Cover: The former U.S. Embassy in Tehran, part of which has been turned into an anti-American museum. (Vahid Salemi / Associated Press), via https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2023-08-26/a-cia-backed-1953-coup-in-iran-haunts-the-country-with-people-still-trying-to-make-sense-of-it Omid Memarian || If talks in Vienna fail to revive the Iran nuclear deal, which former President Donald Trump unilaterally pulled the United States out of, in violation of the agreement,
you must have missed the advice he gave to epstein abt ignoring the “hysteria” women were causing
No, I haven’t. If you’re familiar with Noam Chomsky’s history of his free-speech activism, anti-violence stance, and criticism of Israel, you’ll also be familiar with how those positions have been characterized as support for holocaust denial, nazis, and antisemitism.
It’s pretty clear where Noam is coming from in his advice to Epstein, and is an understandable misstep for an ageing man who was not aware of the extent of Epstein’s depravity.
“Epstein had claimed to Noam that he [Epstein] was being unfairly persecuted, and Noam spoke from his own experience in political controversies with the media. Epstein created a manipulative narrative about his case, which Noam, in good faith, believed in.”
I appreciate the BBC for reproducing Valéria Chomsky’s assessment, which matches my own. I am disappointed by Noam’s relationship with Epstein, but not enough to throw away decades of lucid insight into media, politics, and society.
Yes, it is very understandable that an old white guy would side with a multi-millionaire old white guy against the lower class women that accuse him of rape while describing those women as hysterical vultures. When you join the old boys’ club, you agree to look out for each other and you leave your ideological differences at the door. And then maybe one of the old boys likes the cut of your jib and invites you to be a guest on their TV show, and hey, now you’re the most famous anarchist of your generation. You scratch their backs, they scratch yours.
It is genuinely very understandable. But to call someone doing that ‘a victim’ because people found out? That’s not a good lock.
No, I haven’t. If you’re familiar with Noam Chomsky’s history of his free-speech activism, anti-violence stance, and criticism of Israel, you’ll also be familiar with how those positions have been characterized as support for holocaust denial, nazis, and antisemitism.
It’s pretty clear where Noam is coming from in his advice to Epstein, and is an understandable misstep for an ageing man who was not aware of the extent of Epstein’s depravity.
I appreciate the BBC for reproducing Valéria Chomsky’s assessment, which matches my own. I am disappointed by Noam’s relationship with Epstein, but not enough to throw away decades of lucid insight into media, politics, and society.
chomsky was either too stupid to understand what was happening all around him and epstein, or he knew and chose to look the other way.
In either case his status as a public leftist intellectual is gone
Yes, it is very understandable that an old white guy would side with a multi-millionaire old white guy against the lower class women that accuse him of rape while describing those women as hysterical vultures. When you join the old boys’ club, you agree to look out for each other and you leave your ideological differences at the door. And then maybe one of the old boys likes the cut of your jib and invites you to be a guest on their TV show, and hey, now you’re the most famous anarchist of your generation. You scratch their backs, they scratch yours.
It is genuinely very understandable. But to call someone doing that ‘a victim’ because people found out? That’s not a good lock.