This is the second (and final) part of my response to Berube's characterisation ("pack of lies") of Chomsky's writing on the NATO attack on Yugoslavia. You can read Part 1 by following this link.

Here again is Berube quoting Chomsky (this is the text that Berube calls a pack of lies):

Remember, the Milosevic Tribunal began with Kosovo, right in the middle of the US-British bombing in late '99 . . . Now if you take a look at that indictment, with a single exception, every charge was for crimes after the bombing.

There's a reason for that. The bombing was undertaken with the anticipation explicit [that] it was going to lead to large-scale atrocities in response. As it did. Now there were terrible atrocities, but they were after the bombings. In fact, if you look at the British parliamentary inquiry, they actually reached the astonishing conclusion that, until January 1999, most of the crimes committed in Kosovo were attributed to the KLA guerrillas.

So later they added charges [against Milosevic] about the Balkans, but it wasn't going to be an easy case to make. The worst crime was Srebrenica but, unfortunately for the International Tribunal, there was an intensive investigation by the Dutch government, which was primarily responsible their troops were there and what they concluded was that not only did Milosevic not order it, but he had no knowledge of it. And he was horrified when he heard about it. So it was going to be pretty hard to make that charge stick.

My original response dealt with the purely logical/analytical aspect of Berube's response to the above and how this response did not constitute a refutation. Here I want to go a bit further and read into Chomsky (which if done carefully, is not an unfair thing to do, given that we do not communicate in formal languages).

There are two angles from which we can approach Chomsky. One of them is what I recommend based on his voluminous writing and his own words. In this reading, Chomsky concentrates his criticism on the powerful: state and corporate action. He documents historical record, standard sources, and offers fairly straightforward reasoning to derive his conclusions. He has explicitly stated, many times over, the reasons for his concentration on certain things (U.S action, for instance) as opposed to others (say the actions of Cory Smith, the school bully at PS 132). Not only can he say more about his country of residence (for what should be obvious reasons) and effect change, but also it coincidentally happens to be the most powerful one in the world today (and therefore impacts the world in a larger scale for the same bad behaviour). The context, therefore in which to read (the quoted text) is this: if some entity exercises its power, what are the facts, the stated reasons and justifications, the result, and how do these match up. This I will call either the parsimonious or sceptical attitude.

The second angle, employed consistently by the right, and now by these segments of the left, is one which starts with the question of Chomsky's motives. The next step is a shortcut to examine his record and conclude that he is "anti-American". It follows then that what Chomsky writes serves this interest (or some similar ideological commitment) and one has to do no more than wait for his commitment to trip up his reasoning.

With the latter attitude, the quoted text reads so: given we believe that Chomsky thinks America is always wrong, Chomsky is clutching at whatever he can get, even to the extent of defending Milosevic (let us set aside how such reasoning is peppered with all sorts of assumptions of mental states). Chomsky uses this or that evidence to show that Milosevic was guiltless and the U.S and allies had no justification.

The analysis here is at best naive in that it looks for a coincidence between the state of the world (Kosovo) and the U.S-NATO story and once found (in one way or another) derides anyone who questions U.S action. The coincidence, it should be obvious (but isn't!), does not imply any justification. This we can charitably call the naive attitude.

By the parsimonious attitude things look significantly different: the U.S/NATO acted in a particular manner, and justified the action with some claims. The claim was not just that atrocities were afoot in Kosovo, but that they knew (in the sense of having a record) of such atrocities. Chomsky asks the simple question, giving them the benefit of the doubt, after the end of the NATO action: where is that record? One good place to look for that record is the charges filed. So there he looks. And he finds (and is not refuted on that point by Berube) that the evidence/record is events that happened after the event! What is worse, Chomsky rationally suggests, is that it should have been known that these events would occur as a consequence of the attack. Then Chomsky wonders: could this then be one of the reasons for the attack: to produce the necessary data? ("There is a reason for that").

He then points out that the charges against Milosevic reach back into earlier history. Once again, he asks, what of the events implied in these charges? Are they documented? He offers one fairly official source (the Danish government) and finds that they found a different conclusion than what the charges imply.

Chomsky's argument can be posed as a call to judgement of NATO action:

• Can you, at least now (after the invasion), offer evidence of atrocities in Kosovo, your stated reason for attacking Yugoslavia?
• Is such evidence included in the charges against Milosevic? If not, why not?
• In fact, the evidence you offer is mostly from after the attack! What is the reason for this?
• What have your own governments concluded after investigation on the ground?
• Why is there a need for non-Kosovo evidence if you had enough evidence about Kosovo to justify something as extreme as a war?
• Does your non-Kosovo evidence hold up against Milosevic? What do your own governments find about that question?

Let us give all the leeway possible to the naive attitude:

There is one point where Chomsky seems to make a statement:

Now there were terrible atrocities, but they were after the bombings.

