Warning: More crap from the Epstein files coming in, and it is truly nauseating. This one includes a lengthy rationalization for Jeffrey Epstein’s behavior, written by Jeffrey Epstein in the third person. We have this email because Epstein wrote to Noam Chomsky (Noam Chomsky!) asking him to critique it.
Im considering submitting this to the oped of the wash post id like your thoughts
Sweetheart deal!” So goes the attack on the resolution of the more than a decade
ago federal investigation involving our client Jeffrey Epstein. The attack is
profoundly misplaced, supported neither by the law nor the facts. Nor is it supported
by the structure of our constitutional republic. To the contrary, Jeffrey was subjected
to an extremely aggressive federal intrusion into what would typically be considered
a quintessentially local criminal matter in south
Florida. The offense investigated — at its core, sexual favors for hire — has long
been treated as a matter entrusted to laws of the several States, not the federal
government. The conduct — for which Jeffrey took full responsibility — was a
classic state offense and was treated exactly that way by able, honest prosecutors in
Palm Beach County. Nevertheless, without a request from the state prosecutors, the
federal government intervened. For their own opportunistic reasons, many are now
criticizing the federal decision-makers at the time, including now-Secretary of Labor
Alex Acosta (then-United States Attorney in south Florida), for not going far enough.
The critics are wrong on the facts and the law. They also ignore a fact going to the
heart of fundamental fairness: In the decade since paying his debt to society, Jeffrey
Epstein has led a life characterized by responsible citizenship, numerous acts of
generosity and good deeds.
So…a guy who has a massage table in his living room, who recruits high school girls for daily masturbation sessions, sees himself as living a life characterized by responsible citizenship, numerous acts of generosity and good deeds
. He doesn’t say what the good deeds
are, and most of all, he doesn’t explain where he got the huge amounts of money he used to fund his self-aggrandizing charities
.
But then, he has all the “facts,” and he’s going to go on and on about his view of the truth. Sorry, this is long.
Here are the true key facts: Jeffrey Epstein, a successful self-made businessman
with no prior criminal history whatsoever, engaged in illegal conduct that
amounted to solicitation of prostitution. That conduct was wrong and a violation of
Florida state law. Although no coercion, violence, alcohol, drugs or the like were
involved, some of the women he paid were under the age of 18. Those facts were
carefully assessed by experienced state sex crime prosecutors who aggressively
enforce state criminal laws. No one turned a blind eye to potential offenses to the
public order. To the contrary, the Palm Beach State Attorney’s Office conducted an
extensive fifteen-month investigation, led by the chief of the Sex Crimes Division.
Mr. Epstein was then indicted by the state grand jury on a single felony count of
solicitation of prostitution.
During that intense investigation, the state prosecutors extensively gathered and
analyzed the evidence, met face-to-face with many of the asserted victims,
considered their credibility — or lack thereof — and considered the extent of
exculpatory evidence, including sworn testimony from many that they lied about
being eighteen years old to be allowed into Mr. Epstein’s home. After months of
negotiations, the state prosecutors believed they had reached a reasoned resolution
of the matter that vindicated the public interest — a resolution entirely consistent with
that of cases involving other similarly-situated defendants. The system worked as it
should have.
Then, in came the feds. The United States Attorneys Office extensively and
aggressively investigated whether Mr. Epstein had engaged in a commercial human
trafficking ring, targeted minors, or used the internet or traveled interstate in the
process. But that’s not what this was and that’s not what happened. That is
precisely why the federal authorities’ ultimate decision to defer prosecution to the
state was the right one.
However, the federally-demanded resolution was not without conditions. The federal
prosecutors insisted on various unorthodox requirements that Mr. Epstein’s
experienced defense team had never seen imposed on any defendant anywhere.
Under the federally-forced deal, Jeffrey was required to request that the state
prosecutors demand the imposition of a thirty-month sentence that included both jail
time and the strictest conditions of probation: lifetime sex-offender registration. Those
draconian measures were far more than warranted by the state grand jury’s
indictment and would not have otherwise been required under the previously agreedupon state disposition. As part of this highly unusual deal, the government required
Jeffrey to pay for a highly experienced group of attomeys to bring claims against him
on behalf of a government list of asserted victims. Jeffrey was required to waive the
right to challenge those claims without being provided the asserted victim’s identities
by the government until after he was incarcerated. Importantly, the feds’ decision to
decline prosecution in deference to the state in exchange for these extraordinary
requirements was reviewed and approved at the multiple levels of the U.S.
Department of Justice. Jeffrey took full responsibility, complied with the feds’
demands, served his sentence, and in the process was treated exactly the same
(including his time served) as any other state-incarcerated individuals. His conduct
while in custody was exemplary, and so characterized by the state custodial
authorities.
