351. Conversation between Richard Dawkins and John Lennox

Comment #227152 by decius on August 9, 2008 at 12:29 pm

Comment #227147 by clearthinker

(this is what we call in other circles - the fundamentalist mindset. You ask to debate a subject but you exclude from debate those who disagree with you on that subject in the first place).

352. Conversation between Richard Dawkins and John Lennox

Comment #227142 by decius on August 9, 2008 at 12:10 pm

Comment #227138 by JAMCAM87

I think crude, unsophisticated apologists like Lennox should be dealt with by scientific sceptics, rather than by the finest thinkers of atheism.
That way they would be taken to task over the details of their idiotic superstitions.

353. Conversation between Richard Dawkins and John Lennox

Comment #227134 by decius on August 9, 2008 at 11:54 am

What is this alternative Edinburgh Book Festival?
Did the outcasts clone the original one, or is it as Robertson describes it?

Edit- May be he wanted "equal time" with Rushdie, or something.

354. Conversation between Richard Dawkins and John Lennox

Comment #227129 by decius on August 9, 2008 at 11:44 am

Comment #227120 by clearthinker

Yes, Dawkins brought it up, but that doesn't change the topic of the thread.

Anyway, I was just reassuring you that you should not worry, we go OT all the time, here.
Feel free to answer Steve's questions, or to talk about anything you may want to engage us with.

355. Why Islam Is Unfunny for a Cartoonist

Comment #227124 by decius on August 9, 2008 at 11:31 am

Comment #227115 by Fanusi Khiyal

As to your point 1.

That article dates back to 1977. No one knew the actual figures back then, and to-date no consensus has been reached. Later Chomsky, like all the sources that he mentions, revised the figures.

Do you call this an apology?

Point 2 -I have to look up China and get back to you.

Point 3 -That's not an endorsement, but stating a fact. Castro was indeed an icon in South and Central America.

Yes, I know Cuba very well. I spent two weeks there in 1992. Partly in Havana and partly in Varadero. Living conditions were poor but no one was starving and everybody was taken care of. The health system is amazing, transportation sucks, life is sweet. People really loved Castro, believe me. I sensed no real dissent.

It seems to me that the embargo is nothing to believe in, but a reality.


I agree with you. His approach to Islam is wrong and causes me much irritation.

356. Conversation between Richard Dawkins and John Lennox

Comment #227116 by decius on August 9, 2008 at 11:18 am

Comment #227114 by clearthinker

Now back to the debate about the debate.

357. Conversation between Richard Dawkins and John Lennox

Comment #227112 by decius on August 9, 2008 at 11:00 am

Comment #227109 by JAMCAM87

So, was "Hitchens trounced by Lennox", as Robertson claims?

358. Conversation between Richard Dawkins and John Lennox

Comment #227107 by decius on August 9, 2008 at 10:43 am

Comment #227106 by mordacious1

Thx

359. Conversation between Richard Dawkins and John Lennox

Comment #227105 by decius on August 9, 2008 at 10:39 am

Comment #227100 by mordacious1

I am sure that talks of parthenogenesis have a great impact on Robertson's vulnerable psyche. Add the inevitable sexual arousal at the thought of a naked dead-but-not-quite guy walking around with a localised lump of rigor mortis, and he might conceivably mistake them for valid arguments.

360. Conversation between Richard Dawkins and John Lennox

Comment #227096 by decius on August 9, 2008 at 10:19 am

Comment #227095 by clearthinker

yes I do believe that there was some form of death before the Fall,

361. Why Islam Is Unfunny for a Cartoonist

Comment #227085 by decius on August 9, 2008 at 9:54 am

Comment #227081 by Steve Zara

I agree, and I also resent the quasi-religious zeal of many chomskites. Besides, I disagree a great deal with Chomsky on a lot of issues.
I disagree even more with one-sided distortions of history, though,

362. Why Islam Is Unfunny for a Cartoonist

Comment #227077 by decius on August 9, 2008 at 9:34 am

Comment #226754 by al-rawandi

Al, enjoy yourself in Mexico.

