|
Korean Job Discussion Forums
"The Internet's Meeting Place for ESL/EFL Teachers from Around the World!"
|
| View previous topic :: View next topic |
| Author |
Message |
Big_Bird
Joined: 31 Jan 2003
Location: Sometimes here sometimes there...
|
 Posted: Sat May 05, 2007 8:01 pm Post subject: |
 |
|
| gang ah jee wrote: |
| igotthisguitar wrote: |
I lost complete respect for Chomsky on his mind-boggling comments not so long ago re: 911  |
You mean where he pointed out that the US government wasn't behind the attacks and that conspiracy softheads damage progressive causes? I can see how you'd be upset by that. |
Take heart, I don't think he said they weren't behind the attacks - I think he just said he hadn't seen any convincing proof.  |
|
| Back to top |
|
 |
Big_Bird
Joined: 31 Jan 2003
Location: Sometimes here sometimes there...
|
| Posted: Sat May 05, 2007 8:13 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| Gopher wrote: |
This thread is about Chomsky's antiAmerican, antiWestern framework.
|
Er no, actually. If it is, that's only because you made it so, by seizing on the fact that the article, written by Stephen Lendman, cites Chomsky (as well as others). The thread was intended to open up a discussion about why we are outraged about the misfortunes of some peoples, and not others. It's you who has gone somewhat off topic.
Nonetheless, it's developed into an interesting discussion. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
thepeel
Joined: 08 Aug 2004
|
| Posted: Sun May 06, 2007 3:21 am Post subject: |
|
|
| Quote: |
2 Chinese shot dead in S. African robbery
By Le Tian (China Daily)
Updated: 2006-02-07 06:02
Two Chinese living in South Africa were killed in a robbery on Sunday night bringing the total number of Chinese killed in the country to four in less than a month.
Chen Jianqing, 35, from East China's Fujian Province, who ran a shop with her husband in a small town 45 kilometres away from the South African capital Johannesburg, was shot dead on the premises.
One of her business partners, who has not yet been named, died later in hospital, Chinese consulate officials in Johannesburg said yesterday.
"Local police are investigating the case and we have informed the victims' relatives and are helping them come to Johannesburg," consul Wu Gang told China Daily.
Chen's husband was wounded during the robbery but did not suffer serious injuries, said Wu.
The robbery occurred at about 5:45 pm local time and the armed robbers fled the scene after taking more than 50,000 South African rand (US$8,200) and some jewellery, Xinhua News Agency reported.
According to immigration records, Chen left for South Africa on September 15 last year. She and her husband opened a store there selling clothes and household appliances.
The tragedy occurred just three days after Chen Jingmin, a 23-year-old from Qingdao of Shandong Province, was shot dead on the northern outskirts of Johannesburg by armed robbers.
On January 10, a Hong Kong businessman was attacked and robbed at his home in Johannesburg and died the next day in hospital.
According to statistics, there were more than 40 robberies targeting Chinese in South Africa last year, in which eight were killed.
More than 100,000 Chinese nationals are involved in various kinds of businesses in South Africa, according to a Chinese embassy official in the country.
An increasing number of them are becoming targets of robbers after buying big houses or luxury cars, the official said.
|
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/doc/2006-02/07/content_517693.htm
So, the deep and profound insight that we can take from this thread is that people tend to root for the home team.
Capitan Obvious stands in awe. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
stevemcgarrett
Joined: 24 Mar 2006
|
| Posted: Sun May 06, 2007 3:32 am Post subject: |
|
|
Chomsky has said:
| Quote: |
| The assumption is that people like me, who are outsiders from a professional standpoint, are not entitled to speak on such things. |
No, Noam, most of us don't object to your right to comment on everything from the state of the world to the state of sanitation on the MIT campus. What we object to is your arrogance in assuming we should give your words more credence than any other uninformed blowhard just because you teach a particular subject at a great university.
Scratch the surface of a neo-Marxist and you'll find an elitist every time. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
|
| Posted: Sun May 06, 2007 11:44 am Post subject: |
|
|
| stevemcgarrett wrote: |
| Scratch the surface of a neo-Marxist and you'll find an elitist every time. |
This, of course, almost always goes unnoted.
Lenin went underground and had the courage to actually walk the walk. Same with Mao, and Fidel Castro and Che Guevara, and a few others.
Not so with our nestled-in-the-Establishment antiEstablishment "critics." Edward Said and Gayatri Spivak took high-salary positions at Columbia. Noam Chomsky takes his salary from MIT. This does not mention the likely govt-funded grants and fellowships they accepted along the way to get there.
Once they achieved tenure, they proceeded to bite the hand that fed them -- or systematically saw the branch on which they sat, however you want to describe it -- all to buttress their claims that they represented radical outsiders who attacked and undermined an evil, imperialist America.
In effect, they live off "the system" they denounce -- Said's brave picture of the day he left his office and literally threw a rock at Israel notwithstanding -- with the press and cameramen always nearby, of course.
"America is a cruel, racist, murderous empire -- like the Nazis. Down with 'the system!' Now excuse me, please. I have a book-signing event and tonight is bowling...and did I leave my new BMW's keys on that table...?" |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
happeningthang
Joined: 26 Apr 2003
|
| Posted: Sun May 06, 2007 12:51 pm Post subject: |
|
|
If you two bedfellows have finished up ad homining this thread to death, how about adressing the essence of the issue?
Gopher we've heard from you, Steve Mac - I repeat my question.