Jeffrey Epstein has paid his debt to society. The challenges to his Agreement with
the Government must also be understood as challenges to the millions Mr. Epstein
paid to the asserted victims and their lawyers pursuant to that agreement. Amongst
the beneficiaries of the Epstein-Federal Government Agreement were the many
victims who collectively received many millions as a result of the conditions imposed
on Mr. Epstein that prevented him from meaningfully contesting civil liability —
moneys that would be at issue if requests to invalidate the agreement were granted.
Our nation faces vitally important challenges, many involving the treatment of women
and basic human dignity. Voices are rightly being raised speaking truth to power,
especially about women in the workplace. But Jeffrey’s offenses of yesteryear,
which were entirely outside of the workplace, have long since been redressed by the
criminal justice system. He fully and faithfully has performed every promise and
obligation required of him by state and federal authorities. In the spirit of the
bedrock American belief in second chances and fundamental fairness, that chapter in
Jeffrey’s otherwise-productive and charitable life should be allowed to close once
and for all.
Again, what productive and charitable life
? He’s a rich fuck with no discernible source of income living a life of excess and perversion, pretending to be a victim of an out-of-control state that caught him in one crime, in which he’d been tricked by a woman who said she was over 18.
He’s asking Noam Chomsky if he should publish it. Chomsky tells him no, for various reasons.
It’s a powerful and convincing statement, but my feeling is that it would not be wise to submit it for
publication. Taking the stance of a reader who comes to the matter from afresh, perhaps having
heard some rumors but knowing nothing, the reaction I suspect will be of the “where there’s smoke
there’s fire” kind. Few are willing to think through the arguments and factual details or to try to
adjudicate conflicting claims. I’ve seen this happen over and over on other matters — many years of
having been accused of Holocaust denial, for example.. Ugly and bitter as it is, I suspect the best
course now is not to stir the pot by raising the issue publicly, opening the door to charges and
accusations that can no doubt be answered in the court of logic and fairness — but that’s not the
public domain, where innuendo and suspicion and accusation reign.
Anyway, for what it’s worth, that’s the way it looks to me, in part on the basis of experience.
The great work that you have been doing speaks for itself. My feeling is that you should keep at it,
and simply develop a thick skin to fend off whatever ugliness breaks through now and then,
diminishing over time.
Noam
Great work
, my ass. Chomsky is sucking up to a rich patron here, nothing more. Epstein’s crimes were not the product of innuendo and suspicion
, but were actually victimizations of women and girls that he used and discarded.
Chomsky makes it worse.
Cultures unfortunately can be swept by craziness. Nazism for example. Or the Great Awakening.
We’re in one of those phases now. If there’s a charge, it’s true, in fact True. Any response is
“mansplaining,” another power play, reinforcing the charge. You’ve seen I’m sure what happened to
Lawrence. Full and complete response, amounts to zero. Isn’t even considered. It’s like trying to
discuss rationally with religious fanatics.
Noam
Poor Lawrence Krauss, a victim of a feminism that is comparable to Nazism.
My opinion of Noam Chomsky has just plummetted down into the basement. Fuck you, Noam.
Yes, fuck Noam for all that. The only defense for him is it’s not uncommon for very old people to become petty cranks (Chomsky is 97 now.) I just hope that doesn’t happen to me.
Honestly, from my first impression it looks like Chomsky just fell for the guy’s bullshit.
If that’s true, I’m not going to judge Chomsky, because I myself am certainly not a good evaluator of people’s characters.
From a recent Guardian article: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/feb/03/epstein-files-noam-chomsky
Former Epstein girlfriend Karyna Shuliak at one point emailed a third party whose identity was redacted that she and her boyfriend wanted to send Chomsky and his wife two genetic testing kits.
Perhaps most strikingly, in late February 2019, Epstein represented to an associate that he had gotten advice from Chomsky over how to navigate “the horrible way you are being treated in the press and public”. That was 11 years after Epstein had pleaded guilty to soliciting an underage girl for prostitution – and months before he would reportedly die by suicide while in federal custody awaiting sex-trafficking charges.
“The best way to proceed is to ignore it,” Chomsky wrote, according to text signed under his first name that Epstein sent to a lawyer and publicist. “That’s particularly true now with the hysteria that has developed about abuse of women, which has reached the point that even questioning a charge is a crime worse than murder.”
Not a good guy.
I wonder where Epstein expected that long winded load of dribble to be published.
Epstein’s sex crime ring happened. Numerous people participated in it. Now one wonders, how many other similar things are happening involving wealthy persons right now?
Say what now?
He expected to publish it in the Washington Post, which isn’t such an incredible idea anymore. I wonder what horrors Bezos is concealing even now?
Chomsky has left me cold for ages. I’m not surprised to find he corresponded with Epstein.