I am going to reply to you now, then you can answer at any time of your choosing. Just PM me, if I happen to miss your post.


Al, your strenuous attempts at poisoning the Chomskian well are ill-suited to actually prove your point. Let me remind you that I didn't engage in an all-out defence of Chomsky, with whom I disagree on countless issues. I simply took you to task on some very specific claim of yours, which - I fear - you have been (so far) unable to back up.

My reasons for doing so, is that I find Chomsky's analysis of the Cambodian crisis pivotal in its attempt at even-handedness, and only evidence of clear mismatches between historical facts and Chomskian narrative will convince me to the contrary (and this doesn't include body-count, which is a variable and is meaningless, given that, to-date, no consensus has been reached).

Therefore, I invite you to stay focused, and refrain from producing contrapuntal white noise directed at discrediting the source, while avoiding the issues.

As hawt4dawk noted, let us allow ourselves enough time to consult sources, whenever long content is posted or research is required. Thus, we should be able to reach sooner a shareable conclusion.


For clarity, here is what you originally said.

3) Chomsky also blamed the deaths directly on US bombing in Cambodia (falsely so).

He claimed the bombings caused the "peasant revolt" that was the Killing Fields.

He derided the Americans as a bunch of liars.

He Apologized for the regime (See Phnom Penh comments)

he said they were saving lives, when they were ending lives.

...His further assertion that Noam Chomsky attributed the deaths of the Pol Pot era to ''nothing but'' a war-induced famine is an outright lie. Mr. Chomsky (and the present writer, who was co-author with Mr. Chomsky of his published works on Cambodia) went to great pains to stress that there was no doubt that the Khmer Rouge was committing serious crimes, although we took no position on their scale (which was very uncertain at the time). We focused mainly and openly on the uses to which the West was putting the Khmer Rouge terror, the removal of history and context, the serious distortions of evidence and the selectivity of attention. These were perfectly legitimate subjects in themselves, justified even more by the fact that the West wasn't even proposing doing anything useful for the victims, and by the sequel in which the ousted Pol Pot was quietly rehabilitated as a Western ''freedom fighter.'' But in the West, to focus on the distortions and hypocrisies of a propaganda campaign is to become an ''apologist'' for the villains of that campaign.

363. Why Islam Is Unfunny for a Cartoonist

Comment #227031 by decius on August 9, 2008 at 7:49 am

Comment #226781 by hawt4dawk

Thanks.

Your analysis of Bogdanor is very interesting.

I wish you and your husband a smooth and happy moving. :)

364. Why Islam Is Unfunny for a Cartoonist

Comment #227026 by decius on August 9, 2008 at 7:46 am

Comment #226957 by Fanusi Khiyal

St. Noam's objects of adoration include Mao's China, the USSR, Castro's Cuba, and the Cambodia of the Khmer Rouge,

For the record, my source for this info about Chomsky is the impecably left-wing author Francis Wheen.

365. Richard Dawkins replies to Libby Purves

Comment #227009 by decius on August 9, 2008 at 7:14 am

Comment #226939 by AllanW

I'll 'cheque' back later

366. Why Islam Is Unfunny for a Cartoonist

Comment #226752 by decius on August 8, 2008 at 3:23 pm

Comment #226748 by al-rawandi

Thank you, gladly accepted.

I need a half an hour break to walk the dog, I will reply as soon as I return.

cheers

367. Why Islam Is Unfunny for a Cartoonist

Comment #226743 by decius on August 8, 2008 at 3:06 pm

Comment #226736 by al-rawandi

Al, why don't you calm down, really? I assure you that I have no animus against you and there is no need to make this personal.

Earlier I objected strongly to your quote-mining, but I didn't attack you, not for a second.
So, please, use me the same courtesy.


Firstly, it wasn't an appeal to authority, but a response to your precise accusation that I have no clue about the issue, which instead I happened to follow closely.


Secondly, you are mixing what was said BEFORE the regime capitulated and the extent of the killings became apparent, and what Chomsky wrote after.
This happens ALL THE TIME. During WWII no one had the clue about the extent of the Holocaust. It happened in Bosnia, and so on.

