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Tuesday, June 06, 2006

The Chomsky and Fisk antagonization effect

Looking closely at what Greg Palast has written recently, it appears that he may have lifted his core ideas from Noam Chomsky, and Chomsky from the area of "Chomsky-linguism" that he routinely calls "obvious" and "clearly". If you recall Palast's argument, however flippant it may seem on the surface, it remains suspiciously close to Chomsky's "control over oil" argument.
He made clear that resources = oil.
And that it was all about control of oil, not about access to oil. With enough money, anyone can get access to oil, but the control requires typical American domination.
And likewise, the knee-jerk response to Palast's arguments has looked suspiciously close to the response from Chomsky's detractors. From audio on the most recent Democracy Now!, Chomsky states during a U.N. press conference that we have historically shown that same control over Latin America, and warns, as Palast has, about the role of an autonomous Venezuela. The latest Harper's (not online) has a two-page annotated chart by Palast which concisely frames the argument.

The same DN! broadcast has a short bit on CA congressional candidate Marcy Winograd, who I deeply dig by the way. I have listened to her speak several times on radio interviews, and come away captivated by her buzz-saw delivery. If she doesn't beat Jane Harman in the Democratic primary (the latest says likely not), she can't give up and has to try elsewhere.

Oh, and by the way, talking about other things I would like to see: how about more people use this line for a signature closer:
As usual, Robert Fisk was right ...

I imagine you can replace Fisk with Chomsky and expect the same antagonization effect.

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