Hi Fritz I read Chomsky ages ago. Manufacturing Consent was excellent in the way it showed how the media works,the self selection of personnel in companies and the resultant conformity of views, the role of the advertisers and how they are the true constituancy of the media not the readership(cos they pay the real money).Also his technique of measuring column inches of text and comparing the pro and anti viewpoints of sensitive issues on a column inch basis to show inherent bias was to me at that time very enlightening.
I am also aware that he has blind spots just as the rest of us do, in spite of some excellent insights.Same goes for everyone I suppose, there are all sorts of absolutely brilliant people with all sorts of blind spots. Easy to spot as plenty of experts disagree, they can't all be right.
On peak oil and global warming I don't really know what his positions are, but I am quite sceptical of both. Peak oil because the energy business seems to me to be quite opaque and it is in the interests of the different players to have us believe that oil is scarce and getting scarcer, still don't really know though. Sort of unknowable really. I do note that the Russians, who have just become the worlds largest oil producers ahead of Saudi Arabia, don't accept the fossil fuel theory, believing oil to be abiotic. Global warming is another thing that is shoved down our throats incessantly, indication to me that it is more propaganda than anything else.Plus the evidence to me isn't that persuasive.
