That would be Chomsky. Genocide denier I assume, famously taken to pieces by Monbiot.TechnicalEphemera wrote:
Right. So you endorse Chomsky's claim that Clinton's bombing of al-Shifa pharmaceutical plant killed several tens of thousands of people?
I don't myself think Chomsky has the better of this.
http://www.monbiot.com/2012/05/21/2181/[/quote]
1. Chomsky claimed that the deaths at al-shifa equated to the deaths at 9-11. Werener Daum the German ambassador to teh Sudan claimed 10k+, based on the collapse in supply of malaria medicine and halting of humanitarian convoys. Halting humanitarian aid and denying life saving medicine, of course, are both indictments faced by every state that has committed genocide in the last century and a half.
2. Chomsky doesnt deny genocide, that really does display some clear ignorance of the subject matter, but he does apply the academic criteria for genocide to instances of mass killings in theatres of mass violence. You see genocide is a legal term, its use has legal implications, its legal definition is important. You can't use a legal definition to define one theatre of mass killing and then not use the same criteria for a different theatre. That is academically incompetent and lacking in rigour. A point Herman and Peterson make in their opening chapter, and Chomsky makes in his foreward.
I like Monbiot - although he manages to miss two important components of what constitutes genocide in his definition - and having read the texts that are referred to in this article, as well as many others in genocide studies, I know that Herman and Peterson's broad theses is correct, and they most certainly don't deny the genocide in Rwanda, although do make questionable statements about Srebrenica which are a matter of academic discourse. However, their structural argument regarding the interplay between macro-meso-micro level variables on the course and cause of genocide, and the misuse of the term by liberal interventionists is excellent, although I prefer Olusanya for MMM who is inspired, and Smeulers and Hoex are far better on Rwanda.
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As for Monbiot taking Chomsky to pieces, I suspect that depends on your knowledge and understanding of the subject matter; I'm sure Monbiot wouldnt make that claim, whilst Chomsky would burst out laughing.