Changes

===Controversies===

===Controversies===

#Chomsky denied the Cambodian Genocide, claiming that the killing had been inflated "by a factor of 100."<ref>http://www.paulbogdanor.com/chomsky/encounter.pdf</ref><ref>http://www.paulbogdanor.com/chomsky/labedz.pdf</ref>  He further asserted that the (in reality) 2 to 3 million Cambodians slaughtered by the [[Khmer Rouge]] from 1975 to 1978 were morally comparable to Nazi collaborators during WW2, and that [[Pol Pot]]'s Cambodia was "comparable to France after liberation [from the Nazis]."<ref>http://www.mekong.net/cambodia/chomsky.htm</ref>

#Chomsky denied the Cambodian Genocide, claiming that the killing had been inflated "by a factor of 100."<ref>http://www.paulbogdanor.com/chomsky/encounter.pdf</ref><ref>http://www.paulbogdanor.com/chomsky/labedz.pdf</ref>  He further asserted that the (in reality) 2 to 3 million Cambodians slaughtered by the [[Khmer Rouge]] from 1975 to 1978 were morally comparable to Nazi collaborators during WW2, and that [[Pol Pot]]'s Cambodia was "comparable to France after liberation [from the Nazis]."<ref>http://www.mekong.net/cambodia/chomsky.htm</ref>

#Chomsky recently (1995) claimed, in the wake of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, that the death toll in Cambodia may have been inflated "by a factor of a ''thousand''."<ref>http://www.mekong.net/cambodia/chomsky.htm#fn61</ref>  Since he was responding to an estimate of two million dead, his words would imply that the real toll was on the order of two thousand.  (Note:  Investigators have uncovered and examined the remains of 1.1 million Cambodians found in mass graves near Khmer Rouge execution centers whose cause of death has been determined by the investigators to have been execution by the former Khmer Rouge regime.<ref>http://www.mekong.net/cambodia/deaths.htm</ref><ref>http://www.mekong.net/cambodia/toll.htm</ref><ref>http://welcome.to/dccam</ref>  Because no ''more'' than roughly ''half'' of those killed by the Khmer Rouge were executed (the rest having died from other causes like state-created famine, the deliberate withholding of basic necessities by the state, the refusal by the state to allow foreign aid, the abolishing of medicine and hospitals by the state, systematic overwork and slave labor by the state, and brutal mistreatment by the state), the Documentation Center of Cambodia estimates that the former regime killed or otherwise caused the unnecessary deaths of, between 2 and 3 million Cambodians.<ref>http://www.mekong.net/cambodia/deaths.htm</ref>  A UN investigation reported 2-3 million dead, while UNICEF estimated 3 million dead.<ref>William Shawcross, The Quality of Mercy: Cambodia, Holocaust, and Modern Conscience (Touchstone, 1985), p115-6</ref>  Demographic estimates went as high as 4 million killed by the Khmer Rouge from 1975 to 1978.<ref>http://www.paulbogdanor.com/chomsky/labedz.pdf</ref>  Even the Khmer Rouge acknowledged that 2 million had been killed—though they attributed those deaths to a subsequent Vietnamese invasion.<ref>Khieu Samphan, Interview, Time, March 10, 1980</ref>)

#Chomsky recently (1995) claimed, in the wake of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, that the death toll in Cambodia may have been inflated "by a factor of a ''thousand''."<ref>http://www.mekong.net/cambodia/chomsky.htm#fn61</ref>  Since he was responding to an estimate of two million dead, his words would imply that the real toll was on the order of two thousand.  (Note:  Investigators have uncovered and examined the remains of 1.1 million Cambodians found in mass graves near Khmer Rouge execution centers whose cause of death has been determined by the investigators to have been execution by the former Khmer Rouge regime.<ref>http://www.mekong.net/cambodia/deaths.htm</ref><ref>http://www.mekong.net/cambodia/toll.htm</ref><ref>http://welcome.to/dccam</ref>  Because no ''more'' than roughly ''half'' of those who died during the Khmer Rouge years were executed (the rest having died from other causes like state-created famine, the deliberate withholding of basic necessities by the state, the refusal by the state to allow foreign aid, the abolishing of medicine and hospitals by the state, systematic overwork and slave labor by the state, and normal mortality), the Documentation Center of Cambodia estimates that the former regime killed or otherwise caused the unnecessary deaths of, between 2 and 2.5 million Cambodians (with 2.5 to 3 million dying and half a million of these representing normal mortality for the period).<ref>http://www.mekong.net/cambodia/deaths.htm</ref>  A UN investigation reported 2-3 million dead, while UNICEF estimated 3 million dead.<ref>William Shawcross, The Quality of Mercy: Cambodia, Holocaust, and Modern Conscience (Touchstone, 1985), p115-6</ref>  Even the Khmer Rouge acknowledged that 2 million had been killed—though they attributed those deaths to a subsequent Vietnamese invasion.<ref>Khieu Samphan, Interview, Time, March 10, 1980</ref>