I had to look it up.
Noam Chomsky isn’t a Holocaust Denialist.
He was accused of that because he is a Free Speech absolutist and once defended the right of a French Holocaust Denialist to lie.
This also came up though.
Noam Chomsky is close to a Khmer Rouge Genocide denialist. This has nothing to do with age related problems either, since he wrote his book shortly after it happened in 1979.
Not too impressed with Noam Chomsky now.
Among other things, I knew a survivor of the Khmer Rouge Genocide, a Cambodian refugee.
I doubt this is what Epstein thought. I’m sure Epstein rationalized his actions to some degree but this chunk is just too much blatant lying written to be misleading. This is Epstein writing an intentionally deceptive and manipulative publicity piece. One where he can’t just outright deny having sex with underage girls but is trying to wiggle his way out of the public consequences.
That is a lie on several levels. Coercion was heavily involved, the parties involved alcohol. I don’t know if Epstein ever drugged one of the girls but the parties almost surely had drugs at them. More critically and subtly though is the way age is written about. It’s written to imply that Epstein was hiring prostitutes and it just happened that a small number were under 18. This is a massive deceptive lie, Epstein was recruiting girls, some of which he rented out himself. He investigated the background of the girls and intentionally avoided girls over 18 because he wanted them under age.
I never had much use for Chomsky anyway. He always seemed superfluous, unhelpful, and inexplicably overrated. I’ve never heard him quoted in a way that advanced a conversation or clarified or added anything of substance. And seeing him joining this massive sex-pest-self-pity-party, with the same old bleating about #MeToo and “feminazis” silencing good old red-blooded men, takes him down from useless to ridiculous.
The irony of Chomsky’s downplaying of the Khmer Rouge genocide is that the US government sided with the Khmer Rouge against Vietnam after Vietnam invaded Kampuchea to stop Khmer Rouge mass murders in Vietnam. The level of US support has been debated, with questions over whether it went further than sanctions and blocking IMF loans after the 1978 Vietnamese invasions. But whatever the level Chomsky was in effect allied with the US government on the issue.
My Kampuchean neighbors have elderly mom living with them. She smiles and waves a lot. I think about how she lived through that, and my mind blanks out. Can’t even imagine it. It’s a helluva world we live in.
Re: Chomsky: So what. Whatever’s good is good, and whatever’s bad is bad regardless.
@14: So it would be in a world where people had the leisure to consider every single thing in isolation. But there is too much for that, and we tell people all the time to “consider the source”. The nature of those sources then matters. Chomsky has made it plain he is willing to overlook too much awfulness to be a good one.
“Mostly innocent” has unfortunate rhetorical (and logical) parallels to “a little bit pregnant,” especially in the context of allegations of multiple victims over an extended period of time. So maybe the accused isn’t a serial killer — it only takes one death for (at minimum) manslaughter.
Geez! The dude was in his pomp back when.
Chomsky’s peak ran from the late 1950s through the 1980s, when he changed linguistics and became a leading critic of U.S. power. Then he went funny.
And no, “Mostly innocent” has unfortunate rhetorical (and logical) parallels to “a little bit pregnant,” but it also has fortunate rhetorical distinctions.
(I can elaborate, should you wish)
(He was born in 1928!)
It’s amazing how corrosive money is to morals. An anarcho-syndicalist, giving a scamming pedophile a pat on the back and telling him that everything will be alright.
We really are living in the wrong timeline.
Yeah WTF.
This is the author of “Manufacturing Consent” being buds with the guy who gloated about Brexit and a return to tribalism (let alone the child abuse ring)
Chomsky had some interesting ideas but his communication style leaned heavily into point-scoring rhetorical tricks which I found off-putting. I had no inkling he would sink to the level of this communication with Epstein.
gijoel@18– I wouldn’t think it was money that got to Chomsky. It looks like the attraction was exploitative sexual norms. Even if Chomsky was uninvolved and unaware of Epstein’s worst crimes, he should have seen right through the “women be lyin'” theme Epstein applied to diminish the moral weight of his criminal conviction.
@6. John Harshman
Did a quick wiki-check and google search and found – Faurisson Affair wikipage :
Source : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faurisson_affair
Plus :
Source : https://www.historynewsnetwork.org/article/chomskys-secret-letters-to-a-holocaust-denier
In addition to :
Source : https://libcom.org/article/chomsky-and-gitta-sereny-holocaust-denier-robert-faurisson
Amongst more.
Seems Chomsky didn’t personally endorse Holocaust Denial per se but he defended and supported the right of Holocaust Deniers to speak and write and express their Holocaust Denialism.
Personally, yeah, I don’t think hate speech and spewing outright lies and disinfo should be supported at all.
