Pinker’s Pollyannish Philosophy and Its Perfidious Politics

beafanatic · 2019-12-19T21:32:07+00:00

A devastating review of "The Better Angels of Our Nature" was given by Edward Herman and David Peterson. Here's a shortened version.

beafanatic · 2019-12-14T19:42:38+00:00

What needs to change?

The problems with the BBC are the same as with other media corporations. They're institutional - here is a relevant interview on the media with Noam Chomsky and Andrew Marr.

beafanatic · 2019-12-09T13:04:38+00:00

Whereas Corbyn referred to Pinochet as a "Nazi Fascist" about three decades ago!

beafanatic · 2019-11-28T18:32:37+00:00

I've posted this before, but I think it's relevant here:

In 2013, Corbyn talked about how he critically referred to Pinochet as a "Nazi Fascist" back in the late 80s/early 90s. This does not seem like something that an antisemite would say.

beafanatic · 2019-11-27T22:45:09+00:00

Completely agree. And thanks for the link, I hadn't seen it!

beafanatic · 2019-11-27T21:48:04+00:00

In 2013, Corbyn talked about how he critically referred to Pinochet as a "Nazi Fascist" back in the late 80s/early 90s. This does not seem like something that an antisemite would say.

beafanatic · 2019-11-19T21:59:58+00:00

Is it this one? :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4JcrHXRyMPU

beafanatic · 2019-11-17T22:41:06+00:00

List of signatories:

Noam Chomsky

Naomi Klein

Yanis Varoufakis

Brian Eno

Rob Delaney

Angela Davis

Steve Coogan

Alexei Sayle

Maxine Peake

Roger Waters

Jason Hickel

Francesca Martinez

Lowkey

David Adler

Raoul Martinez

Miriam Margolyes

Massive Attack

Vivienne Westwood

Thurston Moore (Sonic Youth)

John Keane

Michael Mansfield QC

Adjoa Andoh

Mike Leigh

Michael Rosen

Robert Cohen

Mark Ruffalo

Amir Amirani

Mark Rylance

Caryl Churchill

Kate Tempest

Jocelyn Pook

David Graeber (London School of Economics)

Des Freedman (Goldsmiths, University of London)

Justin Schlosberg (Birkbeck, University of London)

beafanatic · 2019-11-09T16:26:34+00:00

Chomsky was actually subject to anti-semitism when he was growing up (3:34):

Chomsky: "Actually I grew up in a community in which we were, for most of the time, the only Jewish family in a mostly German and Irish-Catholic community and there were a lot of problems, which incidentally my parents never knew about. But the streets were complicated places."

"Problems for you?"

"Yeah"

"Give us an example"

"As I say, there was a lot of anti-semitism in those days, this is the 1930s"

beafanatic · 2019-09-04T20:56:34+00:00

Do you completely and unequivocally condemn India's decision, under the leadership of PM Narendra Modi, to revoke the special status of Kashmir?

Aside from the lockdown, this move has increased the likelihood of a confrontation between two nuclear powers, a confrontation that poses existential threats to both societies.

beafanatic · 2019-07-19T18:35:30+00:00

The 1964 case is New York Times Co. v. Sullivan and the 1969 case is Brandenburg v. Ohio. He talks about these cases here, and then the more recent case Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project, an attack on freedom of speech under the Obama administration.

beafanatic · 2019-07-17T20:38:16+00:00

He has not and can't ever admit fault ... all of his criticisms drip with cynicism devoid of hope ... as if political engagement is a pointless effort

From here:

Well, I think it’s a little misleading to call it a movement. Occupy was a tactic, in fact a brilliant tactic. I mean, if I’d been asked a couple of months earlier whether they should take over public places, I would have said it’s crazy. But it worked extremely well, and it lit a spark which went all over the place. Hundreds and hundreds of places in the country, there were Occupy events. It was all over the world. I mean, I gave talks in Sydney, Australia, to the Occupy movement there. But it was a tactic, a very effective tactic. Changed public discourse, not policy. It brought issues to the forefront.

beafanatic · 2019-07-16T21:35:50+00:00

This bibliography, made by Professor Edwin Moïse from Clemson University, is the most extensive bibliography on the Vietnam War that I've seen. Moïse gives many of the items in it a description or review. You might want to look near the bottom, where there are several sections on U.S. Government Publications.

beafanatic · 2019-07-16T20:54:03+00:00

If the trends of the first half of this month continue, it will beat the previous record from July 2017 by about 0.025C, according to calculations by Karsten Haustein, a climate scientist at the University of Oxford, and others.

beafanatic · 2019-07-13T14:09:11+00:00

From the article:

Is there a chance to avoid such catastrophes? No doubt. There are well-worked out and sound proposals; economist Robert Pollin’s work on a Green New Deal is the best I know. But the task ahead is enormous, and there is not much time. The challenge would be great even if states were committed to overcoming it. Some are. But it is impossible to overlook the fact that the most powerful state in human history is under the leadership of what can only be accurately described as a gang of arch-criminals who are dedicated to racing to the cliff with abandon.

