Hi Dennis O'Bell; I don't know if the Tehran Times is credible, but the article seems reasonable. One might ask what Chomsky would be doing in Kolkata India right now, and a quick search finds:
Kolkata Age
AsianAge OnLine, September 4, 2001
...
Meanwhile, it was announced in the meeting that Mr Noam Chomsky will soon be conferred with the Honoris Causa D. Litt. The senate has also received a sum of Rs 55 lakhs for an “endowment chair.” There was also a proposal by members to build a technocampus at Salt Lake.
...
hclinfinet.com
So what exactly did he say in Kolkata? There are plenty of reports in the India press:
photo
The Statesman, November 21,2001
Chief minister Mr Buddhadev Bhattacharya welcomes Professor Noam Chomsky and his wife at Science City auditorium, Kolkata, on Tuesday. — The Statesman
google.com
War deadlier than 11 Sept: Chomsky
The Statesman, November 21, 2001
What was unique about the 11 September attack was not its scale, but the fact that the guns of terrorism were for the first time, pointed at the opposite direction, said Professor Noam Chomsky, linguist and social thinker, while addressing a packed auditorium at Science City this afternoon.
...
thestatesman.net
CU honours Noam Chomsky
The Statesman, November 23, 2001
Professor Noam Chomsky was conferred with an honorary D Litt degree by the Calcutta University.
...
thestatesman.net
Chomsky gospel on Afghan crisis
The Statesman, India, November 23,2001
Prof Noam Chomsky today said that India does not stand to “gain anything” from the ongoing Afghan crisis. “The USA needs Pakistan and not India for guarding its interests in Afghanistan and India has no place in its scheme of things,” he said at a press conference. “The USA acts like a mafia boss. It needs one as long as one serves its purpose and then throws one away as soon as one doesn’t follow its bidding. Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hossain are examples,” he said.
The USA, he said was full of praise for India in August because they had perceived from some statements made by Mr Jaswant Singh that India was supporting the US missile project, but after the foreign minister denied having said so their attitude toward India changed.
At an interactive session with intellectuals, he dismissed suggestions that the USA is helping Pakistan wage a proxy war in Kashmir. “There is no internal document to suggest this. Besides, Kashmir should be allowed to have the right to self-determination,” he said.
According to Prof Chomsky nothing will change even after the installation of a new government in Afghanistan. The USA, he said, will continue to pursue its age-old policy in Afghanistan – guarding its oil interests in West Asia and keeping Russia and China at bay.
thestatesman.net
An excellent editorial:
PARTIAL VISION Chomsky as US-centric as those he criticises
The Statesman, India, November 22,2001
Perhaps the Left Front needs a Western intellectual to bash the West, which explains the red carpet laid out for American linguist and radical thinker Noam Chomsky on his visit to Kolkata. While Chomsky also toured New Delhi and Chennai, where his lectures were attended by well-heeled society types, his trip to Kolkata took place under official auspices of the state government’s department of cultural affairs, with Buddhadev Bhattacharya presiding and party bigwigs and apparatchiks in attendance. Chomsky’s views are notably US-centric in that he holds the US, or “free speculative capital” in general, as single-handedly responsible for the world’s evils. One sees why this sounds like music to Marxist ears, but Chomsky’s message is in many ways a simplistic inversion of the views of red-necked American patriots who see the US as the source of all the good in the world. On the Afghan war, for example, Chomsky’s position is that it is taking more lives than the September 11 attacks in the US. That is neither here nor there – the former is a shooting war involving soldiers on both sides in which, if the Taliban and the Al-Qaeda are taking more casualties than the US-led coalition, it is a reflection of the fact that the Taliban and the Al-Qaeda are losing the war and not that they are imbued to a greater extent by the milk of human kindness. Neither is this the first time that human lives are being lost in conflict in Afghanistan, which has been ongoing for the last 20 years.
The same applies to Chomsky’s other argument, that 2.5 million Afghans are in danger of starvation due to the war. What he doesn’t tell his audience is that Afghanistan has been facing drought for the last three years, chiefly because the Taliban has more expertise in whipping men who don’t go to mosques, or women who stray out of their homes, than in running an economy. The defeat of the Taliban, on the other hand, can open the doors both for an end to conflict as well as humanitarian aid and assistance in economic reconstruction, which arguably are the measures needed to relieve Afghanistan’s suffering. But you cannot defeat the Taliban without making war. To cite another old radical whose point of view Chomsky would probably endorse, Chairman Mao once quipped that it is impossible to make an omelette without breaking eggs.
thestatesman.net
Also of interest:
thestatesman.net
thestatesman.net
thestatesman.net
... He said the USA always let the natives, in whichever country it fought, to do the battles and kept the number of casualties in its own army to the minimal. ...
thestatesman.net
I wouldn't think that India would be feeling particularly proud of associating an obvious idiot (obvious that is, in the aftermath of the WTC and the celebrating crowds in Kabul) with an honorary degree from one of their better universities. Perhaps they have political reasons for not reporting it more fully. I would think that the above editorial would express that thought reasonably well.
-- Carl |