I have tried to listen to Chomsky but could not make it through any things he was saying.
the struggle of an ancient guy trying to speak and just going around in confusing word circles is too much for me. He was just a little to distant for me, too objective maybe, trying to say something but not saying too much
almost rationalizing shit like in this case
I recommend this article from The Guardian which offers an important perspective on the whole Epstein files discussion – it really was just a sick boys club, and its probably being repeated by men with extreme wealth all over: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2026/feb/07/sex-and-snacks-but-no-seat-at-the-table-the-role-of-women-in-epsteins-sordid-mens-club
It is ironic?* that while Epstein was running a sick boy’s club that victimized young girls, the only member of his club that has been convicted and is in prison is a woman. Ghislaine Maxwell.
When the Florida police were investigating Epstein, after hearing testimony from his girl victims, they threatened to arrest them for prostitution and other offenses. Which caused them to stop cooperating with the police.
We know what this is.
Blaming the victims. Protecting the criminals. Happens all the time. I’ve already seen it once today and it is still morning.
?* I’m not sure that ironic is the best word here. Among other words, “appalling” would also work.
@11 Raging Bee
Yeah, but you admitted last month you knew nothing about Chomsky…
I value your take on Chomsky accordingly.
@21 StevoR
Chomsky takes free speech seriously. In his own words:
If you believe in freedom of speech, you believe in freedom of speech for views you don’t like. Goebbels was in favor of freedom of speech for views he liked. So was Stalin. If you’re in favor of freedom of speech, that means you’re in favor of freedom of speech precisely for views you despise.
Sticking up for obviously bad people when society wants to silence them is in line with that.
I have always found Chomsky pompous and arrogant, but his support of sex pests is beyond the pale. He also tried to tell the Women’s March that we didn’t need equality, and that #metoo was splashing mud on the poor rapists. In short, fuck Chomsky and his pedophile friends.
Most of his linguistic theory of inherent universal grammar has been disproved. Of course anyone who actually spent time teaching children to speak could have told him that.
Oops, forgot the link.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/evidence-rebuts-chomsky-s-theory-of-language-learning/
@28: Thanks for that SciAm link, which is devastating. Or probably would be to my ex-wife who, when we were courting around the turn of the century, was completing her PhD in linguistics at the (a?) University of (in?) Paris, working remotely; we met in Guernsey. She adored Chomsky but had no idea that he was involved in leftist politics, and was surprised that I had heard of him, via Alexander Cockburn. Many might see this as an example that two wrongs don’t make a right, but I always rather enjoyed Cockburn.
@25-26: There’s a big difference between “defending the right of those with unpopular views to express them” and “joining in expressing those views, especially as what is fundamentally advertising for those views.”† Even in the 80s, Chomsky’s willingness to criticize group misconduct while excusing individual misconduct struck me as counterproductive, both in terms of defending the unpopular speech and defending the unpopular views. If one wants to defend the right of, say, Michael Shermer to spout off with homophobia (as noted in a different thread here), that’s different from agreeing to write a foreword to be included in his next book.
† I’ve represented some real sleazebuckets in my time — I’ve walked the walk about talking the talk. That’s not at all the same thing as lending my identity as an implicit endorsement of their views by not just defending them, but participating in the speech with them.
@PZ:
I’m don’t think that it was written by Epstein. He wants to submit it, or have it submitted on his behalf, but he doesn’t explicitly say that he wrote it. And I am deeply unimpressed by what I’ve seen of Epstein’s writing.
I’d guess it was a lawyer – either someone on his own defense legal team, or some other lawyer he could tap for this sort of thing. Anyone feel like comparing the style with that of something written by Alan Dershowitz, for example?
Hell, it actually says: “So goes the attack on the resolution of the more than a decade ago federal investigation involving our client Jeffrey Epstein” (bold mine for emph)
This was written by someone on his defense team.
Oh Noam Noam, No, No.
@26. Trump enabling bad faith troll : What a non-surprise to find you are also a Freezepeacher!!1ty!!-er as well. Especially after you were exposed as a regular Musk X-twitter user on a previous thread.
No hate speech and lies – disinfo and misinfo – should NOT be platformed and empowered. Evil racist bigoted liars should not be rewarded and given a fucking billionaire funded megaphone to hurt and traumatise and cause damage to the rest of us.
Yes, there always have been some reasonable restrictions on so called free speech and there are lines that shouldn’t be allowed to be crossed when it comes to what people say.
Do you think if we point out to Stevo that his beloved genocide enabler and supporter Harris uses X/twitter his head will explode?
I hope not although it would give us a much needed break from his endless obsessive bullying and irrationality.
https://x.com/KamalaHarris/status/2018724057655451817
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/-pzk1faiA58
https://www.bmj.com/content/392/bmj.s239
@35 Silentbob
Well, you see, Democratic party leadership is a protected group, so anything much-less-much-Better-genocides Kamala Harris says on Twitter wraps around and becomes protected speech again.
