Re: WEB INTELLIGENCE # 2 - jULY 23, 2003 (fwd)

I agree with every word, except perhaps the last sentence word.The
Friends/Quaker saying about everybody in the world is carzy except thee
and me, and sometimes i have doublts also about thee. Well how about
adding me?

None of us can claim not to have made mistakes, including serious ones
Mea Culpa apologu: I supported the Pol Pot regieme - article in my book
CRIRIQYE AND ANTI CRITIQUE 1984, thhgh the articel was much earlier, wehn
the anti-comuniss said he has killed 3 million when there were hardly 2 x
as many in the coutry. and my support was for what he claied he was
tryuing to do after the US had carpet bombed th plac e with more
explosives than in all of WWII. Well as new eveidence came out, i had to
cahnge my mind, also about the Gang of 4. And of course minor mistakes a
plenty.

But in re an earlier paragrph of John, I repeat what i already said in re
Michel Chossudovsky and myself. we not only think  for ourselves, but we
not onlly sift but  CROSS-Check  the info we receive. 

If I may, I learned that doing my PhD disseration on the Soviet YUnioon
berfore 1957, the first year in that they published any statitical volume
since 1937. For all the intervening years and also fro those before 1937,
I had to use all kinds of info from all kinds of source , offixal
semi-official, contra, rabidly crazy nbationalist antis, much of it
expressed in pecentage increases or decreases of an unstated cuantity.
That is where i learned to CROSS-CHECK one source agasinst a half dozen
others, and assembly my own estimates. When the satatistical handbook came
out, it very lagely confimed my totally ~laboriously self constucted
estimates. Ir is still possible that both were wrong!

cheers
gunder frank


On Wed, 23 Jul 2003,
John Leonard wrote:

> Date: Wed, 23 Jul 2003 15:42:59 -0700
> From: John Leonard <leonardjp@earthlink.net>
> To: wsn@csf.colorado.edu
> Subject: Re: WEB INTELLIGENCE # 2 - jULY 23, 2003 (fwd)
> 
> Yes, Alan, sources do vary by their reliability.
> 
> But this problem is a sociological one.
> We are living in what I call an "open totalitarian society."
> Our culture suffers from self-censorship far more effective than the 
> heavy-handed censorship of closed totalitarian societies, where the masses 
> at least knew what was going on. Our culture is stone-blind to its 
> censorship problem. It's too busy shouting about freedom to notice the 
> heavy chains.
> Our corporatist structures enjoy incredibly effective and virtually 
> invisible "voluntary" controls over thought and expression, via their media 
> cartel, building on generations of patriotic brainwashing instilled in 
> citizens from an early age.
> 
> In this context, there is a huge problem with the respectable and reliable 
> sources.
> They remain reliable by taking no chances.
> Therefore, if one is interested in learning anything outside the 
> comfortable scope that the respectable ones dare to touch, one enters into 
> a sort of very wild intellectual landscape.
> Some topics are so taboo that one virtually cannot find any half-ways 
> "respectable" source willing to touch them in public.
> For instance, you can hardly find Dr. Israel Shahak's work anywhere but on 
> "hate sites." Not because he advocated hate, but because Shahak was a true 
> iconoclast, and establishment "thinkers" won't touch him with a 10-foot 
> pole. They're deathly afraid to. 90% of folks won't go near him, whether 
> all or any of his ideas were right or not.
> 
> So we have another dimension here besides reliability, and that is courage.
> In this pampered environment, the only people who aren't scared to say what 
> they think are those who are angry and have nothing to lose. And they are 
> not considered respectable or reliable.
> 
> In the best of times, the reliability of sources is only a sort of 
> probabilistic filter. It can give no certainty about what is true. In the 
> final analysis, one has to learn to think, clearly, without falling for all 
> those fallacies.
> Clear thinking and open debate is what the defenders of orthodoxy fight 
> against tooth and nail. That is why their arguments make such heavy use of 
> derision and the whole grab bag of psychological tricks. It's intimidation.
> 
> Unfortunately, in worse times, on things like 911 (call me a conspiracy 
> theorist if you like, but i am convinced by the evidence that this was not 
> carried out by cavemen) you can not rely on the reliable sources for 
> independent information in the slightest. Because it takes courage, which 
> they have not one iota of.
> Only after the cat is out of the bag, they will scramble over each other to 
> be first to postulate publicly about it.
> Which means, unfortunately, that we can not rely on the "reliable sources" 
> to save us, from the tyranny being prepared for us if the truth about the 
> neocons never gets out. Or from the tyranny we already have, for that 
> matter. It put them where they are, after all.
> 
> QED: Think for yourself - because nobody is always reliable!
> 
> 
> At 15:55 23.7.03 -0500, you wrote:
> >the reliability of a source can be a legitimate part
> >of the discussion. While one cannot completely discount the veracity of a
> >statement based on the speaker/writer, one certainly can, and ought to,
> >raise the question that the evidence is tainted. Raising a question is not
> >the same as dogmatically asserting its falsehood. The source is a legitimate
> >point of discussion.
> >
> >Furthermore, even if a statement from a tainted source is true, it is
> >generally a good idea to find that same statement from another source. For
> >example, if I say to my students during a lecture: "You should exercise
> >more, because according to Hitler, exercise promotes good health"........one
> >might suggest that perhaps I should quote someone else who made that point
> >rather than appear in any way to be acknowledging Hitler.
> 
> it's not stuff like exercising more that we lack good sources for
> your example would be a way of advertising for hitler by wrapping him in 
> the colors of a widely accepted idea
> 
> 




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               ANDRE    GUNDER      FRANK

Senior Fellow                                      Residence
World History Center                    One Longfellow Place
Northeastern University                            Apt. 3411
270 Holmes Hall                         Boston, MA 02114 USA
Boston, MA 02115 USA                    Tel:    617-948 2315
Tel: 617 - 373 4060                     Fax:    617-948 2316
Web-page:csf.colorado.edu/agfrank/     e-mail:franka@fiu.edu

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