64 Comments

Hmm, anyone else a subscriber but only looks at the teaser version? Would love to read the full interview.

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Same here. For some reason, I only get the teaser and my subscription is up to date. Must be a glitch!

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me too. I have a subscription but can't access to the full report. I keep trying to get out of one browser and log into TK News in another. I can log in, but can not see the full report.

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This is such an ongoing annoyance. Really gets old, Matt Taibbi.

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Gregor Benko: Me too, as they say. Can't seem to make it work to read the Chomsky interview, nor contact anyone to fix the problem, even though I'm a subscriber

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Remove the last four characters in the url.

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Me too. I wonder if it’s because when I subscribed it was $40? They just renewed me at $40 but now I see it’s $50 to subscribe. Am I just donating? I would pay the $50 but I don’t want to click on it because then I will have paid $90.

I miss the days when internet places had actual help contacts instead of read the help article

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founding

I can send you $2 to help your predicament and exploitations. Other Matt's fan grateful for his work might chip in also although as I can see "Useful Idiots" is free of charge.

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The full is in the Useful Idiots substack. I have a sub to UI but not a payed one and I got it (although I don’t really know if I got the whole transcript since I’m on the free sub for UI. Do pay for Matt’s so don’t know if that could be a factor).

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Chomsky is a one trick pony. Anti American in its purest form he will fashion every argument to arrive at the same starting point. Whatever evil anywhere is nothing compared to what USA is doing. Plus it is our fault anyway. Same dynamic as Sanders and his billionaires tick. But for a few votes in his first political campaign Sanders would be driving a cab in Vermont haranguing passengers with tirades against people he envies and resents. Chomsky has more intellectual chops so he brought the genre to higher level. There is always another Bernie or Noam waiting to corner you at Starbucks. Sounds counterintuitive in the light of the attention they get but they are actual irrelevant to man in the street whose mantle they claim. Marxists, regardless of the piles of bodies they produced and geography they have controlled and decades they have been at it have very little to offer that people volunteer for. Fighting human nature and aspirations is a fool's pursuit. No, you cannot engineer human souls.

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For you idiotic bozos who didn't get Chomsky's point about sports: He appreciates and enjoys athletic competition. He is simply pointing out how stupid it is to root for a team just because they're from your geographic location. It's a perfect small bore critique of the nationalism that both he and Einstein have called possibly the worst of humainity's instincts. He has spent his whole life showing people how disgusting and immoral it is to refuse to examine the behavior of your own country with exactly the same criteria you would use examining a different country.

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What would be the purpose of professional sports if it didn't matter who won? What kind of wierd world would it be if you didn't want your home team to win, or your own company to outperform others. Should wives and family and friends of ballplayers not want their husbands team to win? Extend wives and family and friends to their friends and their friends and their friends and so on. Chomsky isn't intellectually strong, he is intellectually weak because he doesn't understand bonds at all. Not national bonds, not any bonds. And his comment about enterprises being run democratically is a joke. He is simply intellectually weak for not understanding human behavior. I am betting he has never run a business or even been in a real business his entire life. Just like Sanders.

The difference between Sanders/Chomsky and people like me, is I keep my fat mouth shut about things of which I know nothing. I think that statement "better to be silent and thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt" applies very nicely to people like Chomsky, Sanders, Warren and a bunch of Republicans too.

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Winning matters, but how one wins - although a quaint idea to most capitalists, is the intent of sports, otherwise the effort is called "war"., winning by any means. For that matter, capitalism actually is a game called war, permanent war that "drives the Democratic Capitalist nation" (quote from Dr. Paul Wolfowitz; NeoConservatism).

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“...traces the aforementioned undeniable truth, that the arc of American politics has moved in his direction, thanks in large part to activism.”

Huh? The acceptance of American imperialism, militarism, corporatism is ubiquitous now. The acceptance of more authoritarianism is everywhere - distinguished between groups mostly by what form it should take and how it should be implemented/achieved. I really don’t see how the arc of American politics can be seen to have moved toward Chomsky. There really is no old-school “left” anymore - the opposition to both political and corporate power - and what social causes of the old left that have made progress are now taken up by the new “left” as a means of control (perhaps most noticeably and acutely in the whole current manifestation of identity politics).

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Chomsky has done well to secure his reputation as an opponent of endless interventions and a supporter of overtures toward peace. However, he turns a blind eye toward some major infractions against the democratic process and investigative research that could tarnish his reputation among what remains of the democratic left. He refuses to deduce the obvious conclusions of 9/11: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sqxq03izxrQ

He doesn't dare entertain alternative theories of the current pandemic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lsRay1wInBg

It is difficult to fault someone that has been so prompt to challenge the mainstream narrative in the past. But at the same time, age should bring a greater courage to endure such attacks. No one that values integrity should choose journalism as a career if they are not willing to take risks. Matt is still young, but if he continues to pursue a career in journalism there will be some hard choices. https://off-guardian.org/2021/02/14/opening-the-cias-can-of-worms/

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Chomsky equates the massive scale effort by the CCP to de-Uighur the Uighurs... to Gaza?!

record scratch

Glad you put this out there Matt. Chomsky always grated but that's delusional.

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Yeah, this sort of thinking by a supposed intellectual is rather bankrupt. And it does, rather nicely in fact, expose his anti-American bias. It is one thing to be against violence and such, but a knee-jerk reaction is the sort of thing that exposes a weak mind.

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Chomsky told folks to vote for Biden. Now we have Biden's security team sending state troopers to some guy's home to intimidate him for a mild criticism of birdbrain AOC. Here's the video proof: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TTBVwTXM2eA

Hope Matt and Chomsky are happy now.