It doesn't make contemporary WWII analysts LIARS and all the insults that you constantly throw around at people, does it?

368. Why Islam Is Unfunny for a Cartoonist

Comment #226721 by decius on August 8, 2008 at 2:40 pm

Sorry, Al

I read your frigging paragraph 6 three times now. It doesn't say what you claim it says.
It speaks of a wrong prediction of a famine by the US government, and that the regime managed to counter it in spite of the war damage.

And your following assertions are just, well, assertions.

If you are fine with undiluted war propaganda, which just so happens to be the one of your own country, I really have no quarrel with you.
It is just pitiful, but it doesn't enrage me, for it is the most common thing ever.

369. Why Islam Is Unfunny for a Cartoonist

Comment #226707 by decius on August 8, 2008 at 2:25 pm

Comment #226695 by al-rawandi

So show me where the critc was wrong,

you haven't read word one from Chomsky on Cambodia, you have no idea what he said throughout the 1970'2 and 80's, you have no idea how he was exposed as a denier and apologist.

David Horowitz and Peter Collier were wrong, in the syndicated article announcing their joint conversion to neoconservatism, to say that Chomsky hailed the advent of the Khmer Rouge as "a new era of economic development and social justice." The Khmer Rouge took power in 1975. In 1972, Chomsky wrote an introduction to Dr. Malcolm Caldwell's collection of interviews with Prince Norodom Sihanouk. In this introduction, he expressed not the prediction but the pious hope that Sihanouk and his supporters might preserve Cambodia for "a new era of economic development and social justice." You could say that this was naive of Chomsky, who did not predict the 1973 carpet-bombing campaign or the resultant rise of a primitive, chauvinist guerrilla movement. But any irony here would appear to be at the expense of Horowitz and Collier. And the funny thing is that, if they had the words right, they must have had access to the book. And if they had access to the book.... Well, many things are forgiven those who see the error of their formerly radical ways.

The Richard West-William Shawcross fork also proves, on investigation, to be blunt in both prongs. Chomsky and Shawcross have this much in common: that they both argue for and demonstrate the connection between the Nixon-Kissinger bombing and derangement of Cambodian society and the nascence of the Khmer Rouge. It is not the case that Chomsky borrowed this idea from Shawcross, however. He first went to press on the point in 1972, seven years before Sideshow was published, with an account supplied by the American correspondent Richard Dudman of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Dudman is one of the few people to have been both a prisoner of the Khmer Rouge and a chronicler of his own detention. His testimony indicated a strong connection between American tactics in the countryside of Cambodia and the recruitment of peasants to the guerrilla side. (Imagine the strain of composing an account that denied such a connection.)

This more or less disposes of West, who has simply got the order of things the wrong way about and added some random insults. The case of Shawcross is more complicated. In his The Quality of Mercy, he quotes three full paragraphs apparently from Chomsky's pen, though he does not give a source. The three paragraphs do not express "skepticism" about the massacres in Cambodia, but they do express reservations about some of the accounts of them. They also argue that the advent of the Khmer Rouge should be seen in the historical context of the much less ballyhooed American aerial massacres a few years earlier -- a point which the author of Sideshow is in a weak position to scorn. Finally, the three paragraphs convey a sardonic attitude toward those who claim that it "took courage" to mention the Khmer Rouge atrocities at all.

But mark the sequel. The three paragraphs as quoted do not appear anywhere. They are rudely carpentered together, without any ellipses to indicate gaps in the attribution, from the summary and introduction to Volume 1 of The Political Economy of Human Rights, which was written by Noam Chomsky and Professor Edward Herman of the Wharton School of Business. The book went to press in 1979, after the forcible overthrow of the Pol Pot regime. Thus, even if the paragraphs were quoted and sourced properly, and even if they bore the construction that Shawcross puts on them, they could hardly have contributed to the alleged indifference of civilized opinion "throughout 1976 and 1977 and especially in 1978" or inhibited the issue from reaching "critical mass." Since Shawcross lists the book, with its date, in his bibliography, the discrepancy can hardly be due to ignorance.

