1975). They also cite The New York Times, May 9, 1975, where Sydney Shanberg wrote that “there have been unconfirmed reports of executions of senior military and civilian officials … But none of this will apparently bear any resemblance to the mass executions that had been predicted by Westerners,” and that “Here and there were bodies, but it was difficult to tell if they were people who had succumbed to the hardships of the march or simply civilians and soldiers killed in the last battles.” They do not mention the Swedish journalist, Olle Tolgraven, or Richard Boyle of Pacific News Service, the last newsman to leave Cambodia, who denied the existence of wholesale executions; nor do they cite the testimony of Father Jacques Engelmann, a priest with nearly two decades of experience in Cambodia, who was evacuated at the same time and reported that evacuated priests “were not witness to any cruelties” and that there were deaths, but “not thousands, as certain newspapers have written” (cited by Hildebrand and Porter)."
Elsewhere he cites official CIA figures which also did not support the claim.
But none of this was even the point of his article, he explicitly writes "We do not pretend to know where the truth lies amidst these sharply conflicting assessments". The point is that the evidence is distorted to smear enemies and make ourselves look good. He writes in the penultimate paragraph:
"What filters through to the American public is a seriously distorted version of the evidence available, emphasizing alleged Khmer Rouge atrocities and downplaying or ignoring the crucial U.S. role, direct and indirect, in the torment that Cambodia has suffered. Evidence that focuses on the American role, like the Hildebrand and Porter volume, is ignored, not on the basis of truthfulness or scholarship but because the message is unpalatable."
That is the simple message that Chomsky has been conveying his entire political life and, as exemplified by current events, people continue to ignore it.
Chomsky's entire shtick was to start from the belief that the US is evil and that any evidence that might be favorable to US positions is suspect, then searching for contrary evidence, no matter how questionable, to show this was the case - even if it means manufacturing or distorting it.
Olle Tolgraven? He said the Khmer Rouge were shooting people during the ordered mass evacuation, something Chomsky left out. He also left out the other accounts from the same article which describe Phnom Penh as being littered with decomposing bodies.
He pointed to Hildebrand and Porter and called it "based on a wide range of sources" when in reality, everything documented after the Khmer Rouge took charge came from one source: official Khmer Rouge propaganda.
In order to refute claim Barron and Paul that "virtually everybody saw the consequences" he invented citations to J.J. Cazaux and Schanberg so he could use carefully cherry-picked quotes from them against it.
Chomsky claimed publications like the Economist have "analyses by highly qualified specialists who have studied the full range of evidence available, and who concluded that executions have numbered at most in the thousands." Notably, the Economist did write an article that hundreds of thousands had been executed. The claim the number was in the thousands came not from the Economist's highly qualified specialists, but rather a letter from a reader in response to that article.
It goes on and on and on and on. If Chomsky was held to the standard he held others, we would dismiss him as not credible for even a fraction of the half-truths and lies he peddled.
> Chomsky's entire shtick was to start from the belief that the US is evil and that any evidence that might be favorable to US positions is suspect
His position is that 1. people distort facts to exaggerate crimes of their enemies and minimize their own crimes and 2. we are primarily responsible for our own actions not the actions of others. Both of these things are very easy to understand in any other context.
If you follow those precepts then you would focus on your own sides' lies and crimes which might naively be viewed as "anti-US" bias.
> Olle Tolgraven? [...]
Chomsky never argues that there wasn't any evidence of killings and seems to accurately describe Tolgraven's account: "A Swedish journalist, Olle Tolgraven of Swedish Broadcasting, said he did not believe there had been wholesale executions. But he said there was evidence the Khmer Rouge had shot people who refused to leave their homes in a mass evacuation ordered the first day of the takeover. " (Los Angeles Times, May 9, 1975). (c.f. Chomsky: "who denied the existence of wholesale executions").
> He pointed to Hildebrand and Porter [...]
I will have to read the book myself but looking at the references it does look like it has a "wide range of sources".
> he invented citations to J.J. Cazaux and Schanberg
Just to be clear: You are saying that he fabricated citations? Can you tell me the specific ones?
> Chomsky claimed publications like the Economist have "analyses by highly ... but rather a letter from a reader in response to that article.
He writes "have provided analyses by highly qualified specialists". I assume he's referring to the letter he describes himself in the subsequent paragraph from, "an economist and statistician for the Cambodian Government until March 1975" who "visited refugee camps in Thailand and kept in touch with Khmers" and who relayed conversations from a "European friend who cycled around Phnom Penh for many days after its fall" and who you misleadingly describe as merely "a reader". Perhaps you could object to the phrase "provided analyses" if he hadn't described the analyses himself in detail in the very next paragraph.
