Demention94 If you want a walking encyclopaedia, watch a few Christopher Hitchens clips...

Matthew Singh-Dosanjh Surely you are kidding. Hitchens was a hack with an impressive vocabulary. Nothing more.

Spooky Action Let me guess- you're someone that opposed the 2003 intervention in Iraq, as well as the broader fight against theocratic Islamic fascism. You're a typical status quo leftist.

Matthew Singh-Dosanjh Prior to the 2003 American invasion, Iraq was ruled by a secular nationalist. It is now being overrun by ISIS...so I'm afraid Mr. Hitchens lead you astray on that one. Also, please stop saying "Islamic fascism." It makes no linguistic sense, and fascism was a creation of Christian Europe anyhow. It is clear that your problem is with Islam itself--a religion with 1.6 adherents worldwide. So good luck with that.

Spooky Action Iraq, secular? -- Under Saddam Hussein, well-known Jihadists such as Abu Nidal, Abdul Rahman Yasin and Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi were all in Iraq BEFORE the 2003 intervention -Under Saddam Hussein, a verse from the Qur'an was placed on the Iraqi national flag --Saddam Hussein himself boasted about paying for Jihadists suicide bombers to attack Israel within pre-1967 boarders Yes, I sure do have a problem with Islam, being an antitheist, so this is in no way whatsoever a point against me. If we were in the 1930s and 1940s, I'd equally have a problem with the Vatican supporting German imperialism and Italian fascism. 'Islamic fascism' makes perfect linguistic and philosophical sense, you obviously disagree because you take a contrary view. With that in mind, I'd urge a less emotional reactionary mind, and a more analytical dialectical one.

Chomsky should be on everyone's enemy list. He's a like a quiet little old Hitler. He's a hard critic of western values. There is something wrong with him. The more I listen to him praise the Cuban government, the more I realize he's a dolt. He's so far out of reality it baffles my mind.

@@troy3456789 Don't be so modest. I am certain that many things baffle your mind.

@@GStones58 In the case of Chomsky, he helps remove all doubt about how stupid he is. I don't have to read between the lines. I can take what he says at face value without adding my own assumptions.

I would wear that like a badge of honor.

@@troy3456789 yeah your not on anyone's enemy list that's for sure

The fact that Krauss is the epitome of the schoolboy admirer says much of the genius of Chomsky.

‘’The modern Socrates’’ tells it all….

MonkeyPoida It's a great wake up call. The real killer is when you examine the justifications and rationalisations presented to excuse the behaviour at the time. How many people know that the british were drug lords? No one taught me that at school, it was all Biggles and the Cutty Sark. Naff all about getting chinese peasants smacked off their tits so we could have a cup of tea.

Tony Hopkinson If you support and rationalise the state -as they did, then you are no different.

Samsgarden Fortunately I don't. Nationalism and the jingoism that goes with it makes me want to puke. Community does mean something though. So while I wouldn't go to war for Britain, I would for the british people. And while I wouldn't tax to support the state, I would to support my community. It's a subtle distinction but a very important one.

Tony Hopkinson Well that's up to you to decide. It would be pretty hard to justify though, considering almost every war is offensive or "repeat business" from the people the West fuck over on a regular basis.

Samsgarden I don't have any problem at all justifying removing threats to me and mine. There's me, mine and some cunts who are threatening them. That includes the buggers who caused me and mine to be threatened though.... I refuse to take the blame for the policies of the corporate sock puppets. I'm as responsible for those actions as Ali from round the corner is responsible for 9/11.

Like fine wine

Fred: Still was at 90. Probably still is at 91.

I will be keen to know about his lifestyle and diet. I am surprised how can he be so active and brilliant at his age. He can sit so long without any issues fully focused on the discussion.

Reid Alldabooks If we could make an overall assessment of this important dialogue, we could safely say, that the advantages are much much more great than what you have mentioned in your criticism

Reid Alldabooks He's an 86 year old man. Perhaps he's got a tad bit impatient with time, but I can only hope to be half as lucid as that man at 80.

Same here. It doesn't even matter whether he is wrong or right about things, I am always thankful for the kick up my paradigms I get from him.

