Chomsky: Paris attacks show hypocrisy of West's outrage - Polidicks

[quote]Philosopher and political commentator Noam Chomsky has criticised the hypocrisy of the West’s outrage following the attacks on Charlie Hebdo and a kosher supermarket in Paris.[/quote] [quote]He further said that, “The scene in Paris was described vividly in The New York Times by veteran Europe correspondent Steven Erlanger: “a day of sirens, helicopters in the air, frantic news bulletins; of police cordons and anxious crowds; of young children led away from schools to safety. It was a day, like the previous two, of blood and horror in and around Paris…” …The scene, Erlanger reported, “was an increasingly familiar one of smashed glass, broken walls, twisted timbers, scorched paint and emotional devastation.” He, however, argued that these reports were are not from the January 2015 attack. “Rather, they are from a report by Erlanger on April 24, 1999, which received far less attention. Erlanger was reporting on a NATO ‘missile attack on Serbian state television headquarters’ that “knocked Radio Television Serbia off the air,” killing 16 journalists.” “There were no demonstrations or cries of outrage, no chants of ‘We are RTV,’ no inquiries into the roots of the attack in Christian culture and history. On the contrary, the attack on the press was lauded. The highly regarded US diplomat Richard Holbrooke, then envoy to Yugoslavia, described the successful attack on RTV as ‘an enormously important and, I think, positive development,’ a sentiment echoed by others,” Chomsky lamented. He added that there were many other similar events in history which have called for no inquiry into western culture and history – for example, the worst single terrorist atrocity in Europe in recent years, the July 2011 attack by Anders Breivik, a Christian ultra-Zionist extremist who slaughtered 77 people in Oslo. “Also ignored in the ‘war against terrorism’ is the most extreme terrorist campaign of modern times – Barack Obama’s global assassination campaign targeting people suspected of perhaps intending to harm us some day, and any unfortunates who happen to be nearby. Other unfortunates are also not lacking, such as the 50 civilians reportedly killed in a US-led bombing raid in Syria in December, which was barely reported.”[/quote] [url]http://edition.cnn.com/2015/01/19/opinion/charlie-hebdo-noam-chomsky/[/url]

Yes, and "Je Suis Charlie" had already been distorted and taken over by Xenophobic islamaphones and is being used to push a Nationalist, Police state agenda. The exact opposite of it's original purpose. Winners write the history books, and the politicans and median conglomerates have always picked the winners and losers for the rest of us since the beginning. It ain't news, but it is bullshit.

I would like to state for the record that I was not aware that Noam Chomsky was an actual person. It would be great if some higher-ups in Congress or the White House would acknowledge all those freaking drone strikes and how we don't know how many people we've killed with them.

[QUOTE=A B.A. Survivor;46985716]I would like to state for the record that I was not aware that Noam Chomsky was an actual person. It would be great if some higher-ups in Congress or the White House would acknowledge all those freaking drone strikes and how we don't know how many people we've killed with them.[/QUOTE] Don't mean to go off-topic, but what did you think Chomsky was before?

[quote]He, however, argued that these reports were are not from the January 2015 attack. “Rather, they are from a report by Erlanger on April 24, 1999, which received far less attention. Erlanger was reporting on a NATO ‘missile attack on Serbian state television headquarters’ that “knocked Radio Television Serbia off the air,” killing 16 journalists.”[/quote] Literally any evidence on this would be appreciated.

[QUOTE=Lamar;46985720]Don't mean to go off-topic, but what did you think Chomsky was before?[/QUOTE] [IMG]http://i.stack.imgur.com/9Xk1Z.jpg[/IMG]

Most other radicals in recent years haven't been part of something as rapidly advancing as ISIS has become, also the media has been building up the drama with ISIS. Sooner or later it's gonna be Baghdad 2003 all over again.

[QUOTE=Pantz Master;46985741]Literally any evidence on this would be appreciated.[/QUOTE] [URL="http://www.nytimes.com/1999/04/24/world/crisis-balkans-belgrade-survivors-nato-attack-serb-tv-headquarters-luck-pluck.html"]Yes, what Chomsky said was published was indeed actually published.[/URL]

As much as I often disagree with Noam, I think he's got a point this time around, the attack on the Tv station during the Kosovo conflict always seemed utterly wrong.

Agreed totally with this. I think the problem is most people just don't care about "those other people" In paris 12 people die, media and people go nuts In pakistan 100+ people die and its reported but nobody really does much about it and there are certainly no badges. Same again in gulf war when the US shot down an iranian plane or smart bombed a civvie bomb shelter melting/boiling 100s of people. A few peeps care but on a whole its just news which leaves no lasting impression.

Wow it's almost like people care more about things that directly affect them. How strange. Mcdeceiver is right though. We should all feel every single persons pain collectively. If one of 7 billion people is in pain, WE ALL ARE IN PAIN. Fuck our brains protective mechanisms, that filter outside influences according to relevancy. We want to be devastated by EVERYTHING that happens everywhere.