How do we read this? Is Chomsky saying that irrespective of the US/NATO story and their justifications/evidence, there was in his opinion no atrocities committed by Milosevic and Yugoslavia in Kosovo? This would be the harshest reading of Chomsky but even here Chomsky does not wave his hands in the air. He goes back to those he is questioning and their own findings: the British parliamentary report that found most of the crimes to be attributable to the KLA.

Note that in all of this, to call Chomsky incorrect (let alone a liar) one has to show that his reasoning of that time was wrong i.e., his justification for his point is either factually or logically wrong, or there were other facts he had in possession (or could have easily obtained) that should have led him to the opposite conclusion. But this harsh reading doesn't gel with Chomsky's general style (which I think he has stated many times): doesn't matter much what I think, what can we conclude from what we know?

Let us go down that path, nonetheless. What else has Chomsky written on Kosovo? Here is him quoting the WSJ:

A rare exception was the Wall Street Journal, which devoted its lead story on December 31 to an in-depth analysis of what had taken place. The headline reads: War in Kosovo Was Cruel, Bitter, Savage; Genocide It Wasn't.

[...]

Despite the intensive efforts, the results of "the mass-grave obsession," as the WSJ analysts call it, were disappointingly thin. Instead of "the huge killing fields some investigators were led to expect, .. the pattern is of scattered killings," a form of "ethnic cleansing light." "Most killings and burnings [were] in areas where the separatist Kosovo Liberation Army [KLA-UCK] had been active" or could infiltrate, some human-rights researchers reported, an attempt "to clear out areas of KLA support, using selective terror, robberies and sporadic killings." These conclusions gain some support from the detailed OSCE review released in December, which "suggests a kind of military rationale for the expulsions, which were concentrated in areas controlled by the insurgents and along likely invasion routes."

It is clear from this that Chomsky does not suppress the notion that the war in Kosovo was cruel. Rather, the line below makes it clear (as I have stated above) that he is concerned with the NATO justification:

For understanding of NATO’s resort to war, the most important period…

Finally, it is utterly childish to ask that Chomsky speak to every issue and to every aspect of each issue. There is no real "A-Ha" moment in turning on him with the question: what do you say of the poor Albanians? Nothing! Shame!

The title is intentionally polemical and silly — I do not really believe that psycho-analysis is a valid form of argument. I might as well explain it though: among a segment of liberals (and I mean liberal, not "left") there is a virulent anti-Chomsky attitude that is difficult to understand'. Examples are the blogger Duncan Black who calls himself Atrios, Michael Berube, and Siva Vaidyanathan. The psycho-analytical explanation I was offered elsewhere, for this irrational syndrome, is some form of Oedipus complex, triggered in particular by the attack on pomo in the 90s, in which Chomsky played a fringe part. Even that doesn't explain much though, since none of these individuals inherits Chomsky's brand (analytical, detailed, factual, and logically argued) of leftism (though I am sure they are capable of such).

I have posted comments on Siva's blog in response to his one-liners: here, here. I do not believe any response is needed to Atrios.

Berube, writing in his blog, on Chomsky's review of the Milosevic-Kosovo-NATO affair, describes Chomsky's words as a "pack of lies". Below is part 1 of my analysis of Berube's blog post:

Berube writes that Chomsky's words on the attack on Yugoslavia are "a pack of lies". Nowhere in his piece does he offer any significant data or reasoning to explain why. Instead he gets into guilt by association by moving on to Herman and Johnstone and then quoting various others' opinions on those matters.

Now the word "lies" in his post is a link to someone else's page about the link between Milosevic and Srebrenica. Other words link to similar reports on the exodus of Albanians from their region, and on the atrocities against them.

However, here is what he quotes of Chomsky:

"Remember, the Milosevic Tribunal began with Kosovo, right in the middle of the US-British bombing in late '99 . . . Now if you take a look at that indictment, with a single exception, every charge was for crimes after the bombing.

There's a reason for that. The bombing was undertaken with the anticipation explicit [that] it was going to lead to large-scale atrocities in response. As it did. Now there were terrible atrocities, but they were after the bombings. In fact, if you look at the British parliamentary inquiry, they actually reached the astonishing conclusion that, until January 1999, most of the crimes committed in Kosovo were attributed to the KLA guerrillas.

So later they added charges [against Milosevic] about the Balkans, but it wasn't going to be an easy case to make. The worst crime was Srebrenica but, unfortunately for the International Tribunal, there was an intensive investigation by the Dutch government, which was primarily responsible their troops were there and what they concluded was that not only did Milosevic not order it, but he had no knowledge of it. And he was horrified when he heard about it. So it was going to be pretty hard to make that charge stick."