This is the bare text of what JE wanted to submit, no attribution. Still wondering who actually wrote it.
https://www.justice.gov/epstein/files/DataSet%2010/EFTA01731311.pdf
Actually, it’s not quite the same text. A different draft?
Another draft. Still no attribution
https://www.justice.gov/epstein/files/DataSet%209/EFTA00799446.pdf
I’ve just been looking at Epstein’s responses to Chomsky, and it’s total mishmash syntactical garbage. Whoever wrote the Op-Ed draft(s) could at least put together some goddamn English language sentences.
Anyway. it looks like Ken Starr wrote the original draft. It was then edited by Kathy Ruemmler. Martin G. Weinberg also suggested some edits. The Op-Ed was to be published with Ken Starr’s and Martin Weinberg’s names
2018-12-16:
https://www.justice.gov/epstein/files/DataSet%2011/EFTA02612160.pdf
https://www.justice.gov/epstein/files/DataSet%2011/EFTA02611118.pdf
https://www.justice.gov/epstein/files/DataSet%2011/EFTA02610284.pdf
https://www.justice.gov/epstein/files/DataSet%209/EFTA01013149.pdf
JE emailed a draft to Michael Wolff. only crediting Ken Starr
2019-02-01:
https://www.justice.gov/epstein/files/DataSet%209/EFTA01028639.pdf
A typically stupid false dichotomy. You can be in favour of freedom of speech for some views you despise, but not for others. You can favour freedom of speech for a particular set of views, or lies, in some circumstances or contexts but not others.
FWIW, in the news, this bit of damage control:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/feb/08/noam-chomsky-epstein-ties-wife-apology
↓
Noam Chomsky and his wife, Valeria, made a “grave mistake” and were “careless” not to thoroughly research the background of Jeffrey Epstein, Valeria Chomsky said in a lengthy statement on Saturday, adding also that Epstein had deceived them.
[…]
Some of Noam Chomsky’s communications with Epstein took place after the Miami Herald published a bombshell story in 2018 detailing how Epstein preyed on underage girls and received an unusually lenient plea deal in 2008. On Saturday, Valeria Chomsky acknowledged the couple had read that story, but said the couple wasn’t aware of the extent of Epstein’s crimes until after his second arrest in July 2019.
“We were careless in not thoroughly researching his background. This was a grave mistake, and for that lapse in judgment, I apologize on behalf of both of us. Noam shared with me, before his stroke, that he felt the same way,” she said (Chomsky suffered a massive stroke in 2023). “It was deeply disturbing for both of us to realize we had engaged with someone who presented as a helpful friend but led a hidden life of criminal, inhumane, and perverted acts.”
Valeria Chomsky is the linguist’s second wife; they married in 2014.
She said Chomsky’s 2019 advice to Epstein on rehabilitating his image should be understood “in context”.
“Epstein had claimed to Noam that he [Epstein] was being unfairly persecuted, and Noam spoke from his own experience in political controversies with the media. Epstein created a manipulative narrative about his case, which Noam, in good faith, believed in,” she said in her statement. “It is now clear that it was all orchestrated, having as, at least, one of Epstein’s intentions to try to have someone like Noam repairing Epstein’s reputation by association.
“Noam’s criticism was never directed at the women’s movement; on the contrary, he has always supported gender equity and women’s rights. What happened was that Epstein took advantage of Noam’s public criticism towards what came to be known as ‘cancelling culture’ to present himself as a victim of it,” she added.
The thing that kicked off the op-ed email chain was this article, published 2018-12-11
https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/article222912360.html
I’ve been trying to track down the genesis of it, searching for Ken Starr. Unfortunately, adding “2018” to the search box gives no results. Who wrote this search engine? So I’ve been wading through all the Ken Starr emails, looking for things from the end of 2018.
I note that the original email [ wondering if the op-ed thing was a good idea ] that JE sent out was also addressed to Valeria, and she also advised that he drop it.
https://www.justice.gov/epstein/files/DataSet%209/EFTA01010048.pdf
The later thread, linked to in the OP, with the back-and-forth with Noam and JE cut her out of the conversation.
Yeah… no. The fact that Noam Chomsky had made “public criticism towards what came to be known as cancelling culture” is discrediting in itself. The “cancel culture” notion was yet another* (and quite successful) attempt by the privileged and bigoted to insist on their right to say anything, no matter how hateful and dehumanising, without any adverse consequences whatsoever. So Chomsky was, at the very least, primed to be “[taken] advantage of” by Epstein.
BTW, the fact that Chomsky’s theory of language turns out to be wrong does not discredit him as a scientist: it was an immensely fruitful theory, generating a huge amount of research, including that which appears to falsify it.