---
I would re-iterate the point that the La Couture numbers were fabricated and had to be retracted; and the CIAs own numbers did not support allegations of genocide. Despite this the La Couture numbers were widely cited (and the CIA numbers were not). That alone proves the point that Chomsky was making and which I described at the beginning. When claims suits our foreign policy elite no evidence is required, when they don't no evidence is possible.
> Chomsky never argues that there wasn't any evidence of killings and seems to accurately describe Tolgraven's account
Yes it was an example of one of Chomsky's half-truths.
> I will have to read the book myself but looking at the references it does look like it has a "wide range of sources".
This was an example Chomsky lying by omission. There were, indeed, plenty of other sources for information in the book - for events prior to the Khmer Rouge coming to power.
> Just to be clear: You are saying that he fabricated citations? Can you tell me the specific ones?
Yes. He wrote, "Their scholarship collapses under the barest scrutiny. To cite a few cases, they state that among those evacuated from Phnom Penh, “virtually everybody saw the consequences of [summary executions] in the form of the corpses of men, women and children rapidly bloating and rotting in the hot sun,” citing, among others, J.J. Cazaux, who wrote, [...]. They also cite The New York Times, May 9, 1975, where Sydney Shanberg wrote [...]"
Neither Cazaux nor Shanberg were cited as evidence for the passage quoted. The book certainly cited Shanberg elsewhere, though in reference to early favorable views of the Khmer Rouge.
> I assume he's referring to the letter he describes himself in the subsequent paragraph from, "an economist and statistician for the Cambodian Government until March 1975" who "visited refugee camps in Thailand and kept in touch with Khmers" and who relayed conversations from a "European friend who cycled around Phnom Penh for many days after its fall" and who you misleadingly describe as merely "a reader".
This was an example of Chomsky dishonest borrowing of authority. The Economist does provide analysis "by highly qualified specialists who have studied the full range of evidence available."
This letter to the editor authored by a UN employee (mischaracterized by Chomsky as someone who worked for the Cambodian government) offered his "first impression" of an Economist article and contained personal estimates of civilian war deaths seemingly based on what he "felt" and some anecdotes.
That certainly wasn't written by one of the Economist's stable of highly qualified specialists who have studied the full range of evidence available - unlike the article the letter was responding to - an article that stated (correctly) that there were a million civilian deaths.
In an alternative reality where the Khmer Rouge were capitalists and an anti-Chomsky had written Distortions at Fourth Hand, there is little doubt that real Chomsky would have ripped it apart as American Imperialist propaganda. Sadly, neither he nor his apologists hold his writings to the standards he held others.
> Yes it was an example of one of Chomsky's half-truths.
Except he himself explicitly says that there were killings multiple times.
> Neither Cazaux nor Shanberg were cited as evidence for the passage quoted.
I don't understand what you are trying to say. Chomsky claims Cazaux wrote that '“not a single corpse was seen along our evacuation route,” and that early reports of massacres proved fallacious', that seems to provide a conflicting account of the "passage quoted" (i.e. "virtually everybody saw...").
> This was an example of Chomsky dishonest borrowing of authority
As I said maybe you could argue that if he didn't explicitly describe the evidence and the source at length in the very next paragraph.
> an article that stated (correctly) that there were a million civilian deaths.
What we are arguing about is whether there was a basis for those figures. I can't find the Economist article online at the moment but as far as I know the only source of those high figures at the time was Lacouture which Chomsky showed to be fabricated. I assume if you knew of another source you would have cited it already.
----
I will re-iterate that the key issue is not any of the above but that the most important piece of evidence, the Lacouture number, was fabricated and would have failed the most basic fact-checking, yet was loudly promoted. In contrast the US government's own numbers, which conflicted with La Couture, were ignored. These hard figures were the most important pieces of evidence and the fact they were treated as they were is what proves Chomsky's point about distortion of information, the Cambodia case being only one example.
All that had to be said, was said. All that had to be said about saying, has been said. If the language of of said, is to be taken as a context free gramar defined by a tuple Y and the ruleset X, then the pumping lema for cf languages applies. Sayer said sad. [Mic Drop]
Regardless of whether you think vaccines should be required or not, the mRNA COVID vaccines have objectively proven to be both safe and effective. Though not as effective as everyone would have liked at reducing spread, it certainly reduced severity of cases.
>Regardless of whether you think vaccines should be required or not, the mRNA COVID vaccines have objectively proven to be both safe and effective.