[QUOTE=Pr0fane;46986583]Wow it's almost like people care more about things that directly affect them. How strange. Mcdeceiver is right though. We should all feel every single persons pain collectively. If one of 7 billion people is in pain, WE ALL ARE IN PAIN. Fuck our brains protective mechanisms, that filter outside influences according to relevancy. We want to be devastated by EVERYTHING that happens everywhere.[/QUOTE] Whos a clever boy, yes you are. Directly affecting them? Some wannabe cool kid in US or UK wearing a badge or tweeting #IamCharlie are statically unlikely to be affected in anyway. Life goes on, likelyhood is their friends won't be affected either. Its been made cool to wear a badge and tweet something so people do it. Its a meme. There are worse things happening in the world, they don't care all that much, they just want to fit into the latest fad. Most of them will never heard of charlie hebdo, they probably don't even notice political cartoons outside of reading a free paper on the bus and accidentally turning the page to politics rather than celebrity/sports shit. You don't have to collectively care for the entire world and I never said that, you tried to undermine my point with some straw man crap. Put stuff in perspective though. Events where 10x or 20x that number happen regularly. Sometimes terrorism, sometimes unavoidable natural disasters, sometimes industrial accidents where safety was disregarded so they could deliver you a cheap ass pair of shoes. Because its not cool or popular nobody cares, its like its just a form of macabre entertainment. "#iamcharlie look at how caring i am RT plz"

[quote]“Also ignored in the ‘war against terrorism’ is the most extreme terrorist campaign of modern times – Barack Obama’s global assassination campaign targeting people suspected of perhaps intending to harm us some day, and any unfortunates who happen to be nearby. [/quote] :rolleyes: Guy makes some good points, especially re: Anders Breivik, then compares a bunch of radicals shooting up magazine editors to missile strikes on insurgents and says 'yep same thing'.

[QUOTE=Pantz Master;46985741]Literally any evidence on this would be appreciated.[/QUOTE] [url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NATO_bombing_of_the_Radio_Television_of_Serbia_headquarters[/url] Instead of responsible people being judged, they threw the manager of RTS for not evacuating people. I can only hope that as the time goes by people realize just how much Serbia was demonized in 90s and huge amount of injustice done to her.

[QUOTE=catbarf;46986714]:rolleyes: Guy makes some good points, especially re: Anders Breivik, then compares a bunch of radicals shooting up magazine editors to missile strikes on insurgents and says 'yep same thing'.[/QUOTE] It's more than that, I think. I just received a serious smackdown in [URL="http://facepunch.com/showthread.php?t=1447013"]this thread[/URL] for making a somewhat similar argument, namely the hypocrisy of decrying one wrong doing (Israel's, in my case) while ignoring the wrong doing of everyone else. The main argument against me was that this is a logical fallacy, since "everyone else does it" doesn't excuse the original wrongdoing. But even if you accept Chomsky's line of reasoning, there's still the assumption that people are outraged over the murder of the French journalists, just as they should have been outraged over other cases of mass murders like Anders Breivik's. In reality, if it was the murder itself that mattered people would have been just as outraged over the murder of the Jews in the kosher market by the very same terrorists. The fact of the matter is that people in the Western world are outraged over a specific issue- the attack on an institute that symbolizes the west's free speech by people representing not only an ideology but an actual organized movement/nation that is opposed to such western ideals and is willing to use violence to fight them. Anders Breivik, as horrifying as he was, is not the face of a murderous "Christian, ultra-Zionist extremist" movement murdering its way across the globe and posing a risk to the European way of life, nor are terrorists that "just" kill European Jews perceived as such. Justified or not, there's a very specific reason people reacted to the Paris attack in a different way than to past terrorist attack or for that matter military actions against press facilities, and that's because it's not about who was killed, but about why.

Maybe these historic events did not receive as much attention as charlie hebdo's because they happened in a time where social networks didn't exist at such a scale?

[QUOTE=Pr0fane;46986583]Wow it's almost like people care more about things that directly affect them. How strange. Mcdeceiver is right though. We should all feel every single persons pain collectively. If one of 7 billion people is in pain, WE ALL ARE IN PAIN. Fuck our brains protective mechanisms, that filter outside influences according to relevancy. We want to be devastated by EVERYTHING that happens everywhere.[/QUOTE] No, the point he's trying to make is this: Why should we care more about a small number of French people dying than hundreds of brown people, civilians, being blown to shit by a misplaced airstrike? How does the fact that the people who died in the first instance are French affect your life more than the people blown up by the airstrike, if you don't live in Paris? You're full of shit.