*Like “political correctness”, “SJW” and “woke”.
@Tethys Does an excellent job of making a fool out of himself by citing a widely discredited article written by two people who are widely panned as charlatans. This is, of course, entirely independent of the Chomsky-Epstein debate, though as others have pointed out here beyond poor judgment there is little reason to assume that Chomsky had anything to do with Epstein’s crimes.
But back to my original point about @Tethys misrepresenting, either willfully or out of sheer ignorance, what the current state of our understanding about the neurobiology and biological grounding of Natural Language is. Far from being disproved, Universal Grammar continues to be the most widely vindicated neurocomputational account of Natural Language. @Tethys would have easily found the following out for themselves, if they had taken the trouble to do a little more than looking for ways to affirm his own confirmation bias. For interested parties, however, below is a minor fraction of the immense body of actual scientific work on biolinguistics that vindicate Universal Grammar. There are too many to cite, but I provide a small sample.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/guest-blog/chomsky-s-theory-of-language-learning-dead-not-so-fast/#:~:text=And%2C%20Japanese%20children%20should%20show,it%20purports%20to%20have%20presented.
https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/2016/12/thousand-ways-to-misrepresent-noam-chomsky
https://www.nyu.edu/about/news-publications/news/2015/december/chomsky-was-right-nyu-researchers-find-we-do-have-a-grammar-in-our-head.html?challenge=d06e90d7-4d8f-4b88-9d8c-10b73beb60f1
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-025-28008-3
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26640453/
Samuel S. Mandal, there are many more articles that refute that, FWIW.
It was an old ad hoc hypothesis, doesn’t hold up.
Your cherry-picking does not change reality.
A bit belated, but the driest humour on the internet:
Relevant ten mins long clip on Chomsky by UNFTR Media here – Genius Doesn’t Excuse What Chomsky Did. Goodbye, Noam.
snicker. Aw, apparently Sammy got their undies in a twist over my opinion of Chomsky.
StevoR, so Chomsky is a genius, according to your link.
@42. KG :
Exactly!
@35. Silentbob :
Fixed it for ya.
No. Different person and context and obvs not someone on this blog, probly something politicians have to do to an extent and perhaps done by her staff rather than her personally.
Also, more importantly, Kamala Harris does not spread lies and disinfo or hate speech.
Says the person that has irrationally obsessively bullied two other commenters here for many years notably John Morales and chigau (違う) with no good reason whatsoever to do so. Indeed you continue to do so and to lie about chigau (違う).
It is NOT bullying to hold some people accountable for what they did for years that has made our entire world a vastly worse place as our Trump helping troll “beholder” did.
@37. Trump helping evil disingenuous troll : What an utter word salad of bullshit.
Kamala is not responsible for any genocide. Certainly not Netanyahu’s one. She did NOT determine policy on Gaza and she and Biden called for restraint, sanctioned extremists and withheld some weapons from the IDF. These are all basic well established inconvertible facts.
Trump, OTOH, (Reminder the ONLY other actual choice in the final USA’s election), reversed these measures and encouraged Netanyahu to “finish the job.”
Genocides plural & worse Don Trump is complicit and responsible for multiple genocides against Palestinians – a people whose very name he used to insult Biden, against Ukraine, even against Americans including trans people.
Oh & yeah, Trump is an actual fucking fascist whereas the Democratic party and Kamala Harris are NOT actual fucking Fascists.
You, Trump enabling troll “beholder” helped and stood with and, in actuality, supported the actual fucking fascists which makes you fascist scum.
You are also a coward who refuses to answer simple questions and you are clearly here in bad faith and we all know that with the possible exception of Silentbob. Who also flees from answering basic questions like what part of this he doesn’t get and why he supports fascist scum and liars here like you.
@John Morales Science proceeds by accumulating and converging evidence. This comment section is not the place, nor does it provide the scope, to trace the history of how neurobiology of Language has developed. As the linked articles correctly describe people like Tomasello have documented history of misrepresenting the claims of UG. Popperian competition amongst theories is only possible when (a) theories are addressed at similar levels of conceptual granularity, and (b) are aimed at the same object of inquiry. David Poeppel and colleagues call this the granularity mismatch and ontological incommensurability problems.
So, “reality”, whatever that is, is established through comparative empirical evaluation of converging evidence. Your position, on the other hand, appears to be “I have found the same old disproven arguments” so what I agree with is reality. Why not try and publish your claims in a peer-reviewed journal? Or perhaps try and grapple with what Tecumseh Fitch, Michael Fisher, Richard Lewontin and other eminent biologists have put forth?
@John Morales “Ad hoc” is exactly what it is not because it yields testable predictions that are borne out in neurobiological investigations again and again. But I suppose all these peer-reviewed papers by some of the biggest names in the field are just lying?