By all existing measures of safety they're by far the least safe vaccines on the market, and even their apparent effectiveness may have just been the result of their immune suppressive effect: https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/immunology/articles/10.... .
>In support of this hypothesis, Dr. Netea’s group reported dampened transcriptional reactivity of the immune cells and decreased type I interferon responses in vaccinated individuals to secondary viral stimulation (97), while our group described inhibition of adaptive immune responses and alteration in innate immune fitness in mice with this platform (99). The immune-tolerant environment induced by these vaccines is further supported by recent studies that have discovered a correlation between an increased number of prior mRNA vaccine doses and a higher risk of catching COVID-19 (100–102). Thus, these data suggest that these vaccines’ efficacy in decreasing disease severity and death might lie with their previously undiscovered immune suppressive characteristics.
The general idea that it is "authoritarian" to force people into isolation to prevent them from harming others is obviously absurd (imagine an airborne disease with Ebola-like mortality).
You could probably make an argument that it wasn't justified in this case using information known at the time but you have to actually make that case, not resort to appeals to "freedom" or information we know now.
I still love his debate with Foucault from ages ago. Chomsky speaking English, Foucault speaking French! The subject didn't matter much to me, but the ease they were debating each other is something else.
I watched some of the documentaries such as the ine about manufacturing consent.
What I don’t understand is this: the news agencies don’t report to the government. Then why would they work together with the government to mislead the people? Does anyone know?
Noam is so amazingly smart, he is probably one a billion. Sometimes I am not sure he is right but can’t really formulate why or what is it that I don’t agree.
I disagree with about everything this guy wrote politically. I totally disagree with this guys perspective, it drives me up a wall frankly. But I have always have had incredible respect and think he played an important role in the dialogue. I read everything he wrote, and generally enjoy his writing. The very definition of the constant loyal opposition. Always getting people to think about things differently and with incredible moral courage. I wrote and argued with him and he always responded. We are all better off because of Chomsky.
To contrast a bit with other comments, he is very much disliked in eastern Europe. He was always pushing his multipolar worldview and not respecting that the Poles, Czechs etc. do not want to live under the Soviet/Russian 'pole'.
My personal opinion is that he 1) hates the US 2) hates eastern Europe because it defeated socialism.
I'd love to be proven wrong, but I do not think I will be.
> My personal opinion is that he 1) hates the US 2) hates eastern Europe because it defeated socialism.
He doesn't hate the US. He hates that the US has been captured by warmongering elites and hates its poor. And he'd probably school you on the USSR's state authoritarian capitalism not being a good example of socialism.
I'm not sure it falls under socialism, but I always enjoy reading about the "Miracle of Wörgl" and Wörgl's mayor Unterguggenberger. There is even a movie about it!
I'm unsure as well but either way this is fascinating; I've only ever heard the term 'scrip' used with negative connotations so this seems like a very refreshing change. The way the currency value was kept stable also looks to me like a great benefit.
Welp, now I gotta write a blockchain that tries to match this experiment as closely as possible
East Germany? Why do you call that a good example of socialism? Post-wall coming down it was mostly East Germans coming to West Germany, less of the reverse. Even today the eastern half of Germany is typically socioeconomically lower on most stats, and a lot of that stems from decades of decisions made in DDR.
1. The West of Germany, particularly the Rhine, had large amounts of natural resources and much industrial capacity. This was true long before Germany was split. Take the steel production of Germany in 1944, for example. 59% of Steel production was in the West, 18% was in the East, and 16% was in the areas outside of Germany. This is not only more production, but more production per capita.
2. Like most of the former Easter bloc, the privatization of state companies resulted in economic downturn in that region. Especially since many of these state industries were simply closed and cashed out on. Jörg Steinbach, economy minister of Brandenburg, is quoted as saying "Some 70 per cent of East German industry disappeared".
Given that it's just another -ism, brain farted by some random french aristocrat in the eighteenhundreds-something if I remember correctly, and like all other -isms designed to control the population and steal the profit. All of them?
The core ideas are awesome, but then the same could be said of Democracy; any idea force fed from the top is going to have the same kind of shit sandwich quality, the rainbow madness is just the latest example.
I am a huge fan both of his technical contributions, healthy AI skepticism, and also a good friend earned her PhD with Chomsky. I hope he is comfortable and surrounded by people who love him.
EDIT: and, of course, he had an accurate view of the world geopolitically, media manipulation, etc.
I can't speak to his opinions on other topics, but since the full-scale Russian invasion started a few years ago, his frequent opinion pieces on world politics started popping up a lot. They were some of the most batshit insane, genocide-apologist takes on the situation that I've ever read.
