In order to ensure that this thread continues to meet TL standards and follows the proper guidelines, we will be enforcing the rules in the OP more strictly. Be sure to give them a re-read to refresh your memory! The vast majority of you are contributing in a healthy way, keep it up!
NOTE: When providing a source, explain why you feel it is relevant and what purpose it adds to the discussion if it's not obvious. Also take note that unsubstantiated tweets/posts meant only to rekindle old arguments can result in a mod action.
On November 27 2016 02:53 Reaps wrote: I like how there is a massive uproar on TL whenever someone posts Sam Harris's views but its perfectly fine to use Noam Chomsky.
Like it or not, Chomsky is an extremely respected intellectual and one of the most influential thinker in the world. One may not like his views but I can think of few public figures who deserve as much respect as he does.
On November 27 2016 02:45 Biff The Understudy wrote:
On November 27 2016 01:37 xDaunt wrote:
On November 27 2016 01:16 Danglars wrote:
On November 26 2016 16:19 FlaShFTW wrote:
On November 26 2016 15:39 Sermokala wrote: shit I'm drunk on rum for the first time in months and fiedel dies wow.
He was a communist dictator that died in his bed in the middle of the nation he helped create that is stable and providing a stable and decent life if nothing else. That feat alone should ring his name throughout history forever.
Not sure if serious... but I guess you're drunk so that might explain it.
Good riddance. Maybe Trump will lift US embargo on Cuba O.O
I second the good riddance. He killed so many, and impoverished millions more. His policies and destruction forced people to flee by sea, which meant some died at sea, because they thought it was better to die attempting to reach America than to live under socialism. It is a great day to close that brutal chapter (although, sadly, the story continues).
We will see Miami celebrating his death in the streets to contrast journalists calling him revered and a hero.
Yeah, all of the fawning over Castro from some on the left is enough to make one vomit. He was not a good dude, and Cuba is a mess as a direct result of his rule.
Cuba was fucked in the ass by the US for a whole century before Castro arrived :
And when Castro was in power they basically had a systematic politics of terrorism and bullying. I have met quite a few cuban people in the last years. They didn't like Castro, but they really, really hated America.
Let's be clear: Castro was a ruthless dictator, and I really won't cry his death. But if there is something to vomit about it's the last century and a half of american FP in South America. Castro has just been a reaction and would probably never had occurred if the US hadn't installed in the first place a corrupt dictatorship for their colonial grand purposes.
I have to agree strongly with this. Any examination of politics in Latin America has to involve a healthy dose of history regarding the US's constant presence in the region, and Cuba/Castro's labeling as a pariah due to its socialist leanings causes their flaws to be magnified while their successes are ignored.
As others posted, we can deride the Castro regime's usage of strong-arm dictator tactics while still celebrating the human development and health advances that their country has achieved in pursuit of socialist ideals.
I also want to emphasize that while the US was embarked in its hundreds of assassination attempts of Castro (for democracy and the freedom of the Cuban people, of course), it supported and installed far right dictatorship that were several order of magnitude worse than Castro on every level on the whole continent. Pinochet in Chile, Videla in Argentina, not talking about Nicaragua, Guatemala etc... The Operation Condor if one of the darkest page of American history (personal to me because my mother fled Videla's regime and its CIA backed politics of torture and assassination of "subversives" - meaning any one with even mild left wing views).
Again, Castro is gone, RIP and let's hope the cubans get better than that next time. But all that rejoicing from the american right is a bit obscene.
On November 27 2016 02:53 Reaps wrote: I like how there is a massive uproar on TL whenever someone posts Sam Harris's views but its perfectly fine to use Noam Chomsky.
Oh, it's not, I just don't feel like saying anything. There are a lot of accomplished and genuinely valued intellectuals who go off the rails and abuse their pedigree to avoid getting called out for saying stupid things, but I'm mostly content not to mention it since there's nothing to be gained from character assassination in absentia.
(This is without evaluating what he said here but just my opinion of Chomsky's political activism in general. I value his linguistic contributions greatly.)
On November 27 2016 02:53 Reaps wrote: I like how there is a massive uproar on TL whenever someone posts Sam Harris's views but its perfectly fine to use Noam Chomsky.
