Considering the number of people who have died, and continue to die because of 9/11, as well as the critical role that Chomsky has played in protecting and perpetuation that myth, the information about his wife's illness seems insignificant in comparison to the benefit of exposing this man's hypocrisy in full. And we've never had such a detailed look at him before. Plus, Barrett was respectful the entire time, whereas Chomsky behaved like a slimey, disingenuous child. His remarks about us not demonstrating or doing anyting offline were particualrly enfuriating, and completely innacurate (our San Diego meetup has now had 129 events).

My question is this: is the dispute over his "who cares who did 9/11" remark in reference to this youtube video?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wCnoXJhITow

Because at the 7:30 mark he clearly says the following about the inside job hypothesis: "Even if it were true, which is extremely unlikely, who cares, i mean, it doesn't have any significance."

Is he disputing that he said that?

In that correspondance he dismisses the "who cares" allegaton by saying: "The first quote is a transparent misquotation. Unambiguously, I said it doesn't matter much which group of Islamic terrorists was involved, the al-Qaeda group in Afghanistan or some other part of these loose networks."

But that's a lot different from the context and meaning of what he says on that youtube vid.

:P

These are precisely the sentiments - much better expressed here - that prompted my first post. It was Chomsky who first got me turned onto political activism decades ago, so his comments on 9/11 are of more than passing interest, and there's no question these are by far the most detailed comments on the topic he has ever offered, and I learned a lot from them, having read everything else the man has ever said or written on 9/11.

Clearly, Barrett broke normal professional protocol here, but his arguments for doing so ought not be dismissed so lightly. Chomsky is also guilty of breaking protocol as well, in both his unfounded accusations against both Barrett and the Truth Movement - his abbreviating it as TM (first time I have seen Transcendental Meditation's former acronym appropriated this way) presumptuous and odd - and his reneging on this agreement to appear on-air, on the basis of false pretenses. However Chomsky uses this exchange to trash 9/11 truth, it's worth laying bare his twisted logic and demonstrable callous disregard for honest debate - illustrated here more clearly than ever before.

We really need to focus as often as possible on how this movement is perceived by others. Not naive, illiterate, paleo-conservatives, but the average individual.

Chomsky had many important criticism of the movement to offer. The cheerleaders among us may not notice. There were many things he just didn't get. But if you try for even a minute to understand where he is coming from and why, his perspective is not without its own logic. People in the movement can be too myopic. The movement is too much an internet phenomenon and not enough about action. The movement has a lot of crazies, like Kevin Barrett, that make it seem like we are dogmatic or unbalanced.

Chomsky's argument that there are more important things is totally bunk for a number of reasons. And his argument that we all don't rely upon well established facts, as though facts only come from scientific journals, is BS. But its not wise to dismiss what he has to say entirely. And that's because we need to be concerned with how the people whom we would like to convince are thinking.

You can dismiss Chomsky, but are you really going to be so dismissive to people who think as he does? Aren't a lot of those people our target audience?

anyone arguing that this will keep Chomsky from addressing the 9/11 Truth evidence clearly hasn't been paying much attention. If anything, Chomsky's startlingly obvious evasions in this exchange may even open some of his followers to the idea that he's not who they thought he was.

And remember, you can't wake up someone pretending to be asleep.

:P

It won't keep Chomsky from addressing 9/11 truth because its really apparent that his mind is made up. But for that reason I don't think you are correct that this is likely to open the minds of many of his followers. I'm very into 9/11 truth and I think Barrett made himself and the movement look bad. I'm pretty sure that fans of Chomsky would feel the same way.

that there are other causes in which more people were killed, and that 9-11 is taking time away from that. You mean the whole world is going to stop while it dedicates itself to Chomsky's approved list of causes? That's a totally false position. Second, Chomsky says that there were no real radicals such as those that protested the Vietnam war. How about Ralph Schoenman and Lynne Stewart? But he did say that he supported a lawsuit against Cheney. That could have been common ground.

that this may not open many of the minds of his followers, because apparently they'll follow him off a cliff. Indeed, this correspondance hasn't changed Chomsky's position one bit. But what it does is give us a better, more substantive argument for how Chomsky is purposely avoiding this issue, and that can be an important tool when dealing with people who don't follow him so myopically. Up until now, I've only really been using the Zwicker chapter, and a few online videos, none of which cut so directly to the heart of his intellectual dishonesty.