As for the gratuitous insinuation about protest over Chile, I can't help recording that one of the anti-Khmer Rouge blockbusters with which the American public was regaled came in TV Guide (circulation 19 million) in April 1977 and was written by Ernest Lefever. Lefever had earlier told Congress that it should be more "tolerant" of the "mistakes" of the Pinochet regime in attempting to "clear away the devastation of the Allende period." He also wrote, in The Miami Herald, of the "remarkable freedom of expression" enjoyed in the new Chile. In 1981, Lefever proved too farouche to secure nomination as Reagan's Under Secretary for Human Rights.

William Shawcross enjoys his reputation for honesty. And so I have had to presume that his book represents his case at its most considered. Why, then, if he has room for three paragraphs from Chomsky and Herman, does he not quote the equally accessible sentences, published in The Nation on June 25, 1977, where they describe Father Francois Ponchaud's Cambodia: Year Zero as "serious and worth reading," with its "grisly account of what refugees have reported to him about the barbarity of their treatment at the hands of the Khmer Rouge"?

Chomsky and Herman were engaged in the admittedly touchy business of distinguishing evidence from interpretation. They were doing so in the aftermath of a war which had featured tremendous, organized, official lying and many cynical and opportunist "bloodbath" predictions. There was and is no argument about mass murder in Cambodia: there is still argument about whether the number of deaths, and the manner in which they were inflicted, will warrant the use of the term "genocide' or even "autogenocide." Shawcross pays an implicit homage to this distinction, a few pages later, when he admits that Jean Lacouture, in his first "emotional" review of Father Ponchaud, greatly exaggerated the real number of Khmer Rouge executions. These errors, writes Shawcross, "were seized upon by Noam Chomsky, who circulated them widely. In a subsequent issue of The New York Review, Lacouture corrected himself. Not all of those who had reported his mea culpa published his corrections. Chomsky used the affair as part of his argument that the media were embarked on an unjustified blitz against the Khmer Rouge."

If this paragraph has any internal coherence -- and I have given it in its entirety -- it must lead the reader to suppose that Chomsky publicized Lacoutre's mea culpa without acknowledging his corrections. But in The Political Economy of Human Rights there is an exhaustive presentation of the evolution of Lacoutre's position, including both his mea culpa and his corrections and adding some complimentary remarks about his work. Incidentally, Lacouture reduced his own estimate of deaths from "two million" to "thousands or hundreds of thousands." Is this, too, "minimization of atrocities"?

Ironies here accumulate at the expense of Chomsky's accusers. A close analysis of Problems of Communism and of the findings of State Department intelligence and many very conservative Asia specialists will yield a figure of deaths in the high hundreds of thousands. Exorbitant figures (i.e. those oscillating between two and three million) are current partly because Radio Moscow and Radio Hanoi now feel free to denounce the Pol Pot forces (which now, incredibly, receive official American recognition) in the most abandoned fashion. Chomsky wrote that, while the Vietnamese invasion and occupation could be understood, it could not be justified. May we imagine what might be said about his complicity with Soviet-bloc propaganda if he were now insisting on the higher figure? For both of these failures to conform, he has been assailed by Leopold Labedz in Encounter, who insists on three million as a sort of loyalty test, but, since that magazine shows a distinct reluctance to correct the untruths it publishes -- as I can testify from my own experience -- its readers have not been exposed to a reply.

Chomsky and Herman wrote that "the record of atrocities in Cambodia is substantial and often gruesome." They even said, "When the facts are in, it may turn out that the more extreme condemnations were in fact correct." The facts are now more or less in, and it turns out that the two independent writers were as close to the truth as most, and closer than some. It may be distasteful, even indecent, to argue over "body counts," whether the bodies are Armenian, Jewish, Cambodian, or (to take a case where Chomsky and Herman were effectively alone in their research and their condemnation) Timorese. But the count must be done, and done seriously, if later generations are not to doubt the whole slaughter on the basis of provable exaggerations or inventions.

