Chomsky, Pilger are secretly on the US Govt payroll

Message Bookmarked

Bookmark Removed

Discuss ramifications

― dave q, Thursday, 16 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

A couple of things. Chomskys a lingust and a poltical writer . In which capacity is he on the pay role if he on the payroll at all
Second excuse my ignorance but who is pilger.

― anthony, Thursday, 16 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Check this out, Anthony.

― Josh, Thursday, 16 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

does MIT receive state funding?

― tha chzza, Thursday, 16 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

In Oliver Sacks book on the deaf he wrote this huge section on how Chmoskys lingustic work has helped those who have been deafprelingually. It is vital work and he may have taken money from the state for it. But this does not seem wrong to me.

― anthony, Thursday, 16 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

pilger is one of my idols...unless he's a major disinfomationist, and is deliberately putting us off track regarding cia's involvement in the sacking of oz pm in 1975, please don't fuck with my head like this.

― Geoff, Thursday, 16 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

MIT receives tons of gov't funding. Science education/funding really grew huge during war/post-war times. Chomsky's salary is certainly paid for by MIT, but he probably gets reseach grants through other associations/gov't departments, plus any of his publishing.

I've only ever talked with him about Linguistics and Artificial Intelligence. He's a very engaging and friendly man.

― marianna, Thursday, 16 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

It's good to hear Chomsky's friendly. I've learned a lot from him about both politics and linguistics, but he has a very cranky tone in his writings and one of my profs told me he's the dirtiest intellectual fighter she'd ever met. My question was pretty sarcastic; I automatically assumed 80% or so of his salary came from the government. I don't think this takes away his right to criticize, though sometimes I wonder whether he'd be as supportive of the Wobblies as he is if he wasn't in a cushy academic post.

― tha chzza, Thursday, 16 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

What was wrong with the Wobblies? You did know that

― Tadeusz Suchodolski, Thursday, 23 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

What was wrong with the Wobblies? You did know that they're still around, no?

My only real complaints about Chomsky are (a) that while he's great on truthfully describing what's going on -- and considering how awful and biased American journalism is these days, that alone makes his political work commendable -- he's not so good on describing how to change things for the better; and (b) his "let them flip a coin" comment during the Gore-Bush Florida mess was flip and childish (very ironic how someone who goes on so much about democracy can be so petty just because the voters being disenfranchised voted for Al Gore and not for Ralphie "Asshole" Nader).

― Tadeusz Suchodolski, Thursday, 23 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

The only thing I heard bad about Chomsky is his skepticism regarding the JFK assasination. Other than that, I understand he's pretty good. He's well-respected in the anarchist community. As for Nader, the only "complaint" I ever heard is that he works his volunteers hard, which isn't much of a charge, if you ask me. Nader may have lost some credibility among some when he ran for President, since many see that kind of activity as "selling out". But I personally think it was a kind of direct action; he knew he wasn't going to win, that wasn't even the point of him running. He just wanted to shake things up, and in that he succeeded. He proved that the Democrats and Republicans are a duopoly in American politics when they forbade him from participating in the debates, then THREW HIM OUT of the audience when he wanted to just see the debates. I personally think Nader, Harry Browne(Libertarian Party), Henry Phillips(Constitution Party), Pat Buchanon(Reform Party), and ALL the other presidential candidates have a right to participate in the debates. It would be interesting to see what the candidates from the Prohibitionist Party or the Socialist Workers' Party or the American Nazi Party would say. Maybe it would be a circus atmosphere, but I think that American politics already are a circus, and like BArnum T. Bailey said, "There's a sucker is born every minute".

― glasnost, Monday, 20 May 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

this guy was a big deal to me once but the fact that half of what he says is broadly accurate makes him more insidious because people accept the whole package or downplay the embarrassing or genocidal parts which he will never apologise for and he's ultimately a reactionary influence which leftism and anarchism could do without

wrt totalitarianism it was always an awkward liberal concept but while it does seem to apply better to our contemporary capitalist panopticon than to the USSR (which even at the height of stalinist paranoia had hard structural political technological social economic etc limits on its ability to totalise its contol) you can also find as many continuities as differences between the regimes, how they disciplined labour, how labour submitted and resisted etc which might be a more helpful line of inquiry. chomsky's brain is poisoned by cold war geopolitics which combined with shoddy analysis, latent liberalism and crypto-americanism and a distinct lack of empathy leads to absurdities like defending a covertly US-backed regime in cambodia in the name of opposing american imperialism or defending nazi speech and organising as essential for keeping the free world free

― Left, Monday, 15 August 2022 16:38 (three years ago)

xp however if we do accept liberal capitalist totalitarianism as a concept:

Fun fact: did you know that after every hour of work at amazon the computer taunts you with a 30 second break where you say mantras that help you come to peace with your own exploitation? pic.twitter.com/G8qIfuxju8
— Connor Spence (@ConnorSpence_) August 14, 2022

― Left, Monday, 15 August 2022 16:53 (three years ago)

however, speaking of continuities:

New: Meet Rev. Richardson, a hospice chaplain who had to rack up “productivity points” as she tended to the dying.

Her story illustrates the rise of the worker productivity score, one of the biggest expansions of employer power in generations. 🧵 https://t.co/mfoigUk56t pic.twitter.com/OMl7Xh41F6
— Jodi Kantor (@jodikantor) August 15, 2022

― Left, Monday, 15 August 2022 17:11 (three years ago)