#Chomsky has claimed that [[Pearl Harbor]] saved millions of lives and that America and Britain used Nazi armies to attack the [[Soviet Union]] and prolong the [[Holocaust]].<ref>http://www.paulbogdanor.com/chomsky/newyorker1.html</ref>

#Chomsky has claimed that [[Pearl Harbor]] saved millions of lives and that America and Britain used Nazi armies to attack the [[Soviet Union]] and prolong the [[Holocaust]].<ref>http://www.paulbogdanor.com/chomsky/newyorker1.html</ref>

#Chomsky has stated: “Of course, no one supposed that Mao literally murdered tens of millions of people, or that he ‘intended’ that any die at all.”<ref>“Second Reply to Casey,” ZNet, September 2001: http://www.zmag.org/chomreply2.htm</ref>  In fact, a comprehensive analysis by Professor R.J. Rummel concluded that Mao was responsible for the deaths of 76 million Chinese.<ref>http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/NOTE1.HTM</ref>

#Chomsky has stated: “Of course, no one supposed that Mao literally murdered tens of millions of people, or that he ‘intended’ that any die at all.”<ref>“Second Reply to Casey,” ZNet, September 2001: http://www.zmag.org/chomreply2.htm</ref>  In fact, a comprehensive analysis by Professor R.J. Rummel concluded that Mao was responsible for the deaths of 76 million Chinese.<ref>http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/NOTE1.HTM</ref>

#Chomsky regularly compares the "alleged" genocide in Cambodia to the 21-year occupation of [[East Timor]] by [[Indonesia]].  He wrote:  “The harshest critics claim that perhaps 100,000 people have been slaughtered [in Cambodia]… Comparing East Timor with Cambodia, we see that the time frame of alleged atrocities is the same, the numbers allegedly slaughtered are roughly comparable in absolute terms, and five to ten times as high in East Timor relative to population… my own conclusion is that the sources in the [case of] East Timor are more credible…”<ref>Radical Priorities (rev. ed., AK Press, 2003), p80.</ref>  Based on the findings of genocide investigators, as mentioned above; at least 2.2 million people were killed by the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia in three years.  A Truth Commission found that the Indonesian war in East Timor caused 18,600 violent killings and 75,000-183,000 deaths from hunger and illness.<ref>Final Report of the Commission for Reception, Truth and Reconciliation in East Timor (CAVR), January 30, 2006, part 6, paras. 47, 56-7: http://www.ictj.org/en/news/features/846.html</ref>  [[Suharto]] killed far less people in absolute terms over decades in one of the world's most populous countries than Pol Pot killed in three years in a country with under 7 million people, and exponentially less relative to the size of the population.

#Chomsky regularly compares the "alleged" genocide in Cambodia to the 24-year occupation of [[East Timor]] by [[Indonesia]].  He wrote:  “The harshest critics claim that perhaps 100,000 people have been slaughtered [in Cambodia]… Comparing East Timor with Cambodia, we see that the time frame of alleged atrocities is the same, the numbers allegedly slaughtered are roughly comparable in absolute terms, and five to ten times as high in East Timor relative to population… my own conclusion is that the sources in the [case of] East Timor are more credible…”<ref>Radical Priorities (rev. ed., AK Press, 2003), p80.</ref>  Based on the findings of genocide investigators, as mentioned above; over 2.2 million people were killed by the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia in less than 4 years.  A Truth Commission found that the Indonesian war in East Timor caused 18,600 violent killings and 75,000-183,000 deaths from hunger and illness.<ref>Final Report of the Commission for Reception, Truth and Reconciliation in East Timor (CAVR), January 30, 2006, part 6, paras. 47, 56-7: http://www.ictj.org/en/news/features/846.html</ref>  [[Suharto]] killed far less people in absolute terms over decades in one of the world's most populous countries than Pol Pot killed in three years in a country with 8 million people, and exponentially less relative to the size of the population.