Berube does not state anywhere in his article as to where the sites he links to show that the below claims by Chomsky are incorrect:

• Indictment charges were for crimes after the bombing.
• British parliamentary inquiry attributed most crimes comitted in Kosovo to the KLA.
• Dutch government found that Milosevic did not order, nor had any knowledge of Srebrenica.

To show any of these incorrect, Berube (and his links) will have to show:

• Majority of indictment charges included crimes before bombing
• British parliamentary inquiry did not reach stated conclusion
• Dutch government did not reach stated conclusion

But let us go even further and do Berube's work for him i.e., weed through his hints (links) and find relevant sections. The link for the text "lies" points to a report by one organization (Institute for War and Peace Reporting) and their finding + *analysis* (not any determination of fact). Here, interestingly is what the report says:

Under the Serbian constitution, the president of Serbia, a post that Milosevic held at the time, is directly responsible for the actions taken by his republic's police force.

That this is the weak form in which the guilt of Milosevic can be established comes further below (note that I do not disagree that this makes him guilty, but most important to the argument, it does not in any way disprove Chomsky's point, and aids it by suggesting that lack of direct knowledge or involvement by Milosevic, its finding, nonetheless is not enough to save him from prosecution). More:

Whether Milosevic knew that his police were sent to participate in the attack on the town is unclear. If he did, then the document will play a key role in proving genocide charges. If he didn't, it will still provide important evidence of crimes against humanity. For the former, intent has to be established; for the latter responsibility is enough.

The first sentence shows that this page in no way at all refutes Chomsky's statement. More:

A six-year, 6 million US dollar investigation by the Dutch government's Institute for War Documentation concluded in a 7,000-page report last April found no evidence linking the Belgrade government to the Srebrenica massacre.

Wait a second. This is the page that Berube links to under the
melodramatic word "lies"? This exactly substantiates Chomsky's words! Some more:

However, the document IWPR obtained clearly shows that members of Serbia's MUP were operating out of the key Bosnian Serb military stronghold of Trnovo, just outside of Sarajevo, and that they were transferred to Srebrenica and placed under the command of Bosnian Serb police colonel Ljubomir Borovcanin.

So IWPR has a document that leads them to think differently than the Dutch. This makes Chomsky a liar?

Let us in fact give Berube all the rope we have. Let us say he reads Chomsky to be explicitly saying that: there were no large-scale atrocities before the US-led attack and that Milosevic was not involved in and was unaware of Srebrenica.

This does not make Chomsky a Milosevic defender of course. As the cliche goes, context is everything, and the context of Chomsky's general critique of this matter is the motivation, legality and justification of the US-led attack on Yugoslavia. In that context, Chomsky is not examining if Milosevic is pure as milk but whether the US reasoning against him holds.

Now, back to Berube interpretation of Chomsky we have constructed just above: how does Chomsky make such a claim? He provides two pieces of information: the findings of a British parliamentary inquiry (atrocities), and the findings of the Dutch government (Srebrenica). Both fairly official sources which if anything would have a bias towards substantiating the US-NATO story. What is the hole that Berube finds in this? Presenting an alternate view to the British inquiry or the Danish findings does not necessarily negate them, far less make Chomsky a liar.

The thing is: Berube could have stopped at saying Chomsky is incorrect (which Chomsky is not, as Berube's own links demonstrate). The word "lies" is intentional grandstanding, and in this case, quite unsubstantiated, especially since there is one other burden to meet to jump from claiming inaccuracy to calling Chomsky a liar: intentionality (on the part of Chomsky).

[Part 2 coming up shortly]

Update: Read Part 2 here.

The big news of the day is Hugo Chavez’s dramatic speech at the U.N, which the New York Times reports here: Chávez Calls Bush ‘the Devil’ in U.N. Speech. Funny thing though: Chavez started, ended and based his speech on Noam Chomsky’s writing, in particular, his book Hegemony or Survival, though you wouldn’t know that if you only read the NYT article. What is it about Chomsky that scares the elite media? That he refuses to play their pseudo-objectivity game?

Also, I see both on NYT and the BBC (among other outlets) Chavez is referred to as “left-wing”. Would these publications then call George Bush “right-wing”: George Bush, the right-wing president of the USA, has a history of failed enterprises.

[ Link ]

From AlterNet:

The Anti-Bush Anarchist

By Gabriel Thompson, In These Times
Posted on May 2, 2006, Printed on May 2, 2006

Standing 5' 9" tall, weighing 240 pounds and sporting a shaved head, Jeff "The Snowman" Monson looks like a cartoon ready to pop, a compressed giant of crazy shoulders, massive biceps and meaty forearms. When he sneers, people shudder. When he sweats, they turn away. When he's angry, your best bet is to run.

He's angry right now, even though his combat career in the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) — an often-bloody tournament that combines martial arts disciplines like Brazilian Jujitsu and Muay Thai Kickboxing — is taking off. [...] So no, it's not his future career prospects that have him pissed. It's the state of the world.