Plus, Barrett gets in a lot of good information along the way. Don't get me wrong though, I can't say I agree with all of Barrett's choices in general, such as associating with Fetzer. Also, he probably could have just cut out that part about Chomsky's wife. But ultimately, his decision to put this in the public domain strikes me as helpful for the movement. Plus, if anyone on the other side wants to call attention to the wife issue (worsening it, by the way), they will simulaneously be calling attention to the Chomsky issue, which ain't bad.

IMHO
:P

Sorry but I used to be a big fan of Noam and when he said it "doesn't matter: I immediately wrote him and told him I was ready to return my autographed copies of his books and that I was truly disappointed etc. While all the points Chomsky makes about his activism and concerns are true, they are just a distraction from taking the red 911 pill. Nobody can force anyone in these matters but Chomsky has directly and indirectly undermined the 911 (TM) with his comments and lack of intention to research the subject.
I am glad that Kevin posted the email history and helped to expand awareness of all the issues concerned within the correspondence. As for his wife's illness I will forward my best wishes and empathy in these matters. However, no amount of fancy dancing around the issues pressed by Kevin is going to fly with me and Chomsky what ever his real intentions are is avoiding the truth in these matters. His comment about ultra nationalism is very interesting and may reflect a hidden desire for a NWO of some sort. I agree with him about the original 911 of 1973 but the point is this country is now on the same path and if we don't save this country what hope is there for the rest of his important activism efforts. The truth seems to be that few of our leaders in politics, business, and academia seem to want to put America and her precious constitution first! Sorry but I feel it's time to put America First and the truth is our enemies do " resent and are jealous of our freedoms and way of life" the question is who are our real enemies.

I was referring to the topic of this posting, the Air America show. I have not read through the Chomsky email stuff yet, so you may be correct, that may have been a bad idea. To tell you the truth, I'm really not very interested in what Chomsky has to say these days.

Sorry, I don't know enough about Kevin Barrett to comment on him either way, but Chomsky comes off really poorly in this exchange.

Chomsky takes a bizarre moral high ground when he talks about things like "real activism" meaning that you are poor and marginalized and so forth. Meanwhile, he himself is far from poor or marginalized, but instead is the author described in the NY Times as "the most important intellectual alive." He gets into a lot of silliness about the lack of real-world activism on the part of 9/11 Truthers, which is not only overwhelmingly false, but is also a simply tacky way of addressing this issue. Some of us devote a lot of time to different types of activism, others do only a little, but what can kill a movement really fast is a lot of posturing about who has "paid their dues" and so forth. This attitude is endemic to a lot of political activism, especially on the left, and it is one way the left marginalizes itself. One thing I love about the 9/11 Truth movement is that there is very little of this kind of attitude.

Barrett should have done a better job of debating him. Much is made of some comment of his in October 2001, which Chomsky characterizes as something the 9/11 Truth movement has taken him to task over, when really, the comments that almost everyone found unsettling in their callousness and lack of a basic understanding of history were from May 2004.

"Regarding 9/11 conspiracy theories... even if it were true, which is extremely unlikely, who cares? It doesn't have any significance. It's a little bit like the huge energy that's put out on trying to figure out who killed John F. Kennedy. Who knows? And who cares? Plenty of people get killed all the time, why does it matter that one of them happened to be John F. Kennedy? If there was some reason to believe that there was a high level conspiracy, it might be interesting. But the evidence against that is just overwhelming. And after that, if it happened to be a jealous husband, or the mafia, or someone else, what difference does it make? It's just taking energy away from serious issues onto ones that don't matter. And I think the same is true here; it's my personal opinion."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wCnoXJhITow

9/11 has not only been used to justify 2 wars, but will remain the central historical justification for American interventionism and imperialism for many decades to come.

Chomsky's extremely poor handling of the issues surrounding 9/11 Truth really opens all of his work and scholarship up to greater analysis and a more critical eye by those of us who are similarly critical of many of the crimes committed by the United States and its allies, and may have accepted his scholarship as having a certain amount of weight.

But I need a link to right-click on. All the radio station pages I go to either don't have Clout or don't do winamp. Air America itself now doesn't even seem to do streaming. Do you know one?

Fred W

from page source

paste this link into your favorite player
http://cast.voxcdn.net:8000/live

Thanks. http://cast.voxcdn.net:8000/live is a winner! It's 32 k-whatevers, but looks like my connection can handle it with just a few skips. Just in time for Peter Dale Scott, too, I think.

Fred W

jesus, i can't stand Ron Weick

mark roberts, and it was hilarious

You can view Mark Roberts's "debunking" website here

This is probably the best they can do. Sad :(