Aaronovich lands one on Chomsky

[egb_hibs]

And that craven fool Pinter...


ps his vietnam / munich allusion is, i think, a misrecollection or an update of the conundrum quoted in my sig.



The meaning of Milosevic: how the Butcher of the Balkans changed us
David Aaronovitch


ONE OF THE MORE tragic aspects of the demise of Slobodan Milosevic is that the international committee to defend him will now have to be wound up. The committee have been assiduous jail-visitors, invariably finding the former Serbian leader resolute or unbowed, his belief in his own innocence virtually luminescent. And they have been determined petitioners, demanding Mr Milosevic’s release and the jailing of “the real war criminals: the Nato leaders who committed crimes against humanity and against Yugoslav sovereignty and who continue to commit those crimes today”. One of their signatories was the new Nobel laureate for literature, Harold Pinter, though somehow this fact was left off the citation.

All that remains for them to do is to spread as many rumours as they can that the forces of imperialism done the old boy in, and then they can get down to the business of pre-emptively defending Kim Jong Il, or posthumously rehabilitating Beria, or something useful like that. What I want to do, however, is to chronicle how the Serbian leader was responsible for the invasion of Iraq. Along a line of logic that runs, crudely, no Slobbo, no Bosnia, no Kosovo, no fashion for intervention, no Iraq.

This is also a personal journey, because, back in 1993 I was as ardent a peacenik as you could find. Or, rather, I was irritated by all these reporters filing their stuff from Balkan towns with z’s in them, emoting about villagers and implying that there was a crime of omission going on, and the international community should do something to sort it out. From the safety of London I preferred the writings of those who, like the author Misha Glenny, suggested that it was all incredibly complex over there, and that getting stuck in on one side or the other would be a terrible mistake. Diplomacy, that was the thing. Humanitarian convoys. Aid. That way no British soldiers would be killed, and truly dreadful conflict might be avoided. I distrusted those who, like Martin Bell, seemed to advocate a campaigning, tendentious journalism.

For a while I put my faith in Douglas Hurd and David Owen and their various peace plans. As the former Yugoslavia fell apart I felt some residual sympathy for the view that, after all, things had been better before under Tito, and that all this was about the resurgence of a petty nationalism that it would have been better to discourage. And if they said you could do business with the unlovely Milosevic (who was no worse, surely, than Croatia’s Tudjman), or if they hinted that the Bosnian Muslims might somehow be complicit in some of the worst attacks on Sarajevo, or if they argued that selling arms to the Muslims would be like adding petrol to the fires, who was to say that they were wrong? Didn’t these Balkan types all do it to each other?

Then came Srebrenica. Of course there was plenty of reason, even before July 1995, to doubt that diplomacy could save hundreds of thousands from ethnic cleansing and murder. But Srebrenica was the moment when our responsibility for all this simply could not be denied. The UN was there, in the form of Dutch soldiers supposedly protecting an enclave. Our
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s were there as Ratko Mladic swanned into the invaded town and smilingly reassured Bosnian women that everything would be dealt with. In front of our eyes, just about, with our full knowledge, thousands were taken to European fields — just as they had been 50 years earlier — and murdered en masse. It was the most shaming moment of my life. We had let it happen again.


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[wee 162]

Oh he had a pop at Chomsky, how daring.

Unfortunately the reason the article was retracted was because it claimed that Chomsky denied the massacre at Srebenica which he hadn't done, misquoted him on various subjects, and frankly was an appaling piece of journalism.

You can read Chomskys defence of himself [Only Registered Users Can See Links. Click Here To Register]. It's really easy to turn round and say an article shouldn't have been pulled because it was entirely right, when that article is no longer accessible. Unfortunately I read the article, and the response at the time, so I know Aaronovitch is a slavering halfwit, and going by this article entirely willing to distort, and flat out lie. Chomsky defended the right of a writer to write what they want, he wasn't agreeing with what she wrote. He also did the exact same with David Irvine iirc, and was subject to the exact same ludicrous suggestions, except that time he was a holocaust denier (Chomsky lost half his family in Auschwitz so that one was more than a bit crass imo).

[egb_hibs]

Originally Posted by wee 162

Oh he had a pop at Chomsky, how daring.

Merely a hook for responses Al
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I am actually more interested in picking up the main theme of western views of the balkans conflict which I'll do this aftie time permitting

Unfortunately the reason the article was retracted was because it claimed that Chomsky denied the massacre at Srebenica which he hadn't done, misquoted him on various subjects, and frankly was an appaling piece of journalism.