Maurice Cranston's letter to The Times Literary Supplement, with its unexamined assumption that Chomsky was a partisan of North Vietnam, falls apart with even less examination. In 1970, Chomsky wrote up his tour of the region for The New York Review of Books and said:

It is conceivable that the United States may be able to break the will of the popular movements in the surrounding countries, perhaps even destroy the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam, by employing the vast resources of violence and terror at its disposal. If so, it will create a situation in which, indeed, North Vietnam will necessarily dominate Indochina, for no other viable society will remain.

I think of that article whenever I read wised-up Western newsmen who dwell upon the "ironic" fact that the North Vietnamese, not the NLF, now hold power in Ho Chi Minh City. It takes real ingenuity to blame this on the antiwar movement, but, with a little creative amnesia and a large helping of self-pity for the wounds inflicted by the war (on America), the job can by plausibly done.

Finally, to Fred Barnes, recruited to The New Republic from The Baltimore Sun and The American Spectator. I wrote to him on the day that his article appeared, asking to know where he heard Chomsky say such a thing. I received no reply until I was able to ask for it in person two months later. I then asked him to place it in writing. It read as follows:

I sat next to Noam Chomsky at a seminar at Lippmann House (of the Nieman Foundation) of Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass., in 1978. On the matter of Genocide in Cambodia, the thrust of what he said was that there was no evidence of mass murder there. As I recall, he was rather adamant on the point. He had, by this time, I believe, written a letter or two to The New York Review of Books making the same point. Chomsky seemed to believe that tales of holocaust in Cambodia were so much propaganda. He said, on another point, that there was an effort underway to rewrite the history of the Indochinese war -- in a way more favorable to the U.S. Perhaps he thought the notion of genocide in Cambodia was part of that effort.

Since this meeting took place in the year after Chomsky and Herman had written their Nation article, and in the year when they were preparing The Political Economy of Human Rights, we can probably trust the documented record at least as much as Mr. Barnes's recollection. And there was no letter from Chomsky about Cambodia in The New York Review of Books. It is interesting, and perhaps suggestive, that Barnes uses the terms "genocide," "holocaust," and "mass murder" as if they were interchangeable. His last two sentences demonstrate just the sort of cuteness for which his magazine is becoming famous.

Here is the story, as far as I can trace it, of Chomsky's effort to "minimize" or "deny" the harvest of the Khmer Rouge. It will be seen that the phony "credibility" of the charge against him derives from his lack of gullibility about the American mass killings in Indochina (routinely euphemized or concealed by large sections of the domestic intelligentsia). From this arises the idea that Chomsky might have said such things; was the sort of person who could decline to criticize "the other side"; was a well-known political extremist. Couple this with the slothful ease of the accusation, the reluctance of certain authors to prove they are not unpatriotic dupes, and you have a scapegoat in the making. Dr. Arbuthnot was right. Nobody would believe that Chomsky advocated a massacre. But they might be brought to believe that he excused or overlooked one.

370. Why Islam Is Unfunny for a Cartoonist

Comment #226694 by decius on August 8, 2008 at 2:10 pm

Comment #226690 by al-rawandi

Much of these quotations are cited directly to Chomsky.

371. Why Islam Is Unfunny for a Cartoonist

Comment #226685 by decius on August 8, 2008 at 1:58 pm

Comment #226678 by al-rawandi

No, dear.

You can't link a document by Chomsky and one by a dishonest critic who opens by saying that "Chomsky wants to convince us that the Earth is flat".

And then quote the latter as if it were Chomsky speaking.

Are you fucking kidding me?

372. Why Islam Is Unfunny for a Cartoonist

Comment #226668 by decius on August 8, 2008 at 1:39 pm

Comment #226655 by al-rawandi

Give me a moment, I was still reading. :)

373. Why Islam Is Unfunny for a Cartoonist

Comment #226666 by decius on August 8, 2008 at 1:38 pm

Comment #226641 by al-rawandi


He doesn't say anything different from what he said already in the quote provided earlier.
There is no way that it can be spun to mean what you want it to mean, though.

It is not an apology for Pol Pot, nor for the massacres. It is a earnest attempt at countering some foolish American propaganda, and putting the blame where it belongs. To each his own.
No one can honestly contend that the destruction visited upon Cambodia by American bombing and the ensuing collapse of civil society should be blamed on Pol Pot.

