The U.S. has been pressing Congo to preserve its carbon-absorbing forests, but government officials want to exploit oil and gas reserves they say lie below them.
In the interview, he is quoting someone else’s conclusions in one line, and unless you can give actual context to these words it’s not even clear what he’s getting at. He says himself that it’s one aside line in one interview that doesn’t represent his conclusions but someone else’s, and that’s exactly what it appears to be. The thrust of his point appears to be that the western media was using one atrocity to distract from their own, which seems like a reasonable position. If you want to make the case, make it. That is indeed one line in an interview that doesn’t make his position clear.
David Campbell himself seems content to give fragments of quotes heavily bracketed in his own deeply interpetive framing that seems to require a deep familiarity with the subject matter in order to even understand, where he talks about A’s reply to B and C’s postion and oh my god it shouldn’t be this hard to make the case if there is one. He links another article of his criticism of Chomsky in which he does exactly the same thing, at which point I lost patience with reading bullshit.
You say his “debunking” is more eloquent than your own, even though it’s impenetrable waffle, which is not surprising given your own inability to make a point and not get lost in your own weeds.
Like, you started attacking Chomsky, why? The only reason I mentioned his credentials was to head off the usual reaction to manufacturing consent which is to call it a conspiracy theory. But, you already accept the concept, but you’re going to get sidelined with genocide denial accusations that you can’t even back up.
And the entire first half of your comment was you basically listing a bunch of different attitudes people had to the Iraq war, with no notion of the power politics involved. Like, yes, there are a lot of ideas flying about, most of them created by the media to manufacture consent, and hence mostly bullshit. I thought you understood this concept? What matters are the reasons of those in power, and they’re not even shy about it. The only way you miss it is if you ignore it in favour of the consent machine’s noise.
And yeah, the MIC can just make Abrams and let them rot in warehouses for decades. But they make more money when there’s a war, so they want it. Also wars are their way of making examples of countries that don’t submit to murderous structural adjustment policies.
I’ll admit that there’s a bit more going on than just oil = war, but it is a primary driver, not just to have the resources, but to control their flow to maintain global hegemony. Just like the lithium wars are more complex than “gib lithium”. Again, not a difficult concept.
This is weak shit. I don’t think I’ll keep replying. You seem intent on maintaining a gish gallop and your position isn’t even clear. I’ve tried to understand your position but it’s like wading through a pile of shit to find a raisin which may not even be there. I just don’t have any more energy for it.
I offhandly mentioned that about Chomsky becuse of the way you have goiven someone who claimed that the poor Bosnians could leave the death camp any time they wanted such a glowing recommendation. This is not exactly a new or unknown controversy.
You say he is repeating the doubts Phillip Kinghtly’ brought, but they’ve been be the throughly debunked, and Chomsky knows its been throughly debunked because later in the same interview he uses the results of the court case where which debunked it as evidence of the courts oppressing free speech. It’s especially bad for someone who is soposed to be an expert on the media repeating a quack because the quack fire his narrative.
David Campbell is just being through using academic language, and I chose his case because I thought you might appreciate and be able to keep up with a properly detailed academic response. Sorry it was too long for you. If you want an easier to understand one, Kraut has a video option piece where he keeps most of his bad habits to a minimum sans being deliberately inflammatory.
In any case, the actual argument I was making before you brought everything to a halt to talk about Chomsky was that you seem to think that ‘power’ is some monolithic they which is endlessly intelligent and completely shared between business and politics. I understand it’s an easy and comforting narrative, but it is an manufactured narrative.
When think tanks whose members make up significant parts of an administration like the Project for a New American Century tell you what and why their doing something you might as well examine it. When xenophobic people in power tell you they want to get back at the Arabs you can probably believe them not just write that off as a manufactured media narrative.
There are manufacturer’s media narratives, like the one that the US invaded a dictator that was already giving it half it’s oil so it could get less oil, but I wasn’t listing those. I was listing some of the thousands of diffrent things that led to it. I thought you could understand that?
There is no unified They in governments, although thinking that is the defining characteristic of conspiracy theorists. Raw resources are a factor in geopolitics, and in Iraq, but are hardly something that’s preticularaly media can use to manufacture consent for a war. Neoconservatives and Neoliberals don’t need some sinister conspiracy to muck shit up in small poor nations, their flawed understanding of economics does that when they give their best try to help.
The thesis I was trying to illustrate was that politics is the sun total interactions of generally well meaning if flawed motives working at cross purposes, even at very top. It is not about raw resources, and they are an absurdly doubious way to modivate an electorate to get out and vote for you or to make friends with power.
In any case, the actual argument I was making […] as that you seem to think that ‘power’ is some monolithic they which is endlessly intelligent and completely shared between business and politics.
And there it is. There’s the actual thing you were apparently trying to address. You spent all that time and all those words addressing an imaginary thing that I had not said based purely on an impression that you had without ever actually explaining what you were thinking. That’s why none of it made any sense.
See, in future, you can just say this upfront. If you had in this case then I could have just told you flat out that you were wrong about what I thought and saved you all this effort. It is really weird that you were able to say this, and even that I “seem to think” it, and not understand that you were simply projecting some strawman bullshit onto me.
In future perhaps be a bit less patronizing and argumentative to everyone you meet? Maybe even try responding to a detailed point by point rebuttal by not ignoring all but one point and then derailing the conversation twice, or mayhaps even explaining why you think a point is mistaken instead of just ignoring it. It might waste less time.
If you want the advanced course, when reading, try asking yourself questions like what is what I am reading trying to say, what is the core thesis of the position this evidence is in support of, and how does this new information relate to my position? Doing so is called critical reading, and is important in online debate.