[QUOTE=archangel125;46990795]No, the point he's trying to make is this: Why should we care more about a small number of French people dying than hundreds of brown people, civilians, being blown to shit by a misplaced airstrike? How does the fact that the people who died in the first instance are French affect your life more than the people blown up by the airstrike, if you don't live in Paris? You're full of shit.[/QUOTE] Because he can relate to the French much more than some unknown village on the African continent or a village in Syria that he has never heard of. Why is that such a hard concept to grasp for all these fake nice people who "care" ?

[QUOTE=ScumBunny;46987209]It's more than that, I think. I just received a serious smackdown in [URL="http://facepunch.com/showthread.php?t=1447013"]this thread[/URL] for making a somewhat similar argument, namely the hypocrisy of decrying one wrong doing (Israel's, in my case) while ignoring the wrong doing of everyone else. The main argument against me was that this is a logical fallacy, since "everyone else does it" doesn't excuse the original wrongdoing. But even if you accept Chomsky's line of reasoning, there's still the assumption that people are outraged over the murder of the French journalists, just as they should have been outraged over other cases of mass murders like Anders Breivik's. In reality, if it was the murder itself that mattered people would have been just as outraged over the murder of the Jews in the kosher market by the very same terrorists. The fact of the matter is that people in the Western world are outraged over a specific issue- the attack on an institute that symbolizes the west's free speech by people representing not only an ideology but an actual organized movement/nation that is opposed to such western ideals and is willing to use violence to fight them. Anders Breivik, as horrifying as he was, is not the face of a murderous "Christian, ultra-Zionist extremist" movement murdering its way across the globe and posing a risk to the European way of life, nor are terrorists that "just" kill European Jews perceived as such. Justified or not, there's a very specific reason people reacted to the Paris attack in a different way than to past terrorist attack or for that matter military actions against press facilities, and that's because it's not about who was killed, but about why.[/QUOTE] i think you're far too optimistic about the average person line of reasoning.

[QUOTE=pkhzor;46991401]Because he can relate to the French much more than some unknown village on the African continent or a village in Syria that he has never heard of. Why is that such a hard concept to grasp for all these fake nice people who "care" ?[/QUOTE] No, that's just you.

Couldn't agree more. It's been particularly irritating to see everyone carrying on about this being the worst European terrorist attack since London, as if that whole business with Breivik simply doesn't count. It's not "terrorism" when white people do it, I guess. At the end of the day, US foreign policy is still a greater threat to world peace and civilian lives than any other force in the world today. The rise of the Islamists currently rampaging through the Middle East can be traced directly back to US policy, and we engage in state-sponsored killing on a scale that very few governments come close to. While a few Islamists carry out an attack that has exactly zero impact on free speech, Western governments are pushing new, invasive laws than have an ACTUAL detrimental effect on free speech. Fear of prosecution has journalists in the US engaging in prior restraint, and people in France are being jailed for Facebook posts. Living in fear of Islamists is stupid. There is legitimate reason to live in fear of the United States government.

[QUOTE=Used Car Salesman;46991514] Living in fear of Islamists is stupid. There is legitimate reason to live in fear of the United States government.[/QUOTE] A group of Islamists have taken over half of Mesopotamia and are busy doing things like stoning women or throwing christians off buildings or stabbing babies and gassing kurds. I haven't seen the United States doing this.

[QUOTE=mdeceiver79;46986524]Agreed totally with this. I think the problem is most people just don't care about "those other people" In paris 12 people die, media and people go nuts In pakistan 100+ people die and its reported but nobody really does much about it and there are certainly no badges. Same again in gulf war when the US shot down an iranian plane or smart bombed a civvie bomb shelter melting/boiling 100s of people. A few peeps care but on a whole its just news which leaves no lasting impression.[/QUOTE] Look back in history. Japanese Americans in internment camps, German Americans not so much, why? Hmm... Oklahoma City bombing the biggest terrorist attack in the US ever, done by militia guys. No great round up of militia guys followed. WTC attack and an immediate round up of Muslim 'terrorists' followed, in addition to two wars and targeted killings that are going on to this day. What's different? Clearly, there's bias. Whites doing it, it's a crime, arrest them, due process of law, etc. Nonwhites doing it? Launch immediate roundups and/or killing, we'll worry about the law later. The authorities can only pull this kind of bs because so many people approve of it. Sadly, the public in general doesn't really care as long as it's happening to 'those' people instead of them.

[QUOTE=cecilbdemodded;46991897] Oklahoma City bombing the biggest terrorist attack in the US ever, done by militia guys. No great round up of militia guys followed.[/QUOTE] Actually the 9/11 were the biggest terrorist attacks in US history. Over 3000 people died and 6000 were injured in 9/11, whereas less than 200 died in Oklahoma and about 700 were injured. Also, some rather contested legislation was enacted in response to the Oklahoma city bombing:[url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antiterrorism_and_Effective_Death_Penalty_Act_of_1996[/url]