Hi Platt
On 11 Nov 2001 at 9:32, Platt Holden wrote:
> Chomsky is well known here as a left-wing radical who systematically
> (and cleverly) employs lies and half-truths to bolster his Marxist
> agenda. He is, in effect, a spokesman for the Taliban and Al-Qaeda by
> proposing that 1) America is responsible for the root causes of the
> attack on the Trade Center, and 2) America has done worse to others.
> Since that is the "general drift" of his message, I certainly do deny it.
>
> I hope this site which is supposedly dedicated to the MOQ doesn't
> become a platform for the full text of speeches by other than forum
> members. Frankly, I'm surprised that Horse as moderator let the
> Chomsky diatribe pass. Should he also permit entire speeches by
> Bush, Blair and other Western leaders to be reproduced here? I don't
> think so.
I agree with you that the full text of this speech shouldn't have come through to the mailing list and would
request that members don't follow suit with other speeches by their favourite speakers (unless that
speaker is Pirsig). If members want to bring attention to a passage or article which they feel may be
relevant then they should post the URL and not the passage itself.
It sneaked in under the radar firstly because the list itself isn't moderated and secondly because I cranked
up the maximum message size allowable due to a number of largeish posts recently - large because
members have failed to chop off the text of previous messages even where it is not relevant. I've since
reduced the max. message size and would implore members to take a little care and post only that text
that is relevant. This saves bandwidth and consequently download time.
> Anyway, I find Horse a lot more eloquent than Chomsky and would
> prefer reading what he has to say any day.
I'm genuinely flattered that you should prefer me to Chomsky, Platt, but I'm intrigued as to the lies (and,
indeed, the half-truths) that you say Chomsky employs. His interpretations/opinions certainly don't mesh
with your own, but as Chomsky is one of the leading American academics (possibly THE leading
academic if you consider that he is, I believe, the most quoted person alive and the third most quoted
person in history after Jesus (!!!) and Aristotle [could be wrong - correct me if so]) he is always very
careful to ensure the accuracy of quotes and references which he uses. I've read a number of his books
(politics and linguistics) and for the most part his references are all available - often newspaper articles
from 'respected' sources such as the New York Times (US) and the Financial Times (UK). Can you
provide examples of these lies or half-truths.
Horse
PS (To Platt and Jonathan)
I haven't forgotten to reply to your last posts but I've been up to my neck in various activities recently and
have had almost no personal time. I'm about halfway through at the moment.
MOQ.ORG - http://www.moq.org
Mail Archive - http://alt.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/
MD Queries - horse@darkstar.uk.net
To unsubscribe from moq_discuss follow the instructions at:
http://www.moq.org/md/subscribe.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Sat Aug 17 2002 - 16:01:37 BST