"I'm not some sort of conspiracy theorist," Monson says of his political leanings. "I'm not talking about how the government is trying to hide UFOs. I just want to do away with hierarchy. I'm saying that our economic system, capitalism, is structured so that it only benefits a small percentage of very wealthy people. When I was traveling in Brazil, they had us staying at a really posh hotel. Outside the hotel there was a mom sleeping on the sidewalk with her two kids. That's when reality hits you. What did that woman ever do? Who did she ever hurt?"

Monson wears his politics on his sleeve, as well as the rest of his body. An anarcho-syndicalist star is tattooed on his chest, an anarchy sign on his back and another "A" on his leg. While he loves his sport, he also feels a responsibility to use whatever exposure he receives for a larger purpose. "I don't think I'm more important than anyone else, but since some people are paying attention, then I'm going to use this as a vehicle to express myself," he says. Some fans have labeled him anti-American, but he shrugs off such criticism.

[...]

Monson sees no contradiction between his radical beliefs and his full-time occupation. "What I do is completely different than war, because everyone wants to be there, and it's a competition. There's no victim. We're all entertainers," he explains. "If there is any contradiction, it's that we're part of the capitalist machine, and I'm really just a wage slave. You know, we don't make any money without fighting, and if I win I get more; if I lose I get less. But it's simply a sport. Sure, it's somewhat like a gladiator sport, but it's voluntary."

Monson grew up middle class in Minnesota. His mother still works as a nurse, and his late father worked at a penitentiary. He graduated from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he wrestled, and then received his Masters in Psychology from the University of Minnesota. During his graduate work, Monson had his political awakening — a course entitled Community Psychology.

"Oh man, that class really opened my eyes," he says.
"Just looking at the way the world is run, the way that the people that might be disabled or have mental issues are left behind. How education and general welfare are not a priority, and how the elite run everything for their own benefit. Then I started reading a bunch of stuff — Animal Farm, the International Socialist Review, Chomsky — and I started thinking in a different way." Monson the Ultimate Fighter uses Plato's allegory of the cave to describe the experience.

After graduating from Minnesota, he moved to Washington State, where from 1997 to 2001 he counseled the mentally ill for Lewis County; his primary responsibility was to determine whether an individual needed to be institutionalized. "I started right when they were pushing through welfare reform, and so we had all of these huge cuts in money for mental health and welfare. It's the same basic idea with No Child Left Behind. The government tells you that you have to cut your programs, cut your money for books, cut the money for teachers, but then you are expected to somehow do better. It's a brilliant strategy, really, from their perspective."

Despite being a world-class competitor, Monson finds time to remain politically engaged. In 2003, he marched against the Iraq War in Seattle, and protested the Free Trade Area of the Americas in Miami (where the notoriously aggressive cops wisely left Monson alone). He is also a member of the Industrial Workers of the World, and despite the controversy that surrounds him, continues to engage people within the fighting community about politics.

So what lies ahead for "The Snowman"? At the moment his focus is on his next big fight. "But this is not my whole life," Monson says of fighting. "I've got children and a girlfriend, and I like to be with my family. I try to remain involved in political events. After my next fight, I'll be taking my son to Montreal. They're having an Anarchist Book Fair, and they invited me to come up and do a workshop." The topic: self-defense.

First Pat Tillman, then of all things an ultimate fight type dude. As the immigrant rallies show, perhaps civil/human rights is best advanced by those outside the so-called "left"! ;-)

WaPo (believe it or not!) has a chat with Noam Chomsky online. In the quoted section below, Chomsky, as always, reclaims the use of terms and zeroes in on verbal hoodwinking that should be, but sadly isn't, obvious:

Chat With Chomsky

[...]
Washington, D.C.: Do you believe that Latin America can be successful in developing alternatives to Washington Consensus neoliberal policy and do you believe that Globalization is a real thing as often portrayed by writers like Thomas Friedman?

Noam Chomsky: The term "globalization," like most terms of public discourse, has two meanings: its literal meaning, and a technical sense used for doctrinal purposes. In its literal sense, "globalization" means international integration. Its strongest proponents since its origins have been the workers movements and the left (which is why unions are called "internationals"), and the strongest proponents today are those who meet annually in the World Social Forum and its many regional offshoots. In the technical sense defined by the powerful, they are described as "anti-globalization," which means that they favor globalization directed to the needs and concerns of people, not investors,financial institutions and other sectors of power, with the interests of people incidental. That's "globalization" in the technical doctrinal sense. Latin America is now exploring new and often promising paths in rejecting the doctrinal notions of "globalization," and also in the remarkable growth of popular movements and authentic participation in the political systems. How successful this will be is more a matter for action than for speculation.

 [Via MP]