Oh, it's not, I just don't feel like saying anything. There are a lot of accomplished and genuinely valued intellectuals who go off the rails and abuse their pedigree to avoid getting called out for saying stupid things, but I'm mostly content not to mention it since there's nothing to be gained from character assassination in absentia.
(This is without evaluating what he said here but just my opinion of Chomsky's political activism in general. I value his linguistic contributions greatly.)
My intention was not to demean Chomsky in any way, i'll always have respect for the mans intellect, i just find some of his views can be seen as extreme as Harris's but because he is far more to the left its somewhat acceptable here on TL and wanted to point out the hypocrisy. It obviously comes down to perspective at the end of the day but when i see someone like Plansix call Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins low intellect's and then go ahead and idolize Chomsky its just like ... what.
On November 27 2016 02:53 Reaps wrote: I like how there is a massive uproar on TL whenever someone posts Sam Harris's views but its perfectly fine to use Noam Chomsky.
Oh, it's not, I just don't feel like saying anything. There are a lot of accomplished and genuinely valued intellectuals who go off the rails and abuse their pedigree to avoid getting called out for saying stupid things, but I'm mostly content not to mention it since there's nothing to be gained from character assassination in absentia.
(This is without evaluating what he said here but just my opinion of Chomsky's political activism in general. I value his linguistic contributions greatly.)
My intention was not to demean Chomsky in any way, i'll always have respect for the mans intellect, i just find some of his views can be seen as extreme as Harris's but because he is far more to the left its somewhat acceptable here on TL and wanted to point out the hypocrisy. It obviously comes down to perspective at the end of the day but when i see someone like Plansix call Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins low intellect's and then go ahead and idolize Chomsky its just like ... what.
I'm personally fine with anyone if they get their facts straight and don't argue in bad faith. I have no problem with people quoting Dawkins, even if I don't like him very much, and I don't see why anybody would protest at a post featuring Chomsky (and I'm not Plansix).
You guys should maybe listen to the video, because the guy has immense knowledge and is just stating historical facts. Then we can discuss the content instead of entering a great debate about the intellectual merits of one of the true intellectual giants of our time.
On November 27 2016 02:53 Reaps wrote: I like how there is a massive uproar on TL whenever someone posts Sam Harris's views but its perfectly fine to use Noam Chomsky.
Oh, it's not, I just don't feel like saying anything. There are a lot of accomplished and genuinely valued intellectuals who go off the rails and abuse their pedigree to avoid getting called out for saying stupid things, but I'm mostly content not to mention it since there's nothing to be gained from character assassination in absentia.
(This is without evaluating what he said here but just my opinion of Chomsky's political activism in general. I value his linguistic contributions greatly.)
My intention was not to demean Chomsky in any way, i'll always have respect for the mans intellect, i just find some of his views can be seen as extreme as Harris's but because he is far more to the left its somewhat acceptable here on TL and wanted to point out the hypocrisy. It obviously comes down to perspective at the end of the day but when i see someone like Plansix call Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins low intellect's and then go ahead and idolize Chomsky its just like ... what.
Please restrict your arguments to the actual people posting in this thread on what they actually said. A quick search of Plansix's posting in General Forums for 'Chomsky' brought up exactly one reference... when he was quoting someone else. So unless he was posting a lot of Chomsky videos, which the search would not pull up, I would hardly consider never mentioning Chomsky in any of his +300 pages of posting (in this thread alone) 'idolizing' someone. Not only that, but Plansix wasn't even the one posting this video, nor could he due to a self-ban. I think some of you guys have been arguing so long in this thread that you have started developing caricatures of each others positions. Or at least have adopted the caricatures that others have developed, who have been arguing for a long time.
On November 27 2016 02:53 Reaps wrote: I like how there is a massive uproar on TL whenever someone posts Sam Harris's views but its perfectly fine to use Noam Chomsky.
Oh, it's not, I just don't feel like saying anything. There are a lot of accomplished and genuinely valued intellectuals who go off the rails and abuse their pedigree to avoid getting called out for saying stupid things, but I'm mostly content not to mention it since there's nothing to be gained from character assassination in absentia.
(This is without evaluating what he said here but just my opinion of Chomsky's political activism in general. I value his linguistic contributions greatly.)