#Chomsky denied any genocide or mass reprisals in [[Laos]] after the Communist victory, stating that the Pathet Lao "have made some efforts to achieve a reconciliation with the mountain tribesmen who had been organized in the CIA clandestine army."<ref>After the Cataclysm (South End Press, 1979), p122.</ref>  Some 100,000 tribespeople had been exterminated in a campaign of genocide at the time.<ref>Forced Back and Forgotten (Lawyers’ Committee for Human Rights, 1989), p8 (estimate); Jane Hamilton-Merritt, Tragic Mountains: The Hmong, the Americans, and the Secret Wars for Laos, 1942-1992 (Indiana Uniersity Press, 1999), pp337-460 (atrocities).</ref>

#Chomsky denied any genocide or mass reprisals in [[Laos]] after the Communist victory, stating that the Pathet Lao "have made some efforts to achieve a reconciliation with the mountain tribesmen who had been organized in the CIA clandestine army."<ref>After the Cataclysm (South End Press, 1979), p122.</ref>  Some 100,000 tribespeople had been exterminated in a campaign of genocide at the time.<ref>Forced Back and Forgotten (Lawyers’ Committee for Human Rights, 1989), p8 (estimate); Jane Hamilton-Merritt, Tragic Mountains: The Hmong, the Americans, and the Secret Wars for Laos, 1942-1992 (Indiana Uniersity Press, 1999), pp337-460 (atrocities).</ref>

#Chomsky once wrote: “At the end of 1978 Cambodia [under the Khmer Rouge] was the only country in Indochina that had succeeded at all in overcoming the agricultural crisis that was left by the American destruction.”<ref>Language and Politics (AK Press, 2004), pp245-6. Cf.: “it was a condition of survival to turn (or return) the populations to productive work. The victors in Cambodia undertook drastic and often brutal measures to accomplish this task… At a heavy cost, these measures appear to have overcome the dire and destructive consequences of the US war by 1978,” After the Cataclysm (South End Press, 1979), pviii.</ref>  By late 1979, UN and Red Cross officials were warning that another 2.25 million Cambodians faced death by starvation due to “the near destruction of Cambodian society under the regime of ousted Prime Minister Pol Pot,”<ref>New York Times, August 8, 1979.</ref><ref>http://www.time.com/time/magazine/printout/0,8816,912511,00.html</ref> who were saved by American and international aid.  The Cambodian communists' economic plans were, at times, utterly surreal. Scholar David Chandler notes that, in a Democratic Kampuchea report on General Political Tasks of 1976, there are three lines devoted to education, and six devoted to urine. The document states that, regarding human urine, "We collect thirty per cent. That leaves a surplus of 70%." These were indicative of the types of policies that Chomsky and his co-writer, Edward Herman, claimed had lifted Cambodia out of the ashes of war.

#Chomsky once wrote: “At the end of 1978 Cambodia [under the Khmer Rouge] was the only country in Indochina that had succeeded at all in overcoming the agricultural crisis that was left by the American destruction.”<ref>Language and Politics (AK Press, 2004), pp245-6. Cf.: “it was a condition of survival to turn (or return) the populations to productive work. The victors in Cambodia undertook drastic and often brutal measures to accomplish this task… At a heavy cost, these measures appear to have overcome the dire and destructive consequences of the US war by 1978,” After the Cataclysm (South End Press, 1979), pviii.</ref>  By late 1979, UN and Red Cross officials were warning that another 2.25 million Cambodians faced death by starvation due to “the near destruction of Cambodian society under the regime of ousted Prime Minister Pol Pot,”<ref>New York Times, August 8, 1979.</ref><ref>http://www.time.com/time/magazine/printout/0,8816,912511,00.html</ref> who were saved by American and international aid.  The Cambodian communists' economic plans were, at times, utterly surreal. Scholar David Chandler notes that, in a Democratic Kampuchea report on General Political Tasks of 1976, there are three lines devoted to education, and six devoted to urine. The document states that, regarding human urine, "We collect thirty per cent. That leaves a surplus of 70%." These were indicative of the types of policies that Chomsky and his co-writer, Edward Herman, claimed had lifted Cambodia out of the ashes of war.