You can read Chomskys defence of himself [Only Registered Users Can See Links. Click Here To Register]. It's really easy to turn round and say an article shouldn't have been pulled because it was entirely right, when that article is no longer accessible. Unfortunately I read the article, and the response at the time, so I know Aaronovitch is a slavering halfwit, and going by this article entirely willing to distort, and flat out lie. Chomsky defended the right of a writer to write what they want, he wasn't agreeing with what she wrote. He also did the exact same with David Irvine iirc, and was subject to the exact same ludicrous suggestions, except that time he was a holocaust denier (Chomsky lost half his family in Auschwitz so that one was more than a bit crass imo).

DA does explain the basis of his charge against NC and does say that NC did not explicitly deny the Srebrenica slaughter.

Do you agree that in general Harold Pinter comes across as a bit of a tw@t?

Personally I remember being outraged at western inaction in the balkans. I did not feel the shame DA talks about, because I was for intervention from the outset. What I did feel was a form of betrayal; as a youngster I had been taught that this kind of thing could not happen again on european soil because we would not stand for it. And it did. And we did.

His link of all this to Iraq is interesting. Not sure if I absolutely agree with it, but there is something in it IMHO. An element he doesn't pick up on, is that apparently western inaction there is cited as a factor in islamist militantization (is that word?) as action has been elsewhere. One for the undiscriminating peacenik to contemplate, that.

[part/time supporter]

Most charitably we may understand this by thinking that Chomsky sees the road from Srebrenica to Iraq just as I do. If Bosnia was the betrayal through inaction and appeasement, Srebrenica the consequence and Kosovo the determination not to let it happen again, then the line runs clear. And if Milosevic, far from being someone we could do business with, was in fact an opportunistic tyrant who played us for fools until we saw the light, then what was Saddam?

I think it is relevant to point out that Anthony Eden took a similar attitude, which led him to intervening re Suez.

[Gareth]

Aaronovich's whole journalistic career now is based around justifying his shift to the right. Fine if thats what he's done and wants to talk about but it hardly makes him some sort of journalistic diety. I lost count of the number of articles he wrote on the theme of 'Was I wrong on Iraq? Of course not'.
I agree with Wee162 on this one and think the response by EGB is a bit shallow, Aron says Chomsky doesn't excplicitly deny etc etc. Then why bother bringing Chomsky into it if not to attempt merely to smear by accusing him of implicitly denying and a form of guilt by association.
I remember Chomsky defending a French academic who had some far right ideas on the basis of fredom of speach too. I disagreed with him but he's been consistent, unlike the pit bull of the self important, David Aaronovich.

[egb_hibs]

Originally Posted by Gareth

Aaronovich's whole journalistic career now is based around justifying his shift to the right. Fine if thats what he's done and wants to talk about but it hardly makes him some sort of journalistic diety. I lost count of the number of articles he wrote on the theme of 'Was I wrong on Iraq? Of course not'.
I agree with Wee162 on this one and think the response by EGB is a bit shallow, Aron says Chomsky doesn't excplicitly deny etc etc. Then why bother bringing Chomsky into it if not to attempt merely to smear by accusing him of implicitly denying and a form of guilt by association.
I remember Chomsky defending a French academic who had some far right ideas on the basis of fredom of speach too. I disagreed with him but he's been consistent, unlike the pit bull of the self important, David Aaronovich.

Aaronovich has his faults, but what I like about him is he prooves that you don't have to be right wing to occupy reality.

[wee 162]

Originally Posted by egb_hibs

Aaronovich has his faults, but what I like about him is he prooves that you don't have to be right wing to occupy reality.

Reality is entirely misrepresenting peoples views? I thought that was called lying.

[egb_hibs]

Originally Posted by wee 162

Reality is entirely misrepresenting peoples views? I thought that was called lying.

I do not share your advantage of having read the piece in question, but I think that you misrepresented DA's comments in your post above.

[wee 162]

Originally Posted by egb_hibs

I do not share your advantage of having read the piece in question, but I think that you misrepresented DA's comments in your post above.

I really didn't. The original article surprised me with Chomskys views since I had read a fair amount of his stuff previously. A couple of days later I got an email from one of the mailing lists I am on pointing me in the direction of the Guardian retraction, and Chomskys letter to the editor. Misquoting, attributing comments that were not made, and putting in stuff out of context is not only bad journalism, it's dishonest and the only conclusion that I could come to having read the original article was that it was a pre-meditated idea to distort what was said to make Chomsky look bad.