My intention was not to demean Chomsky in any way, i'll always have respect for the mans intellect, i just find some of his views can be seen as extreme as Harris's but because he is far more to the left its somewhat acceptable here on TL and wanted to point out the hypocrisy. It obviously comes down to perspective at the end of the day but when i see someone like Plansix call Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins low intellect's and then go ahead and idolize Chomsky its just like ... what.
I'm personally fine with anyone if they get their facts straight and don't argue in bad faith. I have no problem with people quoting Dawkins, even if I don't like him very much, and I don't see why anybody would protest at a post featuring Chomsky (and I'm not Plansix).
You guys should maybe listen to the video, because the guy has immense knowledge and is just stating historical facts. Then we can discuss the content instead of entering a great debate about the intellectual merits of one of the true intellectual giants of our time.
In my experience I would describe Chomsky as verbose and well-read, but not necessarily well-argued when it comes to evaluating his actual points. He can twist history in a way that is not altogether untrue but clearly meant to push an agenda (a trait common among history/polisci/economics intellectuals and/or pseudo-intellectuals who like to argue in an academic style). I don't dislike everything he says, he has said some good stuff in the past. But as it is, arguments made by means of "this academic said it" have a deep and troublesome pattern of bias and misinformation. As such, I tend to look down on the tendency to post an academic's word as if it were one's own argument. The argument itself should be made on one's own. Hiding behind academics is in its own way a dishonest game in the context of a decidedly non-academic environment like this thread.
Also, Biff. That is a 30 minute video. Could you at least give some cliff notes, highlights or some particular timestamps that you want to draw people's attention to specifically? To my mind, simply posting a 30 minute video, doesn't further discussion very well.
Don't really have time right now to watch the whole 30 minute video but the only thing you can applaud Castro for is overthrowing Batista but that is pretty much where it ends. After that he turned into another lame dictator.
Chomsky on political issues is pretty bad. Chomsky would defend the robot devil if he'd mess with US 'imperialism' which for Chomsky is basically anything the US does.
The thing with intellectual giants is that they are giants...in the field they became experts in. Even people of high intelligence can get stuff wrong easily when they wander outside of their own sphere, they are just better at crafting arguments then most people but they usually miss key points because they simply do not have the time to fully understand another field at the same level. That is not to say they are always wrong, their intelligence allows for them to understand at a higher level then the normal person. However, when you see people like Chomsky talk about these things people take it as he is arguing from a position of authority when the vast bulk of any intellectual authority he has lies elsewhere.
On November 26 2016 15:39 Sermokala wrote: shit I'm drunk on rum for the first time in months and fiedel dies wow.
He was a communist dictator that died in his bed in the middle of the nation he helped create that is stable and providing a stable and decent life if nothing else. That feat alone should ring his name throughout history forever.
Not sure if serious... but I guess you're drunk so that might explain it.
Good riddance. Maybe Trump will lift US embargo on Cuba O.O
I second the good riddance. He killed so many, and impoverished millions more. His policies and destruction forced people to flee by sea, which meant some died at sea, because they thought it was better to die attempting to reach America than to live under socialism. It is a great day to close that brutal chapter (although, sadly, the story continues).
We will see Miami celebrating his death in the streets to contrast journalists calling him revered and a hero.
Yeah, all of the fawning over Castro from some on the left is enough to make one vomit. He was not a good dude, and Cuba is a mess as a direct result of his rule.
Its so weird how everything is coloured left and right in your eyes.
Also, @Danglars, "fleeing socialism" lol. They're fleeing from a dictator that threatens their lives. Not "socialism". For fucks sake.
Let's just say opinions vary. I'm not going to kwizarch a defense of right-wing brutal dictators in order to attack the left wing revolutionaries and their governments, paying due attention to the interactions of foreign governments throughout the process. But, hey, you want to separate the socialism from the man. Permit me to say, no single man and his cruelty can do such damage to what was a very wealthy Carribean isle (richest?). And if we're going to "for fucks sake," recognize that cruel repression is a feature of hardcore socialist utopias, to keep their citizens on board. For fucks sake.
On November 26 2016 15:39 Sermokala wrote: shit I'm drunk on rum for the first time in months and fiedel dies wow.
He was a communist dictator that died in his bed in the middle of the nation he helped create that is stable and providing a stable and decent life if nothing else. That feat alone should ring his name throughout history forever.
