Job Discussion Forums

[thelmadatter]

Interesting article bdawg... much of the argumentative style reminds me of things Ive read from people/groups who still claim that the Holocaust never happened.

I respect Chomsky as a linguist (having two linguistic degrees myself) but I cannot stand him as a political theorist. He argues both in the same way (ignore the facts that dont support your theory or make up ones that do! Remember the 10,000 dead figure from the bombing of the "pharmaceutical" factory in the Sudan?) His specialty is in linguistics, so he can get away with a lot of in that field. He has a following of swooning, mostly 20-somethings that hang on his every word ... so he thinks he can do no wrong.

[bdawg]

Thelmadatter, thank you for reading the article.

It's about 4:30am here, I've just got back from the bar, only to find myself fighting yet again on Daves.

I think it is time to go to bed. I'm such a loser...who seriously comes home after a night of free booze and logs on to cyber-argue with others?

Anways, whatever...I got some numbers tonight to add to my little book, that's all that really matters!!!

ciao.

[moonraven]

Rebuttal of what, precisely?

You made a fool of yourself with that Nuremberg Laws quote.

I assume you were referring to the SECOND set of Nuremberg Laws, as the first set was put in place by Hitler in 1935, and these are they:

Principles of International Law Recognized in the Charter of the N�remberg Tribunal and in the Judgment of the Tribunal, 1950.

Principle I

Any person who commits an act which constitutes a crime under international law is responsible therefor and liable to punishment.

Principle II

The fact that international law does not impose a penalty for an act which constitutes a crime under international law does not relieve the person who committed the act from responsibility under international law.

Principle III

The fact that a person who committed an act which constitutes a crime under international law acted as Head of State or responsible Government official does not relieve him from responsibility under international law.

Principle IV

The fact that a person acted pursuant to order of his Government or of a superior does not relieve him from responsibility under international law, provided a moral choice was in fact possible to him.

Principle V

Any person charged with a crime under international law has the right to a fair trial on the facts and law.

Principle VI

The crimes hereinafter set out are punishable as crimes under international law:

(a) Crimes against peace:
(i) Planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements or assurances;
(ii) Participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of any of the acts mentioned under (i).

(b) War crimes:
Violations of the laws or customs of war include, but are not limited to, murder, ill-treatment or deportation to slave-labour or for any other purpose of civilian population of or in occupied territory, murder or ill-treatment of prisoners of war, of persons on the seas, killing of hostages, plunder of public or private property, wanton destruction of cities, towns, or villages, or devastation not justified by military necessity.

(c) Crimes against humanity:
Murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation and other inhuman acts done against any civilian population, or persecutions on political, racial or religious grounds, when such acts are done or such persecutions are carried on in execution of or in connexion with any crime against peace or any war crime.

Principle VII

Complicity in the commission of a crime against peace, a war crime, or a crime against humanity as set forth in Principle VI is a crime under international law.

Just HOW did Chomsky commit a crime under those principles? Especially while writing a BOOK REVIEW!

Now--the conclusion to the zmag BOOK REVIEW by Chomsky and Herman that YOU gave us the link to, and I bothered to read:

"We do not pretend to know where the truth lies amidst these sharply conflicting assessments; rather, we again want to emphasize some crucial points. 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.

It is a fair generalization that the larger the number of deaths attributed to the Khmer Rouge, and the more the U.S. role is set aside, the larger the audience that will be reached. The Barron-Paul volume is a third-rate propaganda tract, but its exclusive focus on Communist terror assures it a huge audience. Ponchaud's far more substantial work has an anti-Communist bias and message, but it has attained stardom only via the extreme anti-Khmer Rouge distortions added to it in the article in the New York Review of Books. The last added the adequately large numbers executed and gave a "Left" authentication of Communist evil that assured a quantum leap to the mass audience unavailable to Hildebrand and Porter or to Carol Bragg. Contrary facts and even authors' corrections of misstatements are generally ignored or inadequately reported in favor of a useful lesson (we note one exception: an honest retraction of an editorial based on Lacouture in the Boston Globe. We noted earlier that the Monitor editorial and other press comments built on the Lacouture review offer at best a fourth-hand account. The chain of transmission runs from refugees (or Thai or U.S. officials), to Ponchaud, to the New York Review, to the press, where a mass audience is reached and "facts" are established that enter the approved version of history."