If you believe that "vaccinations protect us against disease" is propaganda, I have very bad news about whatever information sources you've been following.
He was talking about the covid vaccines when he said that, which never prevented infection or spread. That belief started from a misunderstanding of the press releases.
He either didn't know what he was talking about or was making it a moral thing without regard to effectiveness.
Here's your monthly reminder that despite the large place he occupies in the "sciency" cultural landscape, a lot of his work has been debunked and he has not gone back on his genocide-denying claims about Serbia.
Last time i heard him in an Interview he was already sluring and taking long times bevore he answered. I think there's metabolic problems and that he hasnt got much time left - sadly. I learned a lot from his lectures.
> The Russia-Ukraine crisis continues unabated as the United States ignores all of Russian President Vladmir Putin’s security demands and spreads a frenzy of fear by claiming that a Russian invasion of Ukraine is imminent.
Questions of human conflict are incredibly complex, but occasionally life gives you a freebie. Occasionally, things actually are black and white, there are good guys and bad guys and you should not support the bad guys. If you had trouble getting this one absolutely dead simple case right, maybe you should not bother having an opinion on these matters at all.
Damn, this topic got downvoted onto the 3rd page by the HN hive mind in no time. Right after:
SQLSync – collaborative offline-first wrapper around SQLite, 16 points, 20 hours old
Independent of what people believe of him or his defense of Faurisson's freedom of speech one thing is clear, they have both been the target of extremely aggressive smearing campaigns by Israel.
I would defend the right to freedom of speech of people who believe the earth is flat, that does not mean “I support the flat-earth movement”
Ultimately that leads to Popper's Paradox of Tolerance.[1] Do you defend the absolute freedoms of those whose goal is to destroy that freedom, along with you and many others with it? If yes, how do you stop them from accomplishing their goals? If no, where do you draw the line? (To be clear, I consider these critical but ultimately rhetorical questions with no obvious good answers.)
Chomsky had long publicly criticized Nazism, and totalitarianism more generally, but his commitment to freedom of speech led him to defend the right of French historian Robert Faurisson to advocate a position widely characterized as Holocaust denial.
Without Chomsky's knowledge, his plea for Faurisson's freedom of speech was published as the preface to the latter's 1980 book Mémoire en défense contre ceux qui m'accusent de falsifier l'histoire.
Chomsky was widely condemned for defending Faurisson, and France's mainstream press accused Chomsky of being a Holocaust denier himself, refusing to publish his rebuttals to their accusations.
And how do you know they are real? Because historians have been free to dig around and publish arguments and rebuttals and evidence. Not because anyone by decree or force declared it to be so.
he didn't support that cause. he radically supported free speech.
if someone has him discuss the paradox of (in)tolerance I'd appreciate links or pointers
ps: I come from a country with limits ob the freedom of speech and I defend those limits. I'm just saying Chomsky in contrast held freedom of speech as an absolute, even for anger and hate inciting lies.
And the ACLU "supported" the Nazi movement in Skokie. Do you have any evidence that Chomsky himself denies the holocaust, or are you just slinging shit?
Who's the bigger problem, the idiot yelling fire in the crowded movie theater, or the morally superior intellectual supporting their right to do so? I'm not so sure.
I checked sources, turns out literally tens of millions of people vocally and loudly disagree with you.
I think it's not helpful to anyone to come in here and be so resolute and so black and white. Especially in the face of an event that has drawn the eye of the international community as a potential genocide.
I'm not telling you what to believe, just that like, posting like you did is not engaging in any meaningful discussion.
I think the parent is referring to the situation before Oct 7th and likely going back to Israel's withdrawal in 2005. The detail I think he's trying to put forward is that before Israel's withdrawal the settlers in Gaza operated a flower export business of about that economic magnitude and that the greenhouses and infrastructure that was used for that business was left after Israel withdrew. There is some discussion of this here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gush_Katif#Economy
We're talking about the history of the conflict which I think is important. The Israeli disengagement from Gaza in 2005 is part of how we got here so I think it's important for people following the conflict to know the details and not just respond emotionally to the terrible images of war- which I agree are disturbing.
Please do mention about the complete sea, air, and land blockade of Gaza, when you do that. You can mention the raid on Gaza freedom flotilla as well.
While Israel supposedly disengaged from Gaza, it had conducted similar attacks with hundreds of human casualties under the pretense of operational readiness, training, and the notorious mowing the lawn operations.
Of course some of them were so called retribution and responses, which mostly begins by rockets on Israel soil, but not by the brutal oppression it administers to Gazans.