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Nothing funnier than the "Baked Noam Chomsky" faux phone calls to the Jimmy Dore show.

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"I tried again in the interview below, but he dunked on me quickly. Some issues are no-fly zones. But there are plenty he loves talking about."

Ah, the essence of why the Intelligentsia is held in such disregard. If you are a wide-ranging public policy pundit, yet decline to venture into certain areas that will likely show a lack of intellectual consistency, that seriously degrades confidence that any points you make on any subject have fairly considered the many sides of contentious issues. Isn't this fairness of analysis supposedly the hallmark of our intellectual betters?

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Matt your link has issues. Need to fix it or risk losing readers. It's not just the shorth version problem, it's also that when comments are made about something I commented and I want to view the link doesn't take me to the comment specifically.

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That happens to me too. Sometimes but not all the times. It might be browser related, but the "I only get the short version" seems to happen to me even when I try to login to TK News on multiple browsers.

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Either Chomsky is a total boomer or I just got filtered, hard.

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Splendid lil interview. Thank you, Matt.

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Same problem - subscriber with no access. Went through the whole Substack process with no change at all.

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founding

Outstanding and much needed excerpts from the full version on "Useful Idiots".

Some "thinkers" in our groups are dismissive of Chomsky on “enterprises ought to be owned and managed in a democratic fashion by the people who participate in them” -- the only tinny thread for the entire dismissal ;-))

Of course another inspiring progressive, Richard Wolff, concluded exactly same -- cooperatives ruled by workers-owners. Even in most German corporation there is rudimentary of that - per law worker/employee representatives sit on Boards. Crimes against humanity like lack of universal public health in the US are unimaginable anywhere in the world.

But Noam Chomsky is "dismissed" by numerous "deep thinkers" among commentariat -- the obvious reason is the mirror Chomsky is holding for all of us:

-- Before inventing "genocide" in China promoted by Falun Gong berserkers and anti-Semitic evangelical extremist Adrian Zenz and imposing starvation on Syrian population for 17 (seventeen) years on behalf of oh soo democratic Saudi Arabia and Israel -- Chomsky recommends that we look closer at home -- that we should look at horror of Gaza -- it is OUR open-air concentration camp, for example.

This is too strong for delicate ears of our "deep thinkers".

"More misery in Syria." Let them eat... nothing.

"More misery in Syria." - The Scrum (substack.com)

https://thescrum.substack.com/p/more-misery-in-syria

Patrick Lawrence -- April 10

The US worsened the suffering of Syrians by backing Jihadist terrorists against them, burning their wheat fields and looting their oil and gas. Now the US wants to “help” the Syrians by suffocating them with brutal sanctions!

Queues all over Syria for bread and fuel after the US and NATO looted Syria’s oil and burned its wheat. The US is a sadistic regime that thrives on the misery of nations. Syria was once a self-sufficient country. Before America decided (remember 17 years ago !!) that secular socialist Syria needs “democracy and freedom”.

------------------------------------------------

Former hostage responds to top diplomat calling Al Qaeda a US 'asset' in Syria - YouTube

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k5eb-z-QLXw

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Did you simply forget about Assad? Or do you hold him blameless? Perhaps you approve that he gassed his own citizens?

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founding

It has now been fully exposed and documented that all (ALL) chemical attacks after Syria's chemical disarmament were staged by CIA and its Al Qaeda collaborators, including "famed" White Helmets

- https://thegrayzone.com/2021/04/07/bbc-white-helmets-mayday-uk-intelligence/

- https://thegrayzone.com/2021/03/24/author-bellingcat-opcw-whistleblower/

- https://thegrayzone.com/2020/12/07/opcw-executives-whistleblower-syria-leaks/

- https://thegrayzone.com/2020/10/20/chomsky-opcw-cover-up-of-probe-undermining-us-led-bombing-of-syria-is-shocking/

There are untold other sources and documentation about these crimes. As Obama stated on Venezuela:

- “Venezuela is fundamental threat to USA” -- declared Obama formally initiating regime change.

What he meant is “Socialism is a threat to capitalism”… hence imperial War-party endless wars -- against Bolivia, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Syria, Cuba, Libya, China….. Defund US military terrorism

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Matt, I wish you had asked him about your and GG's unforgivable Trump supporting moral outrage at the refusal of a couple of social media platforms to amplify the Hunter Biden laptop 'October Surprise' non-event - that was always easily accessible on the NY Post site. I did and he was caustic and outraged at your collective stupidity.

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Errr....are you saying that Twitter deleting the NY Post account is equivalent to a "refusal....to amplify the Hunter Biden laptop" story?

In other words, if Twitter does not actively promote an account or tweet, just lets them be, then their non-action is accurately described as amplification?

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Twitter is a private company that people use to amplify news generated by other sources. They have a clear customer agreement that explains how they will not amplify certain kinds of "news."

Twitter initially blocked the story, which centered on three of Hunter Biden’s alleged laptops, because “it was unclear how they were obtained.”

CEO Jack Dorsey said Twitter has “a hack materials policy … around limiting the spread of materials that are hacked.”

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Okay, I viewed the use of the word "amplify" in the same way as Merriam-Webster: "to make larger or greater (as in amount, importance, or intensity) : INCREASE".

So using that definition, a person calls your work and someone takes a message for you, then broadcasts it on the company public announcement system because they see it as important, then they did amplify the message.

In your view, the phone system at your work records a voice message and puts it in your extension mailbox, and you interpret that normal transmission of a message as amplified.

Ah well, tomato tomahto I guess.

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yeah,, Im a subscriber, but Im only seeing teaser. Cannot reach full article.

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