Assuming that Aaronovitch actually read the article and then the other bits relating to it I have mentioned, what other conclusion am I supposed to have come to than that he is a liar given the way he is representing what happened. Perhaps you should take a lot more of what he writes with a pinch of salt, since the only reason I know that he is talking shite in this instance is due to having read the original article, the letter to the editor, and the retraction.

BTW I found [Only Registered Users Can See Links. Click Here To Register] letter to The Guardian just now from the author who was said to have denied that the massacre at Srebrenica happened. It's actually a pretty well argued point imo. I hadn't seen it before. I also came accross [Only Registered Users Can See Links. Click Here To Register] as well which is from the guy who deals with complaints to the Guardian. It is interesting that the original complaint was dealt with to the satisfaction of all the parties directly involved in the subject, but David Aaronovitch was one of the three columnists who had lobbied hard to change this retraction. So given this I would say it is pretty clear he had a decent idea of what was actually contained in the article itself as well as the apology. Liar doesn't do him justice. A total fanny perhaps does.

[wee 162]

Originally Posted by Gareth

I remember Chomsky defending a French academic who had some far right ideas on the basis of fredom of speach too. I disagreed with him but he's been consistent, unlike the pit bull of the self important, David Aaronovich.

That was the one. Wasn't David Irvine at all.

[egb_hibs]

Al, having read it again, it seems to me DA makes the point that NC's culpability is implicit not explicit and that the allegation rests on the assertion that NC 'commended' this other writer, which seems more than a free speech position and more like an endorsement of what was said.

[wee 162]

Originally Posted by egb_hibs

Al, having read it again, it seems to me DA makes the point that NC's culpability is implicit not explicit and that the allegation rests on the assertion that NC 'commended' this other writer, which seems more than a free speech position and more like an endorsement of what was said.

Here's the evidence in front of you, namely the letter which the article was talking about.

Originally Posted by Noam Chomsky

Dear friends,

I have heard from various friends in Sweden about an ongoing controversy concerning Diana Johnstone's book on the Balkans. I have known her for many years, have read the book, and feel that it is quite serious and important. I also know that it has been very favorably reviewed, e.g., by the leading British scholarly journal International Affairs, journal of the Royal Academy. I was therefore interested to learn of the criticisms and the controversy, and took the trouble to investigate what was sent to me. Some comments follow about what was sent to me, which I am assuming to be accurate, for the sake of these comments. I am sending them in the hope that they may be relevant to whatever discussions are taking place within Ordfront.

Noam



A Swedish journalist sent me sections of an article in Svenska Dagbladet that stated:


"As witness to the truth, an author is interviewed, who in the spirit of Noam Chomsky claims that the discourse on ethnic cleansing and genocide in Yugoslavia is "the great lie, the heart of the myth." Such events have not occurred, just "incidents."


The sender suggested that I respond, but of course I will not. There is no need to dignify such gutter journalism with response. Evidently, no journal that expects to be taken seriously would publish such slanders without even a pretense of argument or evidence, and that the fact that it appears tells us a good deal about the standards of any journal that would tolerate this practice.

Another document sent to me contains a number of charges:


(1) "According to her it cannot be a matter of genocide when women and children are spared. But to me it is obvious that genocide and crimes against humanity have been committed in Srebrenica…"

Reference is apparently to Johnstone's statement (p. 117) refuting the claim that the charge of "genocide" is demonstrated by the fact that the Serbs who conquered Srebrenica offered safe passage to women and children. In response to this absurd claim, she writes: "However, one thing should be obvious: one does not commit `genocide' by sparing women and children.

I do not see how her entirely appropriate comment justifies the charge in (1)

(2) Johnstone "claims that the circa 40 persons who were killed in the village of Racak were not civilians but Albanian guerilla fighters which had been killed in fighting with Serbian police."

I read the section but could not find that claim.


3) "Johnstone asserts that more effort has gone into exaggerating the number of dead than into identifying and caclulating the actual number of victims, that there was never any real wish to find out how many were killed and who they were. She suggests that several thousand hade fled and survived."

I read that section too. I am aware of no evidence -- of course, meaning evidence available to her at the time she wrote -- that the statements she actually made in this regard (as distinct from those attributed to her) are incorrect.


