Christopher Hitchens & Noam Chomsky on U.S. Foreign Policy (6/8) (1995)

December 8, 1995 http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html?ie=UTF8&location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.... Watch the full program: http://thefilmarchived.blogspot.com/2010/10/noam-chomsky-and-christopher-hitc...

The Armies of the Night (1968) is a Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award-winning nonfiction novel written by Norman Mailer and sub-titled History as a Novel/The Novel as History. Mailer essentially creates his own genre for the narrative, split into historicized and novelized accounts of the October 1967 March on the Pentagon. Mailer's unique rendition of the non-fiction novel was one of only a few at the time, and received the most critical attention. In Cold Blood (1965) by Truman Capote and Hell's Angels (1966) by Hunter S. Thompson had already been published, and three months later Tom Wolfe would contribute The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (1968).

Fred Hampton (August 30, 1948 -- December 4, 1969) was an African-American activist and deputy chairman of the Illinois chapter of the Black Panther Party (BPP). He was killed as he lay in bed in his apartment by a tactical unit of the Cook County, Illinois State's Attorney's Office (SAO), in conjunction with the Chicago Police Department (CPD) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Hampton's death was chronicled in the 1971 documentary film The Murder of Fred Hampton, as well as an episode of the critically acclaimed documentary series Eyes on the Prize.

The Bell Curve is a best-selling but controversial 1994 book by the late Harvard psychologist Richard J. Herrnstein and American Enterprise Institute political scientist Charles Murray. Its central argument is that intelligence is a better predictor of many factors including financial income, job performance, unwanted pregnancy, and crime than parents' socioeconomic status or education level. Also, the book argues that those with high intelligence, the "cognitive elite", are becoming separated from those of average and below-average intelligence and that this is a dangerous social trend. Most of the controversy concerns Chapters 13 and 14, in which the authors wrote about racial differences in intelligence and discuss the implications of those differences. The authors were reported throughout the popular press as arguing that these IQ differences are genetic, and they did indeed write in chapter 13: "It seems highly likely to us that both genes and the environment have something to do with racial differences." The introduction to the chapter more cautiously states, "The debate about whether and how much genes and environment have to do with ethnic differences remains unresolved."

The book's title comes from the bell-shaped normal distribution of IQ scores. The normal distribution is the limiting distribution of a random quantity which is the sum of smaller, independent random phenomena. The message in the title is that IQ scores are normally distributed because a person's intelligence is the sum of many small random variations in genetic and environmental factors.

Shortly after publication, many people rallied both in criticism and defense of the book. Some critics denounced the book and its authors as supporting scientific racism. A number of critical texts, including The Bell Curve Debate, were written in response to the book.

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[AtheistGallant]

Chomsky rules. 

[dashrirprock]

The irony here is that CAQ would have surely opposed the latest misadventure in Iraq and the Washington Post was one of the first and most vigorous supporters of the war.

Instead of warning about a "death-bed" conversion on atheism he should have said he was mistaken on the war. But no, he doubled-down.

[bboschboi]

@ItsameAlex No.

Chomsky rules.

[dashrirprock]

@fleammm

Covert Action Quarterly, the journal Hitchens is pimping.

[fleammm]

@dashrirprock who is CAQ

[ezehernandez]

the NSC explained that “the majority of Arabs … believe that the United States is seeking to protect its interest in Near East oil by supporting the status quo and opposing political or economic progress.” And they are right: “our economic and cultural interests in the area have led not unnaturally to close U.S. relations with elements in the Arab world whose primary interest lies in the maintenance of relations with the West and the status quo in their countries,” blocking democracy...

[ItsameAlex]

@AtheistGallant

No.

Hitchens rules.

[Tsnore]

Hitch later stood for aggression in Iraq circa 2002-2006.

[DeweyZinnChomskyFisk]

@Exmech2 it is "cultish" and "ignorant" to not share your white supremacist ideology? pathetic...

[Exmech2]

@DeweyZinnChomskyFisk Glad to see your ignorance is limited to the 21st century. And once again... muslim isn't a race. But then, an uneducated, ignorant twit apologist such as you won't accept that demonstrable fact. It doesn't fit into your own cultish views.

[DeweyZinnChomskyFisk]

@Exmech2 i am "the lowest form of human possible" because i don't share your white supremacist ideology? every "God" is a fairytale, including the Christian one. far more people have died at the hands of white imperialism than by terrorists (not to mention the fact that the US created, trained, armed, and funded the terrorist organization that would go on to destroy the WTC towers). pathetic racism...

[Exmech2]

@DeweyZinnChomskyFisk Do you feel that berating muslims for killing people over an insane ideal, fairytale god, and chronic xenophobia is being hateful? Especially when the muslim kills over "honor". Pathetic that you would defend such behavior. You are the lowest form of human possible.