Why do you think the reporting of 'western' victims takes precedence over 'other's? And is this a problem? |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
|
| Posted: Sun May 06, 2007 1:53 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| happeningthang wrote: |
| If you two bedfellows have finished... |
You downplayed and apologized for the issue as originally stated, Happeningthang. Here is it again in its own offensive language...
| Quote: |
| "Unworthy" ones are the many unmentioned tens of thousands killed in Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine and all other places by US, Israeli and other rapacious imperial waring and occupying forces. "Worthy" ones, however, are those prominently mentioned who died or were hurt on September 11, 2001 in the US, on July 7, 2005 in a dubious London "terrorist" bombing, on March 11, 2004 in the Madrid train bombings, and the Israeli corporal practically the whole free world still knows about since he was taken captive in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) last summer and is still being held... |
Nevermind that everyone else in the world does exactly the same thing, Happeningthang. We have a distinct, uniquely-Western issue here, do we not?
I want to see what you are seeing here. But I am having a hard time not laughing at the profound naivete implicit in such a position as this. Someone above referenced "Captain Obvious," for example. So apparently I am not alone in responding to this specious, pseudoissue as I do.
In any case, you might easily find the kind of "balanced" coverage you seek at the World Socialist Web Site, on al-Jazeera or at Hezbollah's English-language webpages, at the Iranian President's English-language press-release webpage, or on Hugo Chavez's smash-hit television program, "Hola Presidente."
Look at this, by the way...
Mexico's momument to the Mexican-American War. How dare they only recognize los Ni�os Heroes without lamenting those they murdered at the Alamo and at Goliad? Apparently non-Mexicans are simply not "worthy victims..."
And look at this...
Chilean sailing and training ship Esmerelda -- national icon. (Really magnificent ship, by the way.)
But how dare the Chileans memorialize their own victims in the War of the Pacific, those who went down with the original Esmeralda, while at the same time failing to memorialize their own barbaric occupation and destruction of Lima, including burning its National Library to the ground, for no other reason than to punish and humiliate Peruvians? I imagine Peruvians do not make "worthy victims" in the Chilean mentality...neither do those Chileans the military junta tortured on Esmerelda in the mid-1970s, either.
Really, Happeningthang, when I look around at world affairs, the most salient thing that strikes me is just how uniquely insensitive and one-sided Westerners and especially Americans are when it comes to "others..." |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Nowhere Man
Joined: 08 Feb 2004
|
| Posted: Sun May 06, 2007 4:53 pm Post subject: ... |
|
|
| Quote: |
| Nevermind that everyone else in the world does exactly the same thing, Happeningthang. We have a distinct, uniquely-Western issue here, do we not? |
Would you care to qualify that?
| Quote: |
| But how dare the Chileans memorialize their own victims in the War of the Pacific, those who went down with the original Esmeralda, while at the same time failing to memorialize their own barbaric occupation and destruction of Lima, including burning its National Library to the ground, for no other reason than to punish and humiliate Peruvians? |
But, according to you, aren't we to stop bickering about the past? Unless it involves noble savages, of course...
Then we should bicker. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
igotthisguitar
Joined: 08 Apr 2003
Location: South Korea (Permanent Vacation)
|
| Posted: Sun May 06, 2007 9:58 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| happeningthang wrote: |
| Fair enough. Still, with the amount of detailed research he's done, I'm going to suggest that Chomsky's is a very informed opinion. |
Simply because one is "well informed" doesn't make what one says correct, accurate or fair.
PLATO would remind us that these types are in fact the most likely candidates to actively MISLEAD & deceive
Too much CULT OF PERSONALITY surrounding types like Chomsky.
Their reputation precedes the substance of what it is that they are actually offering.
A reversed POISONING OF THE WELL. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
happeningthang
Joined: 26 Apr 2003
|
| Posted: Mon May 07, 2007 1:37 am Post subject: |
|
|
| Gopher wrote: |
| happeningthang wrote: |
| If you two bedfellows have finished... |
You downplayed and apologized for the issue as originally stated, Happeningthang. Here is it again in its own offensive language...
|
I thought previous discussions with you, and my original post were enough to demonstrate that I understand this phenomenon is not unique to the west, and that accusatory phrases, such as you quoted, are not constructive. Is it really necessary to expicitly state them every time I post? I at least give you the credit of being able to carry a concept and apply that to further discussion, while you persist in assuming ignorance.
In any case this is the second time you've hopped in on a direct question to Steve Mac. He is able to answer for himself isnt' he? |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
ariellowen
Joined: 19 Apr 2006
|
| Posted: Mon May 07, 2007 2:26 am Post subject: |
|
|
| happeningthang wrote: |
I thought previous discussions with you, and my original post were enough to demonstrate that I understand this phenomenon is not unique to the west, and that accusatory phrases, such as you quoted, are not constructive. Is it really necessary to expicitly state them every time I post? I at least give you the credit of being able to carry a concept and apply that to further discussion, while you persist in assuming ignorance.
In any case this is the second time you've hopped in on a direct question to Steve Mac. He is able to answer for himself isnt' he? |
I thought
previous discussions
with you,
and my original post
were enough
to demonstrate
that I
understand
this phenomenon
is not unique
to
the west,
and that
accusatory phrases,
such as you quoted,
are not constructive.
Is it really necessary
to expicitly state them
every time I post?
I at least
give you
the credit
of being able to carry a concept
and apply
that
to further discussion,
while
you persist
in assuming
ignorance.
In any case
this is the second time
you've hopped
in on a direct question
to Steve Mac.
He is able
to answer
for himself
isnt' he? |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
|
|
You cannot post new topics in this forum
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot vote in polls in this forum
|
|
FAQ
Search
Memberlist
Usergroups
Register
Profile
Log in to check your private messages
Log in