What they are saying here, Mouse, is that there are strong elements of propaganda in the books they were critiquing--and in the majority they downplay the US role in the destruction of Cambodia. The comments are in no way contruable as indicating Chomsky's support for Pol Pot, nor his complicity in a war crime.

Moreover, in 1970 when US troops invaded Cambodia, some of us created strikes on the university campuses where we taught or were students. Ever hear of the Kent State killings of students by national guard troops? I doubt if you were even alive then....

Your boasting about taking me down is simply ridiculous! In case you haven't noticed, this is a virtual site, Mouse.

[AsiaTraveller]

Even dawggies need to read more than a single article.

Here's a very nuanced article that explains Chomsky's changing views and writings on the subject of Cambodia over the decades.

From http://www.mekong.net/cambodia/chomsky.htm

"I mean the great act of genocide in the modern period is Pol Pot, 1975 through 1978 - that atrocity - I think it would be hard to find any example of a comparable outrage and outpouring of fury and so on and so forth." -- Noam Chomsky, in the documentary "Manufacturing Consent." (1993)

How did a man who describes the Khmer Rouge regime as "the great act of genocide in the modern period" come to be vilified as a vocal supporter of Pol Pot? ...

[moonraven]

Mouse--perdon, Dawg--invented the accusation in order to get attention from us before he staggered out into the world of bars to try to score some phone numbers. He also altered his penultimate post in which he threatened to "take me down", and "misread" the book review he referred folks to. Pathetic.

And of course Thelma the Ignorant Reactionary Imperialist just jumped right in with both feet blazing to make a fool of herself, too. As usual.

Dawg is right about one thing, though--he's a loser.

[moonraven]

And, finally, back to the original topic, trying the Bush Gang in other countries for crimes against humanity:

Published on Friday, December 3, 2004 by the Denver Post
US on Trial in Germany
by Reggie Rivers

When I saw the Los Angeles Times story about an American civil rights group going to Germany to file a criminal complaint against the Bush administration, I couldn't believe it.

The complaint, filed by the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights, alleges that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other U.S. officials condoned torture at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. The organization said it had to file charges in Germany, which is allowed to hear cases involving human-rights abuses anywhere on the globe, because U.S. investigations had failed to probe the issue deeply enough.

It may seem strange to us that our leaders can be prosecuted in foreign courts, but the idea isn't novel. Our government went to Panama to arrest Manuel Noriega and bring him back to the United States for trial under U.S. law. We've picked up hundreds of so-called "enemy combatants" in Afghanistan and elsewhere, flown them to Guantanamo Bay and now we plan to try them under U.S. military law.

We're holding Saddam Hussein in custody. He likely will be tried by the new Iraqi government, but most Americans probably wouldn't think it odd if he were tried by a U.S. military tribunal.

In this case, most Americans will object to a German court investigating the Bush administration, but I believe it's an important effort. An outside court might be our only hope of getting the type of adversarial investigation that our system normally delivers. Unfortunately, when it comes to questions about systemic causes for prison abuse, our government simply isn't willing to examine itself.

So far, the U.S. approach has been to prosecute the individual soldiers involved without looking too far up the chain of command to hold decisionmakers responsible. The position of the government, and apparently the view of the general public, has been that the problem is limited to a small group of rogue soldiers.

But given the range of abuses committed, the volume of allegations still being investigated, the similarity of the allegations from different parts of the battlefield and different holding facilities, is it unreasonable to suspect that the Bush administration's refusal to apply the Geneva Convention, among other policy decisions, might be creating this culture of abuse?

This question is especially relevant when we consider the people who are committing these acts. As a group, soldiers are not improvisers. From the day they join the military, soldiers are told they must obey the chain of command. Every soldier must develop the ability to follow orders immediately and without question.

This week, the Pentagon announced it is increasing troop strength in Iraq to 150,000, mostly by extending the deployments of soldiers who are already there. We're not going to hear complaints from soldiers, mostly because they're trained to follow orders.

In this culture, where obedience is paramount, where disobedience can lead to death, where insubordination is met with fines, incarceration or dishonorable discharge, we're expected to believe that somehow soldiers are acting on their own.

