From: gummitch@techbook.com (Jeff Frane)
Subject: Re: Usual Libels against Chomsky
Organization: TECHbooks of Beaverton Oregon - Public Access Unix
Date: Mon, 14 Sep 1992 20:42:54 GMT

jmc@SAIL.Stanford.EDU (John McCarthy) writes:

>In article <2SEP199213213832@reg.triumf.ca> orwell@reg.triumf.ca (BALDEN, RON) writes:

>   John McCarthy (jmc@SAIL.Stanford.EDU), "replying" to me:
>   >Why should we believe Gervasi rather than the Pentagon?

>   I could answer in detail (Gervasi discusses this question himself, where 
>   he points out that the facts are generally not in dispute, but 
>   rather the interpretations used to create "threat inflation"), 
>   but the question is clearly disingenuous, since John McCarthy obviously
>   has no intention of letting the facts confuse his beliefs in this area. 
>   I presume this is not how he goes about his work in mathematics and
>   computer science. 

>   Let me -- with 46 years of historical justification -- turn the question 
>   around, and ask John McCarthy why I should believe anything the 
>   U.S. political-military-industrial complex has to say about this,
>   since they have shown themselves to be consistent liars in this area?


>It was the Soviet Union not America that Orwell had as a model.  He
>feared that the whole world would turn out like the Soviet Union
>under Stalin.  He conjectured that the actual personality of the leader
>didn't matter.  He conjectured that it didn't actually matter whether
>there really was a Big Brother.  Fortunately, he was mistaken, and
>things got a bit better in the Soviet Union after Stalin died,
>and the West didn't go that way at all.

>Should I accuse you of lying for this misleading quotation?

Of course, the previous poster never suggested that Orwell was writing
about the US Pentagon... merely that those who choose to accept the lies
of the "establishment" will distort reality even when the evidence is
overwhelming that they're being lied to again.  Once self-delusion has
become a habit (as it obviously has with McCarthy), it becomes
_essential_ to maintain the delusion so that reality never comes
crashing in.


>I expected you wouldn't actually answer the question but would turn
>it around.  But you don't realize the extent to which I see things
>differently from you.  In my memory of the last 46 years, the
>American left has lied far more consistently than the Pentagon.
>One of the most prevalent forms of lie was distorting what the
>Pentagon said.

Ha!  The Pentagon as Fount of Truth.  Even the Pentagon doesn't pretend
to be that.


>Let's see, to begin with, let's mention I.F. Stone repeating the
>Stalinist lies about the the South Koreans starting the Korean
>War and the U.S. using germ warfare.

Stone's assertions were very well documented, but of course since Stone
was a paid stooge of the Soviet Union (ha ha! what a scream!), we can't
believe a word he wrote, can we McCarthy?


>As a more recent example, let's consider the American left
>propagating the Soviet lie that the accident in Sverdlovsk
>(now again Ekaterinburg) didn't involve germ warfare.
>--

Here is a really good example, McCarthy.  It's always been a major issue
among us leftists.  We marched around and chanted about that one a lot.

You wouldn't like to discuss any specifics about Pentagon lies in, say,
Vietnam, would you?  Or Cambodia?  Maybe Laos?  Maybe Pentagon lies
about successful bombing strikes in Iraq?  I didn't think so.

Jeff Frane


>John McCarthy, Computer Science Department, Stanford, CA 94305
>*
>He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.

As is he who refuses to read history with an open mind.

-- 
gummitch@techbook.COM  Public Access UNIX at (503) 220-0636 (1200/2400) 


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