Christopher Hitchens on Chomsky- 'My quarrel with Chomsky goes back to the Balkan wars of the 1990s, where he more or less openly represented the "Serbian Socialist Party" (actually the national-socialist and expansionist dictatorship of Slobodan Milosevic) as the victim. Many of us are proud of having helped organize to prevent the slaughter and deportation of Europe's oldest and largest and most tolerant Muslim minority, in Bosnia-Herzegovina and in Kosovo. But at that time, when they were real, Chomsky wasn't apparently interested in Muslim grievances. He only became a voice for that when the Taliban and Al Qaeda needed to be represented in their turn as the victims of a "silent genocide" in Afghanistan. Let me put it like this, if a supposed scholar takes the Christian-Orthodox side when it is the aggressor, and then switches to taking the "Muslim" side when Muslims commit mass murder, I think that there is something very nasty going on. And yes, I don't think it is exaggerated to describe that nastiness as "anti-American" when the power that stops and punishes both aggressions is the United States … In some awful way, his regard for the underdog has mutated into support for mad dogs. This is not at all like watching the implosion of an obvious huckster and jerk like Michael Moore, who would have made a perfectly good Brownshirt populist. The collapse of Chomsky feels to me more like tragedy.'

Hitchens claiming he played a part yugoslavia wars.... what a jack ass. Of course he also misrepresents Chomsky's complex analysis quite dramatically.. frankly just incorrectly. Chomsky stated that the Serbian government would not conform to the economic and social reforms the U.S. were pressuring them into which is why NATO eventually bombed them, not because of the war crimes that were being committed. He never said they were victims. The second half of his "argument" is just non-sense attempting to sound profound. It really has no meaning.

Hitchens on Chomsky: '[Chomsky] has now been impeached by his own standards, since scrutiny of the evidence does not bear him out on Serbia or Afghanistan or Iraq. It didn't bear him out on Cambodia either, though he was never a "Holocaust denier" or anything like it. And he has, I think, ceased to be of any use to young people who might pardonably doubt the official story.'

@@MattSingh1 A whole waste of time and shit writing.

hotstixx Obsessive reader and remembers everything he reads. Amazing human being.

hotstixx Much of it he pulls out of his butt. Many of his so call facts are found no where else or grasped by the smallest hair.

Bill .WattsUpWithThat Gee bill.when you stop gobbling your faeces,help us all out.

Bill .WattsUpWithThat Care to elaborate. Name a couple facts he made up. How about just one?

Patrick van meter He has made such outrageous statements like the iroquois were the model for the constitution, or the Berlin wall was created to keep low wage workers out of the west. Even his BS about ISIS, which was created by the void left by Obama. Funny how he doesn't talk about Cuba's or Russia involvement in the wars in South America. The guy is a total fraud.

7:55

DEFINITELY BETTER THAN ANY OF HIS BOOKS. The very pace of his voice makes the whole difference. I just cant’t miss it for more than 24 hours in a row - the global lockdown made it obvious, and yet I’d been reading him regularly for decades. What an incredibly profound and beautiful mind. The epitomy of Homo SAPIENS, possibly the one and only ‘’modern Socrates’’. A true treasure for humankind. If only eight bilions humans had been educated the right way to understand even the most ‘paradoxical’ thoughts of his, this world would be quite a better place to live in, for all of us.

MckennaCountrCulture No comparison

Not Terrance Mckenna - you must mean another Mckenna.

Liberal intellectual. Spends all day telling everyone how bad THEY are.

To catch that and put it the way you did shows that you are a humble genius too.

@@hamidjalili1099 Ha! Cheers! :-)

kzfaq.info/get/bejne/j7uVY8Jl18rOYIk.html👈🏻👈🏻👌👌✌✌

kzfaq.info/get/bejne/j7uVY8Jl18rOYIk.html👌👌✌✌

kzfaq.info/get/bejne/j7uVY8Jl18rOYIk.html👌👌

You should watch Sam Harris on his illusion of free will, he dives further into the topic...

Tager den også lige på Dansk - hvis du ikke allerede kender til nogle af de foredrag Sam Harris har om "illusionen om fri vilje", så vil jeg varmt anbefale dig at se dem...

GorillaGuerilla Jeg har skam også set en del af hans foredrag :) men tak for tippet

Tobias Knudsen er du så enig i hans konklusion...?

