Over the top, but honest

[Borba100@xxxxxxxxxxx]

In a message dated 09/07/2000 10:46:07 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
michael@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx writes:

<<
 I can see where you may disagree with Chomsky, but to call him a liar and
even
 later in your post to compare him with the liars about Vietnam seems over the
 top. >>

Dear Michael,

Am I over the top?  I'd have to be over the top to do what I'm doing. Crazy
as a bed bug.

But - am I wrong?  There's the question. Let's consider.  Chomsky has
received much information contradicting media accounts of what happened in
Kosovo.  I know because I sent them to him, and as our email exchanges show,
he reads my stuff.  I imagine other people send him similar evidence.  And
it's on all the websites.

That includes the German Court information, which flatly contradicts what he
has written about the Yugoslav forces targeting civilians prior to bombing.

Yet he repeated the civilian-attacks argument as late as June.  Moreover, as
I noted, he repeated it in a journal read by Muslims - in effect pouring oil
on a smoldering fire.

Why?  Was this an oversight?

I have asked him to explain.  So far,. as the emails I posted show, he simply
refuses to answer.

I had an experience last fall with another beloved left-ish Professor, Howard
Zinn. He spoke at a teach-in, I think it was in July, in Cambridge, MA.  This
was during the period when several hundred thousand non-secessionists were
being terrorized, robbed, kidnapped, killed and  driven from Kosovo by the
KLA with NATO approval.   The audience was 200-250 mostly young mostly
antiwar activists.  Very important group.  They could have been mobilized to
oppose these real atrocities.

I wrote up an accoount at the time: "Zinn began by asserting that by now
nobody disagrees with the media's contention that the Serbs committed
widespread anti-Albanian atrocities before the bombing of Serbia, and that
after the bombing began the anti-Albanian atrocities got much worse.

"I challenged Zinn from the floor. I said the purpose of the anti-Serbian
atrocity stories in the press was to blind people in this country to the
genocide that's going on right now, aimed at creating an ethnically pure
Kosovo. I said I was frankly shocked that he accepted the media hype so
uncritically. Though he opposed NATO intervention, though he said the media
had an interest in lying to build support for intervention, he never
questioned the validity of the anti-Serbian atrocity stories which were
obviously the key to building support for intervention. Why not?

"Zinn answered that if one got too nit-picky about such details (is the
question of whether 'the Serbs' are mass murderers a detail?) the public
wouldn't take one seriously.

Those were his words. He didn't argue that I was factually wrong. He didn't
attempt to  defend his statement [that Serbian atrtocities were a proven
fact]."

So, the US attacks other people, he repeats the smears found in the mass
media, he gives it a little left wing coloration, and when he's called on it
he can provide no evidence to back it up?

What should one call this?

Best regards,
Jared