March 26, 2004

NEWS BRIEFLETS

• A stupid Michael Moore joke (scroll down a little) is taken seriously in Bulgaria and Spain:

Bulgarians who worked at the World Trade Center in New York City received a warning not to got to work on September 11, 2001, when terrorists rammed hijacked passenger jets into the twin towers, bestseller author Michael Moore writes in his latest book "Dude Where's My Country?"

• The New York Times thinks the Victorian countryside qualifies as remote Australian outback.

• Noam Chomsky has ditched comments at his new blog following ferocious right-wing joke attacks.

• It takes a hyper-educated doctor of philosophy to point out society’s complex realities:

Homelessness is a visible indication of the existence of poverty in Australia.

Posted by Tim Blair at March 26, 2004 07:35 PM
Comments

"Noam Chomsky has ditched comments at his new blog following ferocious right-wing joke attacks"

No fair I hadnt got a chance to drop some turd at his site yet.

Posted by: Dead Ed at March 26, 2004 at 07:51 PM

Homelessness an indicator of poverty? Some - a little. It is well known that most homelessness is voluntary and results from snotty teenagers telling their long-sffering parent (or in a few cases parents) to get stuffed and marching out the door.

Posted by: walter plinge at March 26, 2004 at 08:04 PM

Homelessness an indicator of poverty? Some - a little. It is well known that most homelessness is voluntary and results from snotty teenagers telling their long-sffering parent (or in a few cases parents) to get stuffed and marching out the door.

Posted by: walter plinge at March 26, 2004 at 08:05 PM

Well, I suggest you take a look at the alleged jokes. I don't agree with Chomsky, but I would have liked to use his blog for argument since he threw it open (unlikely but he did it).

These posts are all in capital letters and in one case consisted of the word JEWS repeated until the server gave up citing bandwidth. Even a Noam detractor would be embarrassed by this shit, which presumably will simply shore up his view of the right as ape-brained motormouth idiots. Certainly these "joke" posters were exactly that. They killed the discussion thread and basically obliterated a chance to get a word of reason in edgeways. Smart move.

You may recall a similar decision to can comments was forced on the exellent Melanie Phillips by the same brand of arsehole.

Posted by: Dave F at March 26, 2004 at 08:10 PM

Yeah, I've got mixed feelings. On one hand, it's nice that Noam wasn't taken very seriously. On the other, it's not like a few determined critiques couldn't be made of any drivel he stammers out.

In fact, there were many comments about the obvious stupidity in Noam's posts, but those were ignored or buried by the guy who kept posting JEW.
And it wouldn't take much for Noam to adopt a DU-like comments policy and delete anything critical, so I go back to my first thought.

Noam Chomsky is a joke in the real world. It's too bad that it couldn't been a funnier joke that lasted a little longer...

Posted by: Sortelli at March 26, 2004 at 08:19 PM

I object to having to download a couple megabytes of junk to post my witticism at the end. Chomsky parodies himself and I don't get a chance to rub it in, is the only result.

Posted by: Ron Hardin at March 26, 2004 at 09:05 PM

Homelessness is a visible indication of the existence of poverty in Australia.

Is there anything wrong with the statement if the person feels that some deny that poverty exists?

Posted by: Andjam at March 26, 2004 at 09:21 PM

Good grief, "OilEmpire.us" regards Chomsky and Moore as too soft/rightwing/sane.

Posted by: Andjam at March 26, 2004 at 09:26 PM

Real shame,
The idiots posting "fuck off" and such
arguments spoilt it. Nicer to present a rational
argument and see if Chumbsky would present a decent counterpoint.

Instead it's now a case of "free speech silenced"
blah blah,but by Gnome or the spammers.

Posted by: fred at March 26, 2004 at 10:12 PM

Well actually homelessness is very often a sign that mental illness exists. Many mentally ill just can't maintain a home due to their illness.

Posted by: Shark at March 26, 2004 at 10:33 PM

More complex realities: Tony Abbott is a man and will never experience pregnancy.

Don't you oppress him!

Seriously though, I wouldn't be 100% certain that males will not be able to experience pregnancy within the next couple of decades.

Posted by: Andjam at March 26, 2004 at 10:54 PM

Amazing. A group who say Michael Moore is wrong not because he's so given to lying whenever reality doesn't suit him butinstead because he's insufficiently looney for theirpurposes.

Posted by: Eric Pobirs at March 26, 2004 at 11:23 PM

I see Bloggers moderate their comments section all the time, deleting innapropriate or offensive content and banning trolls. I guess Chomsky was either too lazy to be bothered with maintaining his site, or more likely, he simply used his troll infestation as an excuse to ban dissenting opinions from his blog. Chomsky has never been willing to debate his poilitical views. He has isolated himself from rational criticism for thirty-plus years. He might as well share a shack with the Unibomber.