Not sure if serious... but I guess you're drunk so that might explain it.
Good riddance. Maybe Trump will lift US embargo on Cuba O.O
I second the good riddance. He killed so many, and impoverished millions more. His policies and destruction forced people to flee by sea, which meant some died at sea, because they thought it was better to die attempting to reach America than to live under socialism. It is a great day to close that brutal chapter (although, sadly, the story continues).
We will see Miami celebrating his death in the streets to contrast journalists calling him revered and a hero.
Yeah, all of the fawning over Castro from some on the left is enough to make one vomit. He was not a good dude, and Cuba is a mess as a direct result of his rule.
Its so weird how everything is coloured left and right in your eyes.
Also, @Danglars, "fleeing socialism" lol. They're fleeing from a dictator that threatens their lives. Not "socialism". For fucks sake.
Well, the reality is on a national level, Marxism has really only produced leftist authoritarian regimes, often as brutal as fascism. You could also say those fleeing communist Russia were fleeing a dictator, not communism, but that's not really true because it was Marxists that put the dictators in power. Not only that but those dictators are usually operating along Marxist ideals: collectivizing property etc; they just use authoritarian means.
It's also important to separate the actual refugees and those who claim to be oppressed in order to move to a country that is easier to be financially well off in. Plenty of so-called refugees are anything but.
The biggest error Chomsky makes is that he actually paints the embargo as some kind of capitalist power play. Actually it was probably the thing that kept the Castro administration going in the first place. The best way to bring these regimes down is just to hug them to death. If you start to play nice they basically can't keep their "we are encircled" thing going.
On November 27 2016 02:45 Biff The Understudy wrote:
On November 27 2016 01:37 xDaunt wrote:
On November 27 2016 01:16 Danglars wrote:
On November 26 2016 16:19 FlaShFTW wrote:
On November 26 2016 15:39 Sermokala wrote: shit I'm drunk on rum for the first time in months and fiedel dies wow.
He was a communist dictator that died in his bed in the middle of the nation he helped create that is stable and providing a stable and decent life if nothing else. That feat alone should ring his name throughout history forever.
Not sure if serious... but I guess you're drunk so that might explain it.
Good riddance. Maybe Trump will lift US embargo on Cuba O.O
I second the good riddance. He killed so many, and impoverished millions more. His policies and destruction forced people to flee by sea, which meant some died at sea, because they thought it was better to die attempting to reach America than to live under socialism. It is a great day to close that brutal chapter (although, sadly, the story continues).
We will see Miami celebrating his death in the streets to contrast journalists calling him revered and a hero.
Yeah, all of the fawning over Castro from some on the left is enough to make one vomit. He was not a good dude, and Cuba is a mess as a direct result of his rule.
Cuba was fucked in the ass by the US for a whole century before Castro arrived :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bv7VQDAi4Yw And when Castro was in power they basically had a systematic politics of terrorism and bullying. I have met quite a few cuban people in the last years. They didn't like Castro, but they really, really hated America.
Let's be clear: Castro was a ruthless dictator, and I really won't cry his death. But if there is something to vomit about it's the last century and a half of american FP in South America. Castro has just been a reaction and would probably never had occurred if the US hadn't installed in the first place a corrupt dictatorship for their colonial grand purposes.
I have to agree strongly with this. Any examination of politics in Latin America has to involve a healthy dose of history regarding the US's constant presence in the region, and Cuba/Castro's labeling as a pariah due to its socialist leanings causes their flaws to be magnified while their successes are ignored.
As others posted, we can deride the Castro regime's usage of strong-arm dictator tactics while still celebrating the human development and health advances that their country has achieved in pursuit of socialist ideals.
I also want to emphasize that while the US was embarked in its hundreds of assassination attempts of Castro (for democracy and the freedom of the Cuban people, of course), it supported and installed far right dictatorship that were several order of magnitude worse than Castro on every level on the whole continent. Pinochet in Chile, Videla in Argentina, not talking about Nicaragua, Guatemala etc... The Operation Condor if one of the darkest page of American history (personal to me because my mother fled Videla's regime and its CIA backed politics of torture and assassination of "subversives" - meaning any one with even mild left wing views).
Again, Castro is gone, RIP and let's hope the cubans get better than that next time. But all that rejoicing from the american right is a bit obscene.
