Politics Politics Thread (Read 14763 times)

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Okay these topics are usually pretty interesting! Use this thread to post links to current events/interesting articles or interviews or whatever and discuss them.

http://www.democracynow.org/2009/4/2/marxist_geographer_david_harvey_on_the

this is a pretty interesting interview! i'm not done reading it yet but iirc joe linked to david harvey before and he's a smart guy.

http://www.democracynow.org/2009/4/3/noam

this is the interview with chomsky on NATO, afghanistan, and israel-palestine. part two is coming this week i think and it focuses more on the financial collapse. i don't even think i need to say that chomsky knows his shit and he's not too wordy in this interview either and makes his points pretty easy to follow.
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chomsky doesnt say anything new in that interview. basically its just dissemination of what ahmed rashid wrote in his last book for public consumption heh. obviously the stuff about g20 is new, but his analysis isnt something that you or I could have come up with, and it will be a good while before we can really see what the effects of the conference will be because yeahhh takes a while for this shit to sink in you know

not that I am discrediting his statements or saying that you should disregard it but I've seen you link that article a couple times in the last few days and yeah its not as novel and cutting edge as you think despite its coming from chomsky
Last Edit: April 06, 2009, 07:34:47 pm by Wash Cycle
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Everything chomsky has ever written on politics was always very obvious stuff. He just writes in such a way to make it all accessible to college freshmen and he's got some kind of freak encyclopedic memory so when he speaks he can reference a ton of treaties, documents, articles, books, etc.
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well thats not necessarily true, unless you consider his books on the israel-palestine conflict to be more 'historical' than 'political' in nature

see the thing about chomsky is he has the ability to point things out but he never really offers anything in the political realm with any teeth you know? For instance in the appendices of the chomsky foucault debate he rails on the narrowness of permitted intellectual thought in america for like 30 pages and about how the FBI is really just a secret police that supress left wing political groups etc etc but he just seems content to point it out and go HEY THIS IS BAD SOMEONE LISTEN PLEASE and not much more

but then again the mention of chomsky for me brings up a whole different set of ideas and works than most people because uh he is to linguistics as freud was to psychology so I have to know all about his shit and generative grammar blah blah computer languages snarf
Last Edit: April 06, 2009, 07:49:57 pm by Wash Cycle
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Chomsky hasn't brought anything new to the table as far as the palestine thing goes. His whole position is a two state solution with the borders that were decided on almost 50 years ago
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yeah I guess thats true but he has done quite a bit of service by fleshing out exactly what the United State's role in all of this has been for those of us that have had the wool pulled over our eyes for the last 30 years

it is shocking just how little people in this country understand about that conflict and I think what chomsky has done to bring some of our actions to light is pretty admirable, but aside from that I p much agree with you
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I really don't know Chomsky's work that well, but it seems to me that he would be more interesting to me for his work on linguistics.
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well his work in linguistics is interesting and like I said he is like the freud of linguistics

but just like freud, it was later realized that he was mostly wrong. but he introduced a new way of thinking about language that was outside the realm of behaviorism and that laid the foundations for an entirely new way of conceptualizing how the brain worked which was hella important

and also he was instrumental in devising the mechanics that govern how computer languages work so yeah you can thank him for that too. he worked on turing machines mostly though so lol
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chomsky is a spineless windbag that has said the united states is the freest country in the world and has never put forward anything remoterly new. people listen to him because he isw an academic superstar but his watered down anarchosyndicalism is more like-------anarcholiberalism LOL
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when the hell did he say the united states is the freest country in the world, in fact I'd argue that he believes something contrary to that heh

I know hes said some ridiculous shit before but thats stretching it a bit I think
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chomsky rules, you're all scrubs.
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in the name of all the........spirits of durrutis ascasos ..............who he claims to represent..i say suck my dick ya m#fucker
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you shoulda made this topic in american magic you bimbo
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So what the hell is happening with the economy?

I see that obama was trying to get his shit passed and mccain was bitching about earmarks and then the dow or something jumped up quite a bit the other day. Are we getting better or was that just a death rattle?
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So what the hell is happening with the economy?

I see that obama was trying to get his shit passed and mccain was bitching about earmarks and then the dow or something jumped up quite a bit the other day. Are we getting better or was that just a death rattle?
The jump in the stock market was in response to the stimulus which pretty much is gonna subsidize most of the risk for investors purchasing 'toxic' assets in hopes of getting credit flowing again.

Nobody is very confident in this turning out well(GOTTA HOPE!!!!!) and the unemployment rate is expected to steadily rise, though less drastically than the last few months.
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when the hell did he say the united states is the freest country in the world, in fact I'd argue that he believes something contrary to that heh

I know hes said some ridiculous shit before but thats stretching it a bit I think
He's said that multiple times in interviews and lectures
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its the freest country in the world in the sense that you are free to be fat dumb and happy about nothing at the rest of the world's expense I guess lol
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I'll concede to the fat and dumb, happy I don't see at all though.
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It was usually in response to him posing the question to himself "why not leave if the US is so bad?"

He's pretty much correct in that he probably enjoys more freedom here as a highly regarded 'dissident' public intellectual in the US than anywhere else(plus he gots him some tenure at MIT).

Marmot is just 'spergin cause chomsky aint some kinda 'left-communo-(true)internationalist-anti-imperialismoid-marxian-digital-workerist' internet club member(I.E. Crypto-Trot)
Last Edit: April 06, 2009, 10:00:57 pm by DietCoke
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yeah if he was he wouldnt have tenure at MIT and no one would ever hear a peep from him because he wouldnt exist anymore

I think also the only reasons he is tolerated are a) letting people like him say the things they say acts as a safety valve in that the US can boast about how it allows free criticism of its policies etc etc; he makes them look good and b) because he doesnt really advocate any sort of revolutionary behavior. if he did, hed be gone faster than you can blink. obviously his ideal political setup is antithetical to the current regime's structure but he isnt calling for everyone to revolt and overthrow the ruling class heheh
Last Edit: April 06, 2009, 10:33:15 pm by Wash Cycle