4) "Mikael van Reis published an article in Göteborgs-Posten. I quote:

"… the revisionist author Diana Johnstone, foreground figure in the slander-convicted magazine "Living Marxism". She insists that the Serb atrocities - ethnic cleansing, torture camps, mass executions - are western propaganda. That is also what Slobodan Milosevic and his ilk profess. Thus the Ordfront left is suddenly travelling in the same compartment as postcommunist fascism."

I do not know van Reis, and hope that the quotation is incorrect. However, if it is correct, it is quite remarkable.

Let us first consider the "slander-convicted magazine `Living Marxism'." The case is important. LM was indeed convicted, and put out of business, thanks to Britain's outrageous libel laws, denounced as scandalous worldwide by everyone concerned with the right of freedom of expression. In this case, a huge corporation was able to put a small marginal journal out of business by demanding the impossible, as Britain's miserable libel laws require, and in the certain knowledge that the journal would be unable to mount a defense given the ludicrous imbalance of resources.

Van Reis is, of course, entitled to hold, and express, his strong opposition to freedom of speech: specifically, his doctrine, clearly expressed here, that the rich and powerful should be able to use the power of the state to silence opinion and reporting they do not like.

But putting that aside, let's now consider his reasoning. Johnstone argues -- and, in fact, clearly demonstrates -- that a good deal of what has been charged has no basis in fact, and much of it is pure fabrication. For van Reis, this is outrageous. Van Reis therefore is telling us, loud and clear, that he not only is a dedicated opponent of freedom of speech, but he believes with equal passion that it is critically important to safeguard the right to lie -- not in the interests of freedom of expression, which he strongly opposes, as just demonstrated -- but rather in one special case: to lie in service of power and privilege.

Consider finally his interesting logic. Johnstone's actual statements (the accuracy of which he rightly does not challenge) are also made by Milosevic. Therefore, she and Ordfront are supporters of Milosevic's crimes. And, by precisely the same argument, van Reis is a strong defender of the Holocaust. The proof is elementary. His charges against Stalinist crimes were also made by Goebbels, Himmler, and their apologists until today. QED.

It is astonishing that anything like this should appear in print, in a reputable journal.

A final comment on "genocide." People are free to use the term "genocide" as they please, and to condemn Racak and Srebrenica, say, as genocidal if they like. But then they have a simple responsibility: Inform us of their bitter denunciations of the incomparably worse "genocide" carried out with the strong backing of the US and UK at the very same moment as Racak. Say, the massacre at Liquica, with perhaps up to 200 civilians murdered, one of many (unlike Racak), in a country under military occupation and hence a grave war crime (unlike Racak), and in this case simply a massacre of civilians, without even a pretext of resistance (again unlike Racak). Furthermore, unless the British government, the State Department, NATO, the OSCE, and other impeccable Western sources are lying outright, the Racak massacre was committed at a time when the KLA guerrillas were carrying out terrorist attacks from their Albanian bases against Serbian civilians and police, and were responsible for the majority of atrocities (see, e.g., Lord Robertson and Foreign Secretary Robin Cook, or the very few serious scholarly studies, such as Nicholas Wheeler's -- who strongly supports the NATO bombing but is so unfashionable as to report the results of the massive Western documentation). And to continue, Swedes who display their outrage over these examples of Serbian genocide clearly have the duty of informing us of their far more bitter condemnations of the massacres (again with decisive US-UK backing) through 1999, leaving maybe 5-6000 civilian corpses, according to the Church in East Timor and the leading Western historian of Timor, the British scholar John Taylor --- all BEFORE the paroxysm of terror in late August 1999, after which the US and UK (and for all I know, Sweden) continued to support the Indonesian murderers who were already responsible for the death of about 1/3 of the population in pure aggression decisively supported by the US and UK (and when it came time to make some profit from it, Sweden). Perhaps they have issued bitter condemnations of their Western allies (and Sweden). If so, they have a right to use the term "genocide" in the case of the terrible but much lesser crimes of Racak and Srebrenica. And, needless to say, this is only one trivial example of Western crimes in the same years.

I don't read Swedish journals of course, but it would be interesting to learn how the Swedish press explains the fact that their interpretation of Johnstone's book differs so radically from that of Britain's leading scholarly foreign affairs journal, International Affairs. I mentioned the very respectful review by Robert Caplan, of the University of Reading and Oxford. It is obligatory, surely, for those who condemn Johnstone's book in the terms just reviewed to issue still harsher condemnation of International Affairs, as well as of the universities of Reading and Oxford, for allowing such a review to appear, and for allowing the author to escape censure.