The problem is not that people don’t argue about details. The problem is you and @Tethys are so desperate to argue against Chomsky the person that you are grasping at straws to try proclaim victory a priori. I invite you to try and do a statistical survey of where the fields are at, including molecular biological evidence for components of UG. A priori arguments do nothing for anyone. If you are interested, you should actually try to understand the claims and investigate them. You might actually find something that would allow you to make some valid claims. But that is not what you are doing right now.
Samuel:
Yet your #46 did attempted just that.
(Hypocrisy is not admirable)
So what? They are not the only source. See Wikipedia for many, many others.
Karl can had his opinions, but reality is what it is.
Correspondence to actuality is the goal, not letting a thousand flowers grow.
No.
Reality isn’t the result of a consensual perception.
It’s the thing that exists regardless of how anyone perceives it.
Nothing to do with popularity!
No worries; you first. Hypocrisy, remember?
Show me your personal published claims in a peer-reviewed journal, and I shall attend to it.
Good grief! Again: it is not a popularity contest.
Now I’m desperate? I really don’t spend much energy worrying about discrediting Chomsky. I disagree with his theory of grammar, and his Op-Ed’s on any topic related to women have been consistently patronizing and tone deaf for at least a decade. He discredits himself by literally providing cover for sexual predators.
Epstein and Ken Starr? Ew.
How pitiful.
I should disclose I kinda like the general thrust of Korzybski’s general semantics.
I find language rather interesting, but I had to learn it properly.
The facility for it may be innate (else it could not happen, could it? ;)
Therefore, cf. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Map%E2%80%93territory_relation is relevant.
Samuel, you talk about the map, I talk about the territory.
(When I need to be specific and explicit, I adopt E’ techniques)
I’m scheduling my next primary care physician appointment for August 12, 2026. I might be able to ace the weigh-in.
@ 55 Morales
Lol.
Enlighten us, O resident troll as to your evidence for this unperceived reality. That evidence would be… what, exactly?
You would benefit, Morales, if you were capable of any kind of self questioning or reflection from Mano Singham’s book.
This ghetto video doesn’t do it justice, but gives you a conceptual introduction. Quote: “Questions of truth are irrelevant and a distraction“.
You can only know what you perceive, dude. Imagining some yet unperceived reality is where all religion comes from. In a scientific worldview, there can only ever be perception. And two different perceptions can be equally valid. Freaky, eh. The real world is not amenable to your childish notions of the one big daddy reality.
In the news:https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvgv5yre39zo
↓
Maxwell refuses to answer questions about Epstein in congressional hearing
Ghislaine Maxwell, the convicted associate of sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, refused to answer questions from the US House Oversight Committee on Monday.
Maxwell appeared virtually for a closed-door deposition from the Texas prison where she is serving a 20-year sentence for sex trafficking.
Republican House Oversight Committee chairman James Comer said that “as expected”, Maxwell pleaded the Fifth Amendment, invoking her right to remain silent.
“This is obviously very disappointing,” he said. “We had many questions to ask about the crimes she and Epstein committed, as well as questions about potential co-conspirators.”
[…]
In a social media post earlier, Maxwell’s lawyer David Oscar Markus said Maxwell was “prepared to speak fully and honestly if granted clemency by President Trump”.
“Only she can provide the complete account. Some may not like what they hear, but the truth matters,” he posted.
—
So obviously transactional!
@58. flange : Pretty sure you meant that comment for this thread :
https://proxy.freethought.online/pharyngula/2026/02/06/basic-scientific-understanding-should-squelch-these-ideas/
Yeah?
John @61,
“Maxwell refuses to answer questions about Epstein in congressional hearing”
She can’t, clemency or not, she can not tell the truth. She is continuing her dad`s Mossad op to this day, and she’d have an Epstein situation looming were she to ever spill the beans. So Trump will pardon her, she will leave the country, and all secrets are preserved. They might get to a few minor players and adjacents, like Mandelson or Krauss or Chomsky, but never the big fish.
I think this is the earliest draft there is:
https://epstein-emails.sfo3.digitaloceanspaces.com/docs/HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_030255.pdf
It’s a bit confusing, because it doesn’t have the first e-mail with Ken Starr’s draft alone (searching only brought up this with several responses added on), but the sequence went:
2018-12-13: JE requested the essay (the destination changed in the course of the e-mail exchanges — law journal / newspaper op-ed, maybe two versions of the article? )
2018-12:15: Ken Starr sent the first draft.
2018-12-16: See @41 above — the text was edited; changes from different individuals
JE also solicited opinions from other people , Frex:
2018-12-15: Joi Ito received a copy of Starr’s first draft and generally approved of it.
2018-12-18: Steve Bannon received a later draft , with the question of whether it should go to the wash post (didn’t see a reply to that one).