Ja det er jeg sådan set. Jeg er agnostiker, så jeg er meget skeptisk overfor menneskers evne til at opnå nogen form for absolut forståelse af verden, og dermed bliver begreber som fri vilje afhængige af hvad der ligger til grun for vores handlinger på et kvantemekanisk niveau, eller måske noget endnu mere grundlæggende - hvem siger at kaninhullet ikke er endnu dybere? - og vi kan ikke p.t. forudsige hvordan bitte små partikler som hadroner eller leptoner vil opføre sig, eller præcis hvornår en ustabil isotop af et stof pga. en exciteret kerne udsender en gammakvant - jeg har svært ved at forestille mig en situation, hvor mennesker kan forstå mekanismerne på så grundlæggende et niveau, at de kan forstå hele årsagskæden, men i sidste ende må man jo erkende, at idéen om fri vilje forudsætter en form for adskillese fra resten af verden, som om et individ kan eksistere uafhængig af resten af universet, og tage beslutninger udelukkende baseret på deres vilje, men alt hvad der ligger til grund for vores eksistens er jo bestemt af en masse faktorer som ikke er bestemte af os, så begrebet fri vilje er problematisk hvis man definerer det på den måde, men hvis man vender tilbage til kvantemekanikken, så kan man jo pege på at netop denne uforudsigelighed er det som må træde i den fri viljes sted - og vores identitet, og dermed vilje, afhænger dermed bare af hvad vi "tilfældigvis" har været ude for, og på den måde har vi jo en identitet, men vi vælger den ikke selv, og det ville heller ikke give mening at forestille sig, at vi skulle vælge hvem vi var, fordi det forudsætter et eller andet udgangspunkt, hvor vi ikke er os selv - det virker meget paradoksalt på mig. Men i praksis synes jeg det er lidt ligegyldigt fra dag til dag om man har fri vilje eller ej, for illusionen er overbevisende nok til at snyde mig og alle andre hele tiden, og det fungerer nogenlunde at behandle individer som om de har kontrol over deres valg osv. Så doskussionen bliver for mig blot en form for underholdning.

Chris Pollitt which you'll forget faster than you realise it means nothing if don't do anything about it .... knowledge is porridge

vikeyz1 wat

kzfaq.info/get/bejne/j7uVY8Jl18rOYIk.html✌✌😊😊

To tell you the truth, nobody that I knew at the time had any idea of what the war was all about. Keep in mind that we only hear what the government said. But many people thought it was part of the megalomaniac tendency of Castro. Of course it might be the case that from a highest perspective it was a good thing for those countries, but it certainly was not good for us. I sincerely do not remember anybody filled with self sacrificial feelings wiling to die for any body'else cause. Most people were to busy trying to survive in Cuba.

kzfaq.info/get/bejne/j7uVY8Jl18rOYIk.html👈🏻👈🏻👍👍

There's plenty of libertarian socialist talks by him you can find or anarchist youtube channels like anarchopac or libertarian socialist rants

adfad gadfa How about his son David Friedman?

Aegis Divine Yes, a total straw-man of pro-gun rights position. The second amendment is mostly about protecting the people from the tyrannical state, which already spies on its citizens, uses propaganda to control them etc. It can also be thought of as a way for the citizens to control this imperialism and colonialism. An armed population saying no to all these aggressive wars, the corporate madness against the planet and so on is what's needed. The more educated, moral person you are, the more important it is for you to get a gun and hold on to that gun in America.

Paavo Kuronen It's just annoying that those intellectuals who associate themselves with the likes of Chomsky rely on cartoon-esque caricatures to form their opinions on gun rights. I mean, it's not shameful to admit that you simply are afraid of guns. It is shameful, however, to portray all of the completely sane and normal gun-rights advocates as parodies of Elmer Fudd.

Aegis Divine I found it quite ironic that he started the talk by dismissing rhetorical style and later on used it. When he starts talking about Israel, Conservatives, etc. he sounds very much like a politician. Setting up straw men arguments, ignoring the complexity of the issues and using broad brush strokes to paint his surprisingly simplistic picture. To me Chomsky still remains a conspiracy theorist for intellectuals.

Ofir Gal The irony was certainly not lost on me. Although, to his credit, he encouraged the audience to challenge and fact-check him (even though they applauded sheepishly nonetheless). While Chomsky has a lot to offer, people need to stop allowing intellectuals like him to do the intellectual heavy-lifting for them. No one person could possibly devise all of the answers.

Aegis Divine I have some reservations about Chomsky's answers. I admire the guy but he's obviously skewed to the left. His economics is pretty woeful and he's very supportive of the democratic liberal state. At least he was honest about the fact that Republicans are only nominally conservative. Did you get the sense that Krauss didn't follow half of what's going on?

Piero Gleijeses

If Naturalism is wrong, what else is there? If Realism is wrong, then what is the alternative? How is a Realism a dogma? If the subject transcends itself, then what is the subject that is being transcended? What do you mean by "nothing"?

Solitary15 Difficult to say, maybe start with his earlier stuff re Vietnam

Solitary15 He has some essays compiled into several books. Whatever books you select, you'll probably notice extensive resource citations... something his detractors never acknowledge, but instead dismiss with ad hominems

Understanding Power Hegemony or Survival

He also said that there is very little known about pre-conscious mechanisms and it is a suspicion of his that it seems to be a major factor he stated it wasn't conclusive at all

I would agree with him on that one. Our "decisions" are some messy combination of conscious and unconscious forces. I had a professor in college who I think put it best when I asked him,"Which is it? Do we have freewill or are our actions pre-determined?" He said, "You know what? It's a little of both."