That seems pretty straightforward

So what do you think? Do you reckon that Chomsky is denying that acts of murder took place? I actually agree with the author of the book that genocide is not the correct term when talking about Srebrenica, but it was still an absolutely horrendous war crime and should be treated as such. Labelling it as something which it isn't helps no-one and it also (imo) trivialises actual genocide. I can certainly see why someone who is a linguist by profession would agree that it is not the correct term, and I can also see why someone who defends free speech would say that the attacks on the book and the author were tantamount to a witchhunt. Funny thing is though that I bet you Chomsky would defend peoples right to say these things, even if they are false. If something is false it is easy to debunk.

[HenryLB]

Originally Posted by wee 162

So what do you think? Do you reckon that Chomsky is denying that acts of murder took place? I actually agree with the author of the book that genocide is not the correct term when talking about Srebrenica, but it was still an absolutely horrendous war crime and should be treated as such. Labelling it as something which it isn't helps no-one and it also (imo) trivialises actual genocide. I can certainly see why someone who is a linguist by profession would agree that it is not the correct term, and I can also see why someone who defends free speech would say that the attacks on the book and the author were tantamount to a witchhunt. Funny thing is though that I bet you Chomsky would defend peoples right to say these things, even if they are false. If something is false it is easy to debunk.

The thing with Chomsky though is that he does love being controversial, prodding and goading at the received view often without explicitly countering it. In this case he has said several things which he knows full well will sound inflammatory, but which can be backed away from in the wider sense of the conversation. I actually agree with you - that he didn't mean what the Guardian said he did - but if you're such an ardent controversialist you can hardly spit the dummy when people occasionally catch the wrong end of the stick.

And the bit in the original where the interviewer asks if he has a share portfolio, and he says something like "you'd have to ask my wife," and then gets angry and asks "why is it Colombian peasants never ask me those types of questions?" or somesuch is pure gold.

[gun ainm]

Wee 162 and Gareth land a one-two combo on EGB (and Aaronovich by proxy) knocking the chinless wonder to the floor
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[egb_hibs]

something i found quite surprising about this, not having read anything of his for a while - he's not a very good writer is he? i found much of that quite incoherent. it's hard work to follow his line of reasoning.

anyway, he comes across to me as a bit deranged - unable to contemplate serbia on it's own terms, but only ever in relation to the UK/US. srebrenica was clearly a genocidal act - slaughter of people because of their ethnicity. chomsky doesn't deny this explicitly, but then DA never said he did. What he does is snake his way around, relativising, muddying waters and so one. I found it quite distasteful and I think DA's point has some substance to it. Chomsky strikes me as quite an immature man.

[wee 162]

Originally Posted by egb_hibs

something i found quite surprising about this, not having read anything of his for a while - he's not a very good writer is he? i found much of that quite incoherent. it's hard work to follow his line of reasoning.

anyway, he comes across to me as a bit deranged - unable to contemplate serbia on it's own terms, but only ever in relation to the UK/US. srebrenica was clearly a genocidal act - slaughter of people because of their ethnicity. chomsky doesn't deny this explicitly, but then DA never said he did. What he does is snake his way around, relativising, muddying waters and so one. I found it quite distasteful and I think DA's point has some substance to it. Chomsky strikes me as quite an immature man.

From the Oxford English Dictionary;

"Genocide - the deliberate extermination of a people or nation."

Not that clear to me that that's what happened at all tbh. The use of the word genocide is a deliberately emotive word designed to provoke a reaction in this case imo. As I said I think the casual use of it means that the word and the meaning of it are devalued. I personally reckon that stuff which examines the way in which we get information presented to us is always worth considering. I honestly did not know until reading this stuff that it was only the men who were slaughtered in Srebrenica until reading this stuff, and I suspect strongly that my impression was created by the continual use of the word genocide to describe it. It was an appaling war crime, but that doesn't make it genocide. If we use killing people because of their ethnicity as the benchmark for what we call genocide then just about every war in the history of the world could be described as genocidal, and they haven't been.

Chomsky continually goes on about double standards in the way in which we are presented with information, it's probably the basis of most of his published work. Of course he is going to compare this act with others, such as in East Timor, which were happening at the same time, and ask why this wasn't the same attention being paid to that. Don't you think that's a perfectly legitimate point?

BTW how does the fitting up of Chomsky in The Guardian of all places fit into the liberal establishment meedja?