From: j.hastings6@genie.geis.com
Date: Fri, 23 Sep 94 03:03:50 PDT
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Media Bias
Message-ID: <199409231003.AA147514599@relay2.geis.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


James A. Donald (jamesd@netcom.com) writes:
 
>I note that Chomsky fans, like Chomksy himself, have no
>shame in lying bare faced in public.
 
I have seen Chomsky speak at F.A.I.R. (Fairness and Accuracy in
Reporting - a New Left anti-media-bias watchdog inspired by the
right-wing Accuracy In Media group), and have heard him on KPFK.
I saw the movie about him and have read some of his writing, including
articles in Anarchy magazine.
 
The movie, as I remember it from a year or two ago, claims that the
East Timor people suffered the same magnitude of oppression at the
hands of the U.S.-supported Indonesians, as did the Cambodians under
the Khmer (were they Soviet or Chinese puppets? Or independent?).
 
In a dramatic scene in the Chomsky film, the press reports about the
Cambodian killing fields, convenient for the U.S. anti-Communist
fascist imperialist running-dog empire, *ahem*, rolled across the
floor of a warehouse, with lights flicking on as the spool of printouts
passed under them, covering a great length of the floor.
 
The reports of East Timor atrocities were relatively non-existent.
 
How do you explain that, Man?! Fight the Power! Right Awn!
 
I don't say that Chomsky isn't biased himself, or that Timor equals
Cambodia, I'm just telling you what I remember.
 
>Your claim, and Chomsky's claim, is a flagrant lie
>... the Ambassador and the editors of the New York times ...
>could not have clocked up as many as Amin did in real life,
>let alone in Amin's "wildest fantasies".
 
I wonder where the other guy came up with Chomsky's Uganda comparison.
 
>Nothing the New York times said or did remotely compares with Chomsky's
>enthusiastic support of Pol Pot's genocide in Cambodia.
>Chomsky compared Pol Pot's genocide to the denazification by the French
>Resistance after world war II.
 
When I saw him live and on stage, Chomsky said he thought the genocide
stories about Cambodia were as bogus as the other 99% lies told by the
lapdog "adversarial" press (like Yellow Rain "chemical warfare" actually
caused by bee droppings). Or the Gulf of Tonkin incident. Or Terrorists,
Pedophiles, Money-Launderers, and Dope Dealers that will surely get us
all if Digital Telephony and Clipper aren't adopted.
 
Can we really blame him for doubting the unreliable media?
 
He stopped defending Khmer Rouge (sp?) when he became convinced that
the killing fields were real. In other words, he would never support
genocide. That's the Party Line anyway, comrade.
 
>But Chomsky defines peoples free choice to say one thing rather
>than another thing, to listen to one source rather than another
>source, to be "extreme coercion and control".
 
What is the source of this accusation?
 
Chomsky is an extreme free-speech anarchist, from what I've read
about and by him. He even defended the right of Holocaust-revisionist
Robert Faurisson to speak about his historical beliefs against the
French state's claim that it has the right to determine what is
"historical fact." Chomsky himself does not deny the Holocaust.
 
>...when Chomsky argues that speech is coercion, and choice is submission,
>I know that he and his pals in the government are planning to enhance our
>civil liberties by protecting us from that speech, and to enhance our
>lives by rescuing us from that submission.
 
Fine. Death to P.C. government-imposed "sensitivity." But, what does
Chomsky have to do with this?
 
According to the S.F. Weekly in 1989, Noam Chomsky was once described in
a college newspaper as both "a Nazi sympathiser" and "a Soviet apologist."
That's a neat trick, maybe possible during the Hitler-Stalin pact. However,
the Soviets wouldn't let him enter the worker's paradise because he called
it "The Dungeon State" in one of his many books. And his support for free
speech, even for those with controversial non-P.C. positions, makes his
Nazi qualifications, and your "speech is coercion" accusation, suspect.
 
Looks like an un-F.A.I.R. smear job to me.
 
Kent - j.hastings6@genie.geis.com
Ham packet AX.25: WA6ZFY @ WB6YMH.#SOCA.CA.USA.NA (or "NoAm")