Not OP. Sometimes it's good to have a lack of nuance and come with absolute black/white thoughts. At some point, we all internally, draw our own lines in the sand about how we think on a topic (that is hopefully until we encounter new information that necessitates a change). I know for a fact that my opinion on this topic is not accepted, likely won't be accepted by either prominent side, but I stick with it because it conforms to my internal thoughts, priorities and problem-solving properties.
> it's truly surreal to hear people say this with their entire chest when the mountains of first-hand evidence proves otherwise.
Evidence from the post you are replying to, but did not address:
>> Gaza is not under threat from Israel, who pulled out in 2005, and gave Gazans a 250-300M flower export business. You can confirm this from any source you like.
Additionally, there should be no need to state that Hamas (which is widely supported in Gaza) attacked Israel and started this current war. Ie, Israel is under threat from Gaza.
The death ratio of civilian to combatant casualties from this war is 1:1 which is the lowest in any recent war, much to the credit of the IDF.
To entertain genocide conspiracy theories, those numbers, as well as Gaza population growth, would have to be very different for one thing.
Glad someone said it. Hamas is not a terrorist because they terrorize. Hamas is a terrorist because they are a threat to western govt and world order. Similarly south africa post apartheid was a threat to western world order.
> if it is God’s will (literally, “if God has willed [it]”
>In sarcastic contexts, it suggests that the speaker has no interest in making the future event occur (thus, it will only occur if God steps in and wills it). Unlike the Arabic usage, this seems to be more attested in English than the literal meaning.
I've heard it used in terms of avoiding the evil eye.
In religious circles it's not uncommon to prefix each and every writing with that. It's very generic sort of implying god is everywhere. So in writing, in that context, it has no real special significance other than to hint the writer is religious.
In some contexts Inshallah and "Bae Ezarat Hashem" could I guess have similar meanings. E.g. in the Wikipedia example: "I will visit my relatives in Riyadh this summer, God willing." it can be used exactly the same way.
Some languages have a distinct grammatical mood[0] for expressing wishes, curses, etc.: things that the speaker would like to pass but may or may not. (here are the dynamics, I think I've set the right initial conditions, but let's integrate them forward...)
Other languages have a distinct grammatical mood[1] for expressing things that, as day follows night, are certain to happen: (here's the Lagrangian, and there's the attractor)
In these senses, בס״ד could be viewed as a syntactic marker for the optative, somewhat like, but much shorter than, "forward-looking statements are provided to allow potential investors the opportunity to understand management’s beliefs and opinions in respect of the future so that they may use such beliefs and opinions as one factor in evaluating an investment."
[I am bitterly disappointed that זב"שך is outmoded]
[1] in HWC (alas, it has no wikipedia!), "bumbai" can be used for prophecy: "You stay X, bumbai Y" is IIUC: "if you continue to do X, Y shall come to pass."
Totally unrelated to the original topic, but looking at the linked article, is the name of the store "B&H Photo" a reference not only to the initials of the founders names but also tangentially to this concept?
That's funny, I'd never made that connection before. The B&H owners are Szatmars (who tend to be pretty stringent in their practices), so I don't think they'd make this exact reference -- ה substitutes for HaShem which (very) roughly equates to taking god's name in vain.
This is getting very tangential, but I've never seen someone spell it in English Szatmar before as opposed to Satmar. (From what I understand, Szatmar is the Hungarian-derived spelling, whereas Satmar is the Yiddish-derived one.)
My family is from pretty close to there (on the modern Ukrainian side not Romanian, but Hungarian and Eastern Yiddish speaking), so I’ve always seen it spelled “Szatmar.”
But yeah, looks like “Satmar” is much more common in English and there’s no ז in the Yiddish spellings either.
That's why I wasn't sure which. Without that context, I could read it purely innocently (if a slightly weird choice). With it, it's probably snide, but who knows.
> My first thought was snide / next level anti-Semitic trolling
Chomsky has been very critical of Israel, and as a result there are many pro-Israel people who strongly dislike him. So, while it isn’t impossible for Hebrew language trolling to be from an antisemite, my first thought would be it is from one of his pro-Israel critics
I couldn't tell if you meant Minsky or Chomsky. Chomsky has doubled down on some pretty terrible positions into his old age, including "Ukraine asked for it" when it came to Russia's invasion of Ukraine or a continuous stream of apologies and whataboutisms for regimes who resemble his ideal politics in name only
I feel that in his later years he made a conscious effort to talk to young people and made them aware of the history and depth of the problems the world is facing, and he used very modern avenues to do so, like podcast interviews. I will always have the highest degree of respect for this man and an admiration for his integrity, sensitivity and scholarship.