Hint Hint. Capitalism and Communism both suck. Democracy needs to be built from the bottom up as humans are corruptible animals and even then its near impossible to keep any system completely honest. It's a shame really how rotten the world this. Once you free yourself of your own governances propaganda you find yourself lost, betrayed. Someday there will be an age of enlightenment, its just a shame in this time of free information instead of coming together we are only exposed to the filth which infects every facet of society.
On November 27 2016 05:16 Nyxisto wrote: The biggest error Chomsky makes is that he actually paints the embargo as some kind of capitalist power play. Actually it was probably the thing that kept the Castro administration going in the first place. The best way to bring these regimes down is just to hug them to death. If you start to play nice they basically can't keep their "we are encircled" thing going.
Yes, lets completely ignore all economic factors and downgrade our analysis to scientifc concepts like "hug them to death". That will work, so we can clearly see how the embargo wasnt a power play, the US just doesnt like cigars.
Btw, the reason why many people dont commit to the monotone Castro demonizing has something to do with the medical, educational and anti poverty standards which where established under the Castro regime as well as him being a symbol for the antiimperialist liberation struggle around the world.
@above
humans are corruptible animals
this weird recourse to an alleged "human nature" has not only no scientific basis, but in general is illadvised when one trys to analyze and understand the shortcoming of different political and economic systems
On November 27 2016 05:16 Nyxisto wrote: The biggest error Chomsky makes is that he actually paints the embargo as some kind of capitalist power play. Actually it was probably the thing that kept the Castro administration going in the first place. The best way to bring these regimes down is just to hug them to death. If you start to play nice they basically can't keep their "we are encircled" thing going.
Yes, lets completely ignore all economic factors and downgrade our analysis to scientifc concepts like "hug them to death". That will work, so we can clearly see how the embargo wasnt a power play, the US just doesnt like cigars.
Btw, the reason why many people dont commit to the monotone Castro demonizing has something to do with the medical, educational and anti poverty standards which where established under the Castro regime as well as him being a symbol for the antiimperialist liberation struggle around the world.
The embargo was a political move because people at the time where very much still operating on domino-theory fears of everybody succumbing to communism. Strong-arming them was simply politically popular. If the US had taken a pragmatic approach and just tried to open them up with trade Cuba would have probably gone down the route of the Soviet Union or China.
Compared to countries that were in a similar state in the 60's and 70's and embraced market economies, for example in Asia, Cuba is objectively still in an absolutely ridiculous and downtrodden situation.
@whoever said Cubans hate the US. My Cuban friend got his US citizenship 2 days before the election and voted for Hillary, and he likes the US. I don't think anecdotal evidence is that great.
On November 27 2016 05:16 Nyxisto wrote: The biggest error Chomsky makes is that he actually paints the embargo as some kind of capitalist power play. Actually it was probably the thing that kept the Castro administration going in the first place. The best way to bring these regimes down is just to hug them to death. If you start to play nice they basically can't keep their "we are encircled" thing going.
Yes, lets completely ignore all economic factors and downgrade our analysis to scientifc concepts like "hug them to death". That will work, so we can clearly see how the embargo wasnt a power play, the US just doesnt like cigars.
Btw, the reason why many people dont commit to the monotone Castro demonizing has something to do with the medical, educational and anti poverty standards which where established under the Castro regime as well as him being a symbol for the antiimperialist liberation struggle around the world.
The embargo was a political move because people at the time where very much still operating on domino-theory fears of everybody succumbing to communism. Strong-arming them was simply politically popular. If the US had taken a pragmatic approach and just tried to open them up with trade Cuba would have probably gone down the route of the Soviet Union or China.
Compared to countries that were in a similar state int the 60's and 70's and embraced market economies, for example in Asia, Cuba is objectively still in an absolutely ridiculous and downtrodden situation.
And how do you come to this conclusion? Surely not by looking at history, as the the US obviously was not aiming to hug the Soviet Union to death. Same with China which is, despite being relatively open to free trade, still a dictatorship, ruled by the same exact party. The "lets just trade" with them approach also doesnt seem all that effective when one looks at Saudi Arabia, Ruanda, Egypt etc. To claim that the US sanctions somehow helped the Castro regime is an absurd notion.
EPT