Again, I refer you to his major scholarly works on the subject, if you are at all interested.

Also, during those times, he was making extremely accurate predictions as to how the conflict would develop and as to which steps each side would undertake, and this is sign of great mastership of the subject.

P.S. My ignorance on unrelated subjects remotely involving Chomsky has really nothing to do with his knowledge of South East Asia.

374. Why Islam Is Unfunny for a Cartoonist

Comment #226647 by decius on August 8, 2008 at 1:13 pm

444. Comment #226643 by Bonzai

I totally agree.

375. Why Islam Is Unfunny for a Cartoonist

Comment #226628 by decius on August 8, 2008 at 12:45 pm

Comment #226611 by al-rawandi

I already looked up your "quotes".

You provided the page number, this certifies that you have distorted and quote-mined on purpose, and not that you don't have the book at hand.

Read my post and you'll find the actual words.

I did not declare victory, I excused myself from the conversation.
You aren't interested to establish in earnest Chomsky credibility as an analyst of the Cambodian conflict, so there is no reason to drag this further.

YOU would have the nerve to defend Chomsky who had the nerve to defend Robert Faurisson... who spewed such vile hate for Jews in the Tehran Times, and then turn and criticize me for exposing what is obvious to any rational observer.

376. Why Islam Is Unfunny for a Cartoonist

Comment #226602 by decius on August 8, 2008 at 12:01 pm

Comment #226581 by al-rawandi

Al, I specifically asked you to not quote-mine Chomsky in order to score cheap rhetorical points.

And what do you do?
You quote yourself quote-mining Chomsky elsewhere, going as far as distorting the original quote with added words of your choosing.

Also, Chomsky extensively wrote on Cambodia in dedicated books. Yet you chose to quote from a manual specifically written for simpletons. Basically a transcript of a verbal interview, where he goes over all of contemporary history in a couple of hundred pages.

I have to say that I am surprised.
I find this method of arguing well below the standards that I am used to, and more befitting a Dershowitz than yourself, quite frankly.
Therefore - with your permission - I'll leave it here.

One last thing. I shall provide the actual quote for the benefit of the others.

MAN: You said that we support Pol Pot in Cambodia through our allies. Isn't there a chance that there could be another genocide there if the Khmer Rouge gets back in power? I'm terrified of that possibility.
Yeah, it's dangerous. What will happen there depends on whether the West continues to support them ...
MAN: But we may be heading for another genocide.
Well, look, the business about "genocide" you've got to be a little care­ful about. Pol Pot was obviously a major mass murderer, but it's not clear that Pol Pot killed very many more people-or even more people-than the United States killed in Cambodia in the first half of the 1970s. We only talk about "genocide" when other people do the killing. [The U.S. bombed and invaded Cambodia beginning in 1969, and supported anti-Parliamentary right-wing forces in a civil war there which lasted until 1975; Pol Pot ruled the country between 1975 and '78.
So there's a lot of uncertainty about just what the scale was of the Pol Pot massacre, but the best scholarly work in existence today estimates the deaths in Cambodia from all causes during the Pol Pot period in the hun­dreds of thousands, maybe as much as a million. Well, just take a look at the killing in Cambodia that happened in the first half of the decade from 1970 to 1975-which is the period that we're responsible for: it was also in the hundreds of thousands.61
Furthermore, if you really want to be serious about it-let's say a million people died in the Pol Pot years, let's take a higher number-it's worth bear­ing in mind that when the United States stopped its attacks on inner Cam­bodia in 1975, American and other Western officials predicted that in the aftermath, about a million more Cambodians would die just from the ef­fects of the American war. At the time that the United States withdrew from Cambodia, people were dying from starvation in the city of Phnom Penh alone-forget the rest of the country-at the rate of 100,000 a year. The last U.S. A.J.D. [Agency for International Development] mission in Cambodia predicted that there would have to be two years of slave labor and starvation before the country could even begin to get moving again. So while the number of deaths you should attribute to the United States during the Pol Pot period isn't a simple calculation to make, obviously it's a lot-when you wipe out a country's agricultural system and drive a mil­lion people out of their homes and into a city as refugees, yeah, a lot of people are going to die. And the responsibility for their deaths is not with the regime that took over afterwards, it's with the people who made it that way.
And in fact, there's an even more subtle point to be made-but not an in­significant one. That is: why did Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge carry out their massacre in the first place? Well, there's pretty good evidence that the Khmer Rouge forces took power primarily because they were the only ones who were tough enough bastards to survive the U.S. attacks. And given the destructive psychological effects of the American bombings on the peasant population there, some sort of violent outpouring was fairly predictable ­and there was a big element of just plain peasant revenge in what hap­pened. So the U.S. bombings hit a real peak of ferocity in around 1973, and that's the same period in which the Pol Pot group started gaining power. The American bombardment was certainly a significant factor, pos­sibly the critical factor, in building up peasant support for the Khmer Rouge in the first place; before that, they had been a pretty marginal element. Okay, if we were honest about the term "genocide," we would divide up the deaths in the Pol Pot period into a major part which is our responsibil­ity, which is the responsibility of the United States.