Regards,
Kenneth


Posted by: KJAY at March 26, 2004 at 11:40 PM

Years ago, and this is a true tale, in an attempt to further my path to enlightenment, I borrowed a Noam Chomsky book (forget which one) from the local public library. The wise librarians had catalogued, not merely mis-shelved, his works so they fitted in the section with goat farming!

Posted by: kwol at March 26, 2004 at 11:57 PM

Drunkeness is a visible indicator of the existence of beer in Australia.
Vomit is a visible indicator of the existence of late night kebab shops in Australia.
Buses are a visible indicator of the existence of soviet-style public transport policy in Australia.
Cemetaries are a visible indicator of the existence of death in Australia.
Prostitutes are a visible indicator of the existence of stiffies in Australia.
How much did this maroon get paid, and how do I get hold of some of it?

Posted by: Habib at March 27, 2004 at 12:04 AM

Maybe Chomsky is now into Manufacturing NonConsent.

Posted by: tipper at March 27, 2004 at 12:17 AM

Having lived in Shepparton for 10 years I think the article was spot on calling the Victorian countryside the outback.

Posted by: swassociates at March 27, 2004 at 12:20 AM

I can't believe Noam is quashing dissent this way. I may have to reevaluate my committment to the left wing.

Posted by: J Mann at March 27, 2004 at 12:50 AM

Re Chomsky's blog & comments,
It pissed me off as well to have to scroll through endless spam posted by LGF'ers to get to comments that were worthy of debate. An entire LGF thread was posted to Chomsky's site for fuck's sake! And this from LGF'ers who constantly bleat about "bandwidth" and "trolls" on their own blog.
Good one, LGF, you fucked up badly there.
Then again, Chomsky has surely got to realise that "linguistics" is not a good base for poltical discourse.

Posted by: Tony at March 27, 2004 at 01:42 AM

I wish all you right wing scumbags would just back off Noam.....

Like all other left thinking people John Pilchard and Robert Fish .....sounds like a fucking aquarium in here...all they want is peace...

Leave Saddam alone (body bags pick a number), North Korea don't touch (body bags pick a number), Stalin man of the century (+ - 30 million odd body bags)etc etc

It is these peace lovers who will cure over population all on their lonesome....as they intercede on behalf of the worlds scum ....all in the name of in vogue causes don't you know..the latest who tell us how much they love death.

Give me a right wing scumbag over a piece of dogshit like Chomsky, Pilger and Fisk any day of the week.

Fucking oxygen thieves....

Posted by: Traps at March 27, 2004 at 03:15 AM

Not all of the comments out there were junk, but what did the guy expect to happen?

Posted by: zzx375 at March 27, 2004 at 03:39 AM

Chomsky Nocomments - My that was even quicker that I suspected. One of several things Chomsky and his acolytes fragile philosophy can't withstand is analysis and debate, logic and facts. As long as they can inhale their foul vapors within a closed system, they can survive. Put them to a real world test and you will see a collapse as quick as the Comments section.

Posted by: Billy Hank at March 27, 2004 at 04:06 AM


This from the kiddies over at Metafilter. It's from the comments section regarding a link to Chomsky's blog.

"Man, at least he has a comments section. Popular blogs without comments are just cowardly. Imagine how much of Instapundit's right-wing bullshit would be torn apart by one or two well crafted comments."

-posted by skallas at 1:54 PM PST on March 25

How fucken funny is that?!!

Posted by: Big Ramifications at March 27, 2004 at 12:34 PM

Not very.

Posted by: Andrea Harris at March 27, 2004 at 12:45 PM


Maybe I should have set the scene...

That comment was made during the brief time Chomsky's comments section was active.

"skallas" was telling the forum how cowardly it would be if there was no comments section.

And now he looks like a complete twat and it makes me laff just thinking about it.

Posted by: Big Ramifications at March 27, 2004 at 01:33 PM

You're easily amused.

Posted by: Andrea Harris at March 27, 2004 at 01:36 PM

Trolls are trolls, no matter what their cause.

I think Chomsky a hypocritical, manipulative, egocentrical twit, and the people who hang on his every word are lemming-like fools. His kind do little more than support oppression and elitism through the spread of self-hate, guilt, and twisted facts. They represent the barbarians at the gates of civilization.

(Not that I represent the finest in civilization, but I like what I see there, on the whole.)

I would have liked the chance to drop my comments on Chomsky's blog. Now I can't. Behavior like we saw on the blog only reinforces the beliefs of the left, all thanks to the "five percenters" present in any set of demographics that you care to name.

This just gave them ammunition for their cause, even if it ignores similar behavior of their own people. Who may be more than 5% of the left's population.

But I won't worry about what Chomsky and minions think about me, or my views. I expect that if his blog comments hadn't been trolled to death, the impact of any intelligent discourse on Chomsky's behavior would be small at best. It would be like convincing John Kerry that his Vietnam tour is largely immaterial to his qualifications as Presidential material.

It's those people waffling between Chomsky and the real world that would be the real objective.

Posted by: JeffS at March 28, 2004 at 01:54 AM