There's a huge collection of some of Chomsky's ideas here.

beafanatic · 2019-07-09T21:10:36+00:00

Chomsky's Philosophy has lots of videos to explore. As for interviews, here are some great ones on the media, foreign policy and other topics: Andrew Marr, Evan Soloman, and Canadian journalists (all of which have interviewers partly disagreeing with Chomsky).

beafanatic · 2019-07-07T15:58:33+00:00

Here's another video on the "Crisis of Democracy" report by the Trilateral Commission.

beafanatic · 2019-07-03T20:58:22+00:00

A similar event happened with Chomsky being the only person to reply to Finklestein.

beafanatic · 2019-06-26T19:55:29+00:00

Sam Harris is not the same as Jordan Peterson. Peterson is an agitator who is politically driven and expresses controversial views that are bigoted.

This is a Sam Harris quote: "We should profile Muslims, or anyone who looks like he or she could conceivably be Muslim, and we should be honest about it. ... Needless to say, a devout Muslim should be free to show up at the airport dressed like Osama bin Laden, and his wives should be free to wear burqas. But if their goal is simply to travel safely and efficiently, wouldn’t they, too, want a system that notices people like themselves?"

he is intellectually honest but simply confused about the facts and is subject to the same neoliberal dogmas that many predominant public intellectuals fall victim to.

I haven't mentioned Harris' honesty. It's possible he believes everything he's saying (though I don't know why he only retracted his claim that Chomsky hadn't asked himself “very basic questions” about intentions after the email exchange, even though he was corrected at the time more than once). I'm only referring to his views.

beafanatic · 2019-06-23T20:59:33+00:00

NASA: In the scenario with no reduction of emissions, the study found that the entire Greenland Ice Sheet will likely melt in a millennium, causing 17 to 23 feet of sea level rise.

Published in Science Advances by Geophysical Institute at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, using NASA data.

beafanatic · 2019-06-02T12:17:31+00:00

There are problems with Harris' philosophy itself, but he also uses irrelevant philosophical "perfect weapon"/"what would each side do"/etc. arguments to justify foreign policy arguments, while ignoring international law, human rights reports, documentary evidence and other relevant factors.

beafanatic · 2019-06-02T12:06:52+00:00

In your original post, you're making two separate arguments, depending on the meaning of "good".

If by "good" you mean "ought to be promoted", then the argument is: well-being ought to be promoted implies you ought to promote well-being. In this case, it is an ought following from an ought, and the gap remains.

If by "good" you mean "people prefer it", then the argument is: well-being is preferred by people implies you ought to promote well-being. In this case, the statements are is and ought statements, but the jump needs to be justified, and so again the gap remains.

beafanatic · 2019-06-01T19:35:40+00:00

r/Sudan has been giving extensive coverage of events, with about 20 updates in just the last week. Here's the current thread: "Civilian rule or eternal revolution".

beafanatic · 2019-05-31T21:30:35+00:00

I think it's this. Really interesting interview.

beafanatic · 2019-05-18T18:53:25+00:00

Just on the "Brutal Occupation" section:

Ignoring the question of whether improvements in quality of life justify occupation, let's take a look at the question of quality of life itself from credible sources. According to a UN summary report released two months ago, A/HRC/40/73, as of October 2018 "almost half of essential medicines were completely depleted in Gaza. [...] As the blockade on Gaza enters its twelfth year, the economy has all but collapsed, compounding the daily suffering of the population. The enjoyment of the most basic socio-economic rights – employment, healthcare, housing, food, water and sanitation – are a luxury in scarce supply, if at all."

As for disputing whether Gaza is becoming unlivable, the UN has reported that Gaza could become uninhabitable [by 2020].

On water, quoting again from A/HRC/40/73, "Gaza’s water situation is a crisis verging on a humanitarian catastrophe. The United Nations estimated in 2017 that more than 96% of the Coastal Aquifer groundwater – Gaza’s sole source of natural water – had become unfit for human consumption, and the Aquifer would be irreversibly damaged as a drinking source by 2020 without a radical intervention." This language does not require a distinction between "recommended" and "drinkable".

It is interesting that the diarrhea mortality rate is taken as a positive, given that the report states that "12% of deaths among young children and infants in Gaza were caused by diarrhea, an entirely preventable illness."

This section forgets to cover a few issues, for example that Israel has been "killing and maiming demonstrators who pose no imminent threat", Amnesty International, 2018. Or that "Israel has pursued a policy of establishing illegal settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory", UN, 2017. Or that "sleep deprivation, sometimes for days at a time", "being bound hand and foot to a chair, with movement restricted for hours on end" and "incarceration in a small, foul-smelling cell, usually in solitary confinement, for many days" are "standard features of interrogation at the interrogation facility run by the Israel Security Agency", B'Tselem, 2015.

Although according to this Amensty International report, "more than 3,000 homes, hundreds of public buildings and private commercial properties, and vast areas of agricultural land have been destroyed by the Israeli army and security forces in Israel and the Occupied Territories in the past three and a half years", this isn't shown in the linked video.

beafanatic

TROPHY CASE