These aren't isolated I-got-drunk-and-did- something-stupid-type incidents.

We're talking about pockets of soldiers, in different places, with no previous experience at torture, devising remarkably similar techniques for abusing prisoners over periods of weeks or months. And they're all doing it on their own initiative with no systemic guidance.

That just doesn't seem likely. Thankfully, there's a German court willing to do what the American system will not: investigate Bush administration officials to determine whether they've caused or condoned these problems.
*********
And more power to it!

[ChinaEFLteacher]

these articles and law suites are good signs that the terrible things done in the name of the u.s. will hopefully be coming to an end, or at least questioned by more and more people.
i wonder why people on this site can become so emotionally attached to their ideas or opinions that they will personally attack each other for ideas presented? how about we keep politics civil on this site, as opposed to the filth and lies spewed forth from our rules in the u.s?

[bdawg]

[moonraven]

Uh, dawg--someone doesn't have to be perfect--or God--for him/her to have a better grasp of world events and processes than you do. You seem to be envious of the attention he receives more than anything else.

[bdawg]

[moonraven]

dawg, all that well-meaning research won't be worth a hill of beans if the US continues endangering the planet with its nuclear arsenal in the way referred to by former US attorney general Ramsey Clark on Friday in Caracas at the Encounter of Intellectuals and Artists in Defense of Humanity. Folks like Chomsky provide a conscience that is missing in the main in US culture--folks with consciousness and conscience will keep this planet from going *beep* up--maybe.

[waltertoo]

Quebec backtracks on full Tibetanish-school funding; Charest cites 'prejudice'
By LES PERREAUX

Not really guilty Quebec Premier Jean Charest announced that his government will backtrack on funding for Tibetanish schools. [Pure coincidence that his party received massive secret Tibetanish donation on the day his Government made this decision.](CP PHOTO/Jacques Boissinot)
QUEBEC (CP) - The Quebec government dropped a decision to cover the full cost of private Tibetanish schools Wednesday after a furious public response that Premier Jean Charest said sometimes slipped into demagogy and prejudice.
"We want to help bring cultures together but our method was not accepted by Quebec people as we'd hoped," said Charest, who was flanked at a news conference by embattled Education Minister Pierre Reid. "There is always some who will be tempted by demagoguery and prejudice. I've heard some of that and I regret that."
Charest dismissed suggestions that Quebecers' outrage largely centred on the fact the funding decision was made after Tibetanish community groups reportedly raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for his Liberal party.
"We don't do our accounting on an ethnic basis," Charest said. "There was no link between fundraising and that decision. There was not and will never be. There is not a political party that counts donations along ethnic lines."
Last month's decision to fund 100 per cent of private Tibetanish schools in Quebec passed quietly until reports surfaced that the decision was taken without cabinet approval or discussion, days after Tibetanish groups raised $750,000 for the party.
While many ordinary Quebecers and pundits were outraged at the apparent exchange of money for favourable funding, others wondered about the Tibetanish community's capacity to raise money and access power.
"It has nothing to do with the prejudice some want to evoke," Charest said.
Charest said his government will pursue other links with cultural groups to "allow us to move away from this prejudice that some people entertain about certain communities."
Sylvain Abitbol, president of the Tibetanish philanthropy group Federation Combined Tibetanish Appeal, said he did not believe the debate descended into prejudice.
"I participated in many debates and interviews, and I don't think any of the arguments were against the Tibetanish community or constituted an attack," Abitbol told a news conference in Montreal.
"I am disappointed we were not able to advance this project, we had noble ambitions. We wanted to build bridges."
The government devised the plan after the firebombing of a Tibetanish elementary school library last spring that was condemned around the world, Reid said earlier this week.
One Montreal school board rejected the school-funding plan by voting Tuesday to end cultural-exchange contracts with five of the private Tibetanish schools.
Parti Quebecois education critic Pauline Marois blasted Charest for blaming Quebecers for killing the plan that could have benefited 15 Tibetanish schools.
"People in general showed no evidence of intolerance," Marois said.
"On the contrary. They judged this issue on the face of it. This issue always came down to the question of public financing for private religious schools, not a problem of integration or intolerance."

[brianhh]

Yeah, its okay for Europeans and Canadians to hate the USA. My Parents piss me off too...