much of the genocide was "peasant revenge" and not an organized massacre.

377. Why Islam Is Unfunny for a Cartoonist

Comment #226579 by decius on August 8, 2008 at 10:28 am

Comment #226565 by al-rawandi

Yes, he was armed and supported by the US, but the invasion was one of territorial history.

He claimed the bombings caused the "peasant revolt" that was the Killing Fields.

378. Why Islam Is Unfunny for a Cartoonist

Comment #226563 by decius on August 8, 2008 at 9:39 am

404. Comment #226558 by al-rawandi

1) The US merely refused to object to the E. Timor invasion.

3) Chomsky also blamed the deaths directly on US bombing in Cambodia (falsely so).

379. Why Islam Is Unfunny for a Cartoonist

Comment #226557 by decius on August 8, 2008 at 9:30 am

Comment #226554 by hawt4dawk

Chomsky actually is an anarcho-syndicalist, which has to do with organising labour, rather than freeing society from the state. In fact, anarcho-syndicalism is a form of self-managed capitalism.
Also, anarcho-syndicalism proved so successful during the Spanish civil war that Stalin, enraged and jealous, turned against it in a manner that could only be described as a betrayal of the common cause against Franchism.

380. Richard Dawkins, the naive professor

Comment #226548 by decius on August 8, 2008 at 8:55 am

Comment #226542 by phil rimmer

Phil, I don't think that's the case, since upon reload images are already cached in the temp files.
Also, I think it began after Wednesday's problems, when all page-links had ceased working for several hours.

381. Richard Dawkins, the naive professor

Comment #226541 by decius on August 8, 2008 at 8:40 am

I think we should alert Josh with this. Any volunteers? :)



EDIT - I volunteered myself. :)

382. Richard Dawkins, the naive professor

Comment #226536 by decius on August 8, 2008 at 8:34 am

Comment #226535 by thewhitepearl

That's funny, I've just checked and IE doesn't do it on my computer. Is it a recent problem, in your case?

383. Richard Dawkins, the naive professor

Comment #226533 by decius on August 8, 2008 at 8:31 am

Comment #226529 by Logicel

I heard that one, too, but it is most likely incorrect.
A similar etymology has been suggested for the italian word "finocchio" (literally: fennel). Someone claimed that fennel seeds were spread upon the stake to counter the revolting smell of burning human flesh.
It is nonsense, because the usage of "finocchio" - to indicate a homosexual - doesn't appear in any written text until the XIX century, and at first it indicated someone who is burdensome.

384. Richard Dawkins, the naive professor

Comment #226524 by decius on August 8, 2008 at 8:15 am

Is anyone else experiencing the disappearance of avatars upon page reload in firefox? It has been malfunctioning for two days or so, in my case.

385. Richard Dawkins, the naive professor

Comment #226522 by decius on August 8, 2008 at 8:04 am

Quetz,

nice entry, but I think the math for the cost of 36 kg of rice doesn't add up, even if we allow for 3 meals a day.

