[NC was in India for 3 weeks. Here's another talk with Q&A. Link below]
'The Term "Fundamentalism" Is Misused' Question And Answer Session with Noam Chomsky after his Public Lecture at the Music Academy, Chennai: November 10, 2001 As a rule, the form of public lectures (this particular one was presented by Frontline magazine and the Media Development Foundation and supported by 22 representative organizations) does not allow the fielding of questions, comments and criticisms from the audience. Furthermore, providing for a Question and Answer session in a large auditorium with an overflowing audience becomes a physical and logistical challenge. Nevertheless, Noam Chomsky indicated in advance to the organisers his clear preference for Q & A. Accordingly, a session lasting about forty-five minutes followed the lecture, attracting great audience interest within the auditorium and also outside, where hundreds of people watched the proceedings live on close circuit television, or clustered around loud speakers. The Q & A format allowed for oral as well as written questions from a highly engaged audience. A large number of written questions were received and oral questions and comments came in from various sides. The session was able to accommodate a representative sample of questions of both types and from every part of the auditorium. However, when the meeting concluded after three hours, it was clear that the questions could have kept the lecturer on his feet for at least another hour. Q1: Sashi Kumar: Now we'll take some questions. We have one question from the organisers here, perhaps we could kick off with this: ``Please go into the question of what explains the September 11 crimes, the likely perpetrators and the reservoir of support. And, finally, what are the policy options?'' A1: Noam Chomsky: Well, who carried out the crimes? We know a number of them, the ones who killed themselves. So those are known. They were mostly middle class, urban, educated people, mostly from Saudi Arabia. They certainly were not people who'd been hiding in caves in Afghanistan. The United States decided that you have to personalise these things, so you can carry out a `Crusade'. So they picked Osama bin Laden and the Taliban, who have interacted with him, which could be true. But they have apparently no evidence for it. If there were any evidence, it would be presented, you could be sure of that. Just simply to mobilise support. The United States selected an increasingly comical client named Tony Blair [audience laughter and applause] to present the case to the world, while sort of hiding in the background. I suppose the public relations purpose there was to convey the image that we really have lots of secret information that this little boy doesn't know about [audience laughter] but we`ll let him do it. But whatever the purpose was, they basically have no information, pretty clearly, and that's not very surprising. I think it's not at all unlikely that these networks are indeed responsible. That was everybody's first assumption, mine too, and I think it's the plausible assumption. But there's a big difference between plausible assumptions and evidence. And networks like that are very hard to penetrate. They are decentralised, non-hierarchic, don't have much communication. They follow a policy that's actually called `Leaderless Resistance'. It's also used by Christian Right terrorists in the United States. That's why the FBI [Federal Bureau of Investigation] can never penetrate those groups. Leaderless Resistance means there's a kind of a shared point of view, maybe established by spokespersons, but then actions are initiated and carried out in small groups. (1 of 14) < http://www.outlookindia.com/full.asp?sid=1&fname=chomsky&fodname=20011 128&secname= >
