At 12:23 21/12/01 -0500, you wrote: >I'm thinking about starting a winter term course with the following >article. Following the reading I will begin our conversation by >asking my future high school English teachers if they think Chomsky >is right. And then we might explore what would count as evidence and >proof one way or the other. And then what they would do differently >as teachers if Chomsky is speaking the truth. What do you think? > > http://www.zmag.org/GlobalWatch/chomskymit.htm > >Brian McAndrews
At the beginning of Chomsky's talk, he lays down two conditions. One of these is: <<<< The first one is just what I assume to be recognition of fact. That is that the events of September 11 were a horrendous atrocity probably the most devastating instant human toll of any crime in history, outside of war. >>>> I think that Stalin's imprisonment of millions of intellectuals, "rich" peasants, and imagined political dissenters in the Gulag archipelago and of their inevitable deaths to be arguably the worst civil crime of all time. He often "instantly" sent tens of thousands simultaneously. Osama Bin Laden was a crazed psuedo-intellectual of the super-rich class. There have been many others like him. For example, in 1972 there was Carlo Fetrinella, the playboy revolutionary and son of a family that owned a vast fortune in timber, building, textiles and banking. He tried to destroy the electricity supply to Milan with 16 sticks of dynamite but, fortunately, he accidentally killed himself with his attempt on the first electricity pylon he tried to blow up. If he'd succeeded, there'd have been many deaths in Milan as a result. And what about those Japanese psychopaths who tried to seed Tokyo's Metro with sarin nerve gas? There'll be more psychos to come in due course -- fortunately not too many -- but Bin Laden is certainly not alone. I don't qualify to go any further in reading Chomsky's article because after the conditions he lays down, he writes: <<<< If you don't accept those two assumptions, then what I say will not be addressed to you. >>>> All I can say is that I had a great deal of respect for Chomsky 30-40 years ago when he advanced his theory of innate language. He persuaded me away from Skinner's behavourist ideas. But it seems that, today, I'm not qualified to read his "New War against Terror" any further, so I won't make any more comments. Keith Hudson __________________________________________________________ �Writers used to write because they had something to say; now they write in order to discover if they have something to say.� John D. Barrow _________________________________________________ Keith Hudson, Bath, England; e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] _________________________________________________