386. Richard Dawkins, the naive professor

Comment #226048 by decius on August 7, 2008 at 4:32 pm

Hi TWP.

Fine, thanks, just a bit busy with my work.
I noticed that you have been away, too. How are you doing?

387. Richard Dawkins, the naive professor

Comment #226034 by decius on August 7, 2008 at 4:14 pm

Comment #226019 by JRD7

Why don't you go to the times website and leave your comments there?

388. Richard Dawkins, the naive professor

Comment #225940 by decius on August 7, 2008 at 2:11 pm

Comment #225904 by Richard Dawkins

May I respectfully ask why you didn't stand your ground all the way? After all, being both a scientist and a pop icon of sort, you constitute an irreplaceable asset for an audience-hungry television channel eager to produce such a programme.

I guarantee you that it is very liberating to tell a lawyer to bugger off. :)

389. Is our universe fine-tuned for life?

Comment #225903 by decius on August 7, 2008 at 1:36 pm

Comment #225728 by squinky

Sure life could be on Earth right now living as silicates. Actually, I'm a fan of self-replicating boron or maybe even iridium phosphates or whatever the hell I can think up. In fact, I'm no longer an atheist. There are teapots orbiting the Earth--self-replicating ones in fact and they can exceed the speed of light (that's why we can't detect them).

390. The best way to undermine the jihadists is to trigger a rebellion of Muslim women - and establish energy independence

Comment #225809 by decius on August 7, 2008 at 11:53 am

Comment #225795 by al-rawandi

I WAS ROBBED!

391. Rochester Physicist's Quantum-'Uncollapse' Hypothesis Verified

Comment #225767 by decius on August 7, 2008 at 11:07 am

Phil,

I think no one can help, here, without reading the original paper.

392. Richard Dawkins, the naive professor

Comment #225760 by decius on August 7, 2008 at 10:59 am

So much verbose praise and conceding the obvious, as if it would help to validate her egregious argument from ignorance and her preposterous charge against Richard.

393. Call to teach biblical creation as science

Comment #225676 by decius on August 7, 2008 at 7:36 am

Comment #225670 by Steve Zara

The clueless gits who advocate such inanities think that an argument from authority is all that is needed to amend science.

394. Call to teach biblical creation as science

Comment #225658 by decius on August 7, 2008 at 7:04 am

Comment #225648 by Oystein Elgaroy

Thanks.
Do my other points still hold?


Edit- Never mind, I looked it up.

395. Call to teach biblical creation as science

Comment #225636 by decius on August 7, 2008 at 6:28 am

Comment #225623 by Ygern

There was an 'afterglow' after the Big Bang, so strictly speaking there was light before the stars were formed.

396. Douglas Adams Memorial Lecture 2008

Comment #225617 by decius on August 7, 2008 at 5:55 am

Incompetently filmed, recorded and encoded. Heavy cuts maim an otherwise excellent lecture.

I suggest to follow SilentMike's advice and watch the same talk that Pinker held at authors@google.

397. Is our universe fine-tuned for life?

Comment #225341 by decius on August 6, 2008 at 1:17 pm

Comment #225318 by squinky

These are problematic statements.

silicon-based life (which could never arise spontaneously)

life has to start with carbon-based, water loving creatures that evolve intelligence

398. [UPDATED] Venomous Snakes, Slippery Eels and Harun Yahya

Comment #225177 by decius on August 6, 2008 at 10:13 am

Just saying it here won't do. E-mail Josh with your complaint, please.

399. [UPDATED] Venomous Snakes, Slippery Eels and Harun Yahya

Comment #224914 by decius on August 6, 2008 at 2:37 am

I am convinced, now.

Adnan Oktar is clearly innocent: he loves freedom and he greets people with "salamun aleikum".

What other proof do you need?

400. Interview with Paula Kirby on 'The Right Hook'

Comment #224753 by decius on August 5, 2008 at 2:20 pm

Paula,

excellent performance. Soft-spoken yet firm, and you didn't let any bs pass unchecked, although I had the impression that you have been purposefully muzzled at the end.