I’m going to end things here, as mirroring your tone is not pleasant at all.
In the interview, he is quoting someone else’s conclusions in one line, and unless you can give actual context to these words it’s not even clear what he’s getting at. He says himself that it’s one aside line in one interview that doesn’t represent his conclusions but someone else’s, and that’s exactly what it appears to be. The thrust of his point appears to be that the western media was using one atrocity to distract from their own, which seems like a reasonable position. If you want to make the case, make it. That is indeed one line in an interview that doesn’t make his position clear.
David Campbell himself seems content to give fragments of quotes heavily bracketed in his own deeply interpetive framing that seems to require a deep familiarity with the subject matter in order to even understand, where he talks about A’s reply to B and C’s postion and oh my god it shouldn’t be this hard to make the case if there is one. He links another article of his criticism of Chomsky in which he does exactly the same thing, at which point I lost patience with reading bullshit.
You say his “debunking” is more eloquent than your own, even though it’s impenetrable waffle, which is not surprising given your own inability to make a point and not get lost in your own weeds.
Like, you started attacking Chomsky, why? The only reason I mentioned his credentials was to head off the usual reaction to manufacturing consent which is to call it a conspiracy theory. But, you already accept the concept, but you’re going to get sidelined with genocide denial accusations that you can’t even back up.
And the entire first half of your comment was you basically listing a bunch of different attitudes people had to the Iraq war, with no notion of the power politics involved. Like, yes, there are a lot of ideas flying about, most of them created by the media to manufacture consent, and hence mostly bullshit. I thought you understood this concept? What matters are the reasons of those in power, and they’re not even shy about it. The only way you miss it is if you ignore it in favour of the consent machine’s noise.
And yeah, the MIC can just make Abrams and let them rot in warehouses for decades. But they make more money when there’s a war, so they want it. Also wars are their way of making examples of countries that don’t submit to murderous structural adjustment policies.
I’ll admit that there’s a bit more going on than just oil = war, but it is a primary driver, not just to have the resources, but to control their flow to maintain global hegemony. Just like the lithium wars are more complex than “gib lithium”. Again, not a difficult concept.
This is weak shit. I don’t think I’ll keep replying. You seem intent on maintaining a gish gallop and your position isn’t even clear. I’ve tried to understand your position but it’s like wading through a pile of shit to find a raisin which may not even be there. I just don’t have any more energy for it.
I offhandly mentioned that about Chomsky becuse of the way you have goiven someone who claimed that the poor Bosnians could leave the death camp any time they wanted such a glowing recommendation. This is not exactly a new or unknown controversy.
You say he is repeating the doubts Phillip Kinghtly’ brought, but they’ve been be the throughly debunked, and Chomsky knows its been throughly debunked because later in the same interview he uses the results of the court case where which debunked it as evidence of the courts oppressing free speech. It’s especially bad for someone who is soposed to be an expert on the media repeating a quack because the quack fire his narrative.
David Campbell is just being through using academic language, and I chose his case because I thought you might appreciate and be able to keep up with a properly detailed academic response. Sorry it was too long for you. If you want an easier to understand one, Kraut has a video option piece where he keeps most of his bad habits to a minimum sans being deliberately inflammatory.
In any case, the actual argument I was making before you brought everything to a halt to talk about Chomsky was that you seem to think that ‘power’ is some monolithic they which is endlessly intelligent and completely shared between business and politics. I understand it’s an easy and comforting narrative, but it is an manufactured narrative.
When think tanks whose members make up significant parts of an administration like the Project for a New American Century tell you what and why their doing something you might as well examine it. When xenophobic people in power tell you they want to get back at the Arabs you can probably believe them not just write that off as a manufactured media narrative.
There are manufacturer’s media narratives, like the one that the US invaded a dictator that was already giving it half it’s oil so it could get less oil, but I wasn’t listing those. I was listing some of the thousands of diffrent things that led to it. I thought you could understand that?
There is no unified They in governments, although thinking that is the defining characteristic of conspiracy theorists. Raw resources are a factor in geopolitics, and in Iraq, but are hardly something that’s preticularaly media can use to manufacture consent for a war. Neoconservatives and Neoliberals don’t need some sinister conspiracy to muck shit up in small poor nations, their flawed understanding of economics does that when they give their best try to help.
The thesis I was trying to illustrate was that politics is the sun total interactions of generally well meaning if flawed motives working at cross purposes, even at very top. It is not about raw resources, and they are an absurdly doubious way to modivate an electorate to get out and vote for you or to make friends with power.
And there it is. There’s the actual thing you were apparently trying to address. You spent all that time and all those words addressing an imaginary thing that I had not said based purely on an impression that you had without ever actually explaining what you were thinking. That’s why none of it made any sense.
See, in future, you can just say this upfront. If you had in this case then I could have just told you flat out that you were wrong about what I thought and saved you all this effort. It is really weird that you were able to say this, and even that I “seem to think” it, and not understand that you were simply projecting some strawman bullshit onto me.
What a fantastic waste of both of our times.
I agree completely.
In future perhaps be a bit less patronizing and argumentative to everyone you meet? Maybe even try responding to a detailed point by point rebuttal by not ignoring all but one point and then derailing the conversation twice, or mayhaps even explaining why you think a point is mistaken instead of just ignoring it. It might waste less time.
If you want the advanced course, when reading, try asking yourself questions like what is what I am reading trying to say, what is the core thesis of the position this evidence is in support of, and how does this new information relate to my position? Doing so is called critical reading, and is important in online debate.
I’m going to end things here, as mirroring your tone is not pleasant at all.