2018-12-21: JE told the legal team of writers/editors to hold off publishing it for the time being.
2018-12-29: The Chomsky query and response thread
More shit hit the fan for JE in early 2019, and therefore:
2019-03-04: A substantially modified op-ed was published in the New York Times.
Despite the changes in wording, the general idea of “JE didn’t do anything that bad, and served his time, and should be left alone now” still remains. It was signed by Kenneth W. Starr, Martin G. Weinberg, Jack Goldberger, and Lilly Ann Sanchez
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/04/opinion/letters/jeffrey-epstein.html
beholder @25:
Yeah, but you admitted last month you knew nothing about Chomsky…
Okay, go ahead and tell us what I got wrong about him.
Chomsky takes free speech seriously.
Yeah, just like Phony Stark when he bought Twitter.
In his own words: “If you believe in freedom of speech, you believe in freedom of speech for views you don’t like.”
Yes, but Holocaust-denial isn’t just “a view we don’t like” — it’s a LIE, a deliberate misrepresentation of important material facts, spouted with the malicious intent to deceive people, incite hate and contempt for whole groups of people, and cover up, misrepresent or excuse ACTIONS that got millions of innocent people killed. That’s blood libel, and libel is NOT “protected speech.” Neither are several other forms of lying.
Also, as the quotes cited by StevoR @21 show, Chomsky was not just defending some Holocaust-deniers’ free speech — he was praising their work, pleased that they’d found his own work helpful to them, and calling a famous Holocaust-survivor a fraud. None of that was called for by any lofty commitment to free speech for all; and that dig at Wiesel strongly implies that Chomsky was defending Holocaust-deniers only because they were attacking a narrative used by Israel. (Couldn’t Chomsky have just said “their past atrocities do not justify your present-day atrocities”? That’s simple logic a PROFESSOR OF LINGUISTICS should have been able to manage without cozying up to racist Nazi idiots.)
In Noam Chomsky: A life of dissent, Robert Barsky says ‘Chomsky’s tactics may not always be the most appropriate in light of the causes that he supports but the values transmitted by his work are, according to virtually any reasonable measure, consistent with those of the libertarians.’
Given what we’ve all been seeing of libertarian values since about 1978, that really doesn’t speak well of Chomsky.
In a social media post earlier, Maxwell’s lawyer David Oscar Markus said …“Only she can provide the complete account…”
That’s bullshit. We already have a nearly-complete account based on victims’ statements in other legal proceedings, documents and other evidence both in and out of the Epstein files, records of hush-money paid to victims, etc. We don’t need a known liar and perjurer to confirm or deny what far more credible people — as in, you know, people who were actually raped or otherwise abused by the men in this ring — have said.
Making this case all about Maxwell is just another way of erasing the actual victims. They’ve said they were raped by Trump and others — why would anyone trust one of the perpetrators to rule on the victims’ statements?
Owen Jones has a new clip on this here – What Was Chomsky THINKING?: Epstein Scandal Explained which goes for 38 mins 18 seconds. Must admit only seen the very start of this so far myself* but Owen Jones is good and trustworthy and usually makes some good points.
.* Its late here 1 30 am and I can’t sleep and its almost 30 degrees Celsius outside and so quarter awake if that & not at my best but anyhow… Hope this is worth sharing with yáll.
PZ, I hate to break it to you, but it looks like you wrote this too soon:
https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/national-international/noam-chomsky-jeffrey-epstein-ties/4033247/
In her public statement, Valeria Chomsky notes that she was speaking for herself and for her husband, who is 97 and “confronting significant health challenges” since he suffered a stroke in 2023. She writes that they were naive and uninformed, and cites Noam Chomsky’s “overly trusting nature” as a reason for their “serious errors in judgment.”
[T]he two first met Epstein in 2015, and were unaware at the time of his 2008 jail term for soliciting prostitution from an underage girl. By 2015, the accusations against Epstein had been the subject of hundreds of news articles, many of which detailed allegations that he had paid dozens of underage girls for sex.
“When we were introduced to Epstein, he presented himself as a philanthropist supporting science and a financial expert,” she wrote. “By presenting himself this way, Epstein gained Noam’s attention, and they began corresponding. Unknowingly, we opened a door to a Trojan horse.”
Valeria Chomsky goes on to recall that “Epstein began to encircle Noam, sending gifts and creating opportunities for interesting discussions in areas Noam has been working on extensively. We regret that we did not perceive this as a strategy to ensnare us and to try to undermine the causes Noam stands for.”
She writes that they visited Epstein once at his ranch in New Mexico, attended dinners at his Manhattan townhouse and stayed at his apartment a few times. The relationship was friendly, but entirely professional, with no “children or underage individuals present.”