NP Another Left academic describes Chomsky's responses to 11/9 as"misguided"

[jbor]

barbara100 at jps.net wrote:

> What, you think you can slip this past us because Doug's away on holiday?!
> Not so fast.

What difference does it make that Doug (and the pseuds) are away? The
article was published on 29/12.

You seem to be under the mistaken impression that Doug and yourself embody
the political sensibility of the majority of subscribers to this list, and
that the expression of alternative points of view to your own is treason.
That this attitude leads you and he to attempt to drown out or otherwise
censor opposing viewpoints merely reflects on your own dogmatism and
totalitarianising tendencies.

> and this guy (the author) is trying to put
> it up against the likes of Noam Chomsky

According to the byline "this guy", David McKnight, "is a senior lecturer in
the faculty of humanities at UTS. He is a long-time writer and activist on
the Left" in this country. There's even a contact email for him (which I'm
sure Doug would have insisted, smugly, that you direct your complaints to,
had he been the one to post the link).
 
> As
> Chomsky said in one of his recent lectures, 'the police would never consider
> wiping out a whole neighborhood in the apprehension of a criminal if they
> knew him to be hiding in a certain part of town.'  I'm sure, some cops might
> want to, but they can't willingly and knowingly kill a whole bunch of
> innocent people to get at one bad guy.

To engage this analogy for a moment - even though it's a stupid one, and
distorts both the *scale* and the locale of the actual situation - it wasn't
that the main suspect (and his ten-thousand-odd strong *gang*, mind) was
holed up in isolation in a neutral "neighbourhood" at all, he was being
harboured and actively protected by the brutal criminals who tyrannised that
particular neighbourhood. Thus, these criminals (actually, a military
regime) also became accomplices after the fact of the crime, and equal and
legitimate targets of the "police". After all attempts to negotiate with the
criminal leaders were unsuccessful the inevitable "shootout" occurred, with
the same unfortunate consequences.

I don't particularly agree with everything McKnight writes in the article
(for example, I think that in the context the difference between the type of
"global equivalent of a police raid" he advocates as an "alternative" and
the international military intervention which did transpire is virtually
negligible), but the point would be that Chomsky's particular brand of
loudmouthed US-bashing and "radical anarchism" has become less rather than
more palatable even to those "on the Left" since 11/9.

By the way, from your harangue you don't appear to have read the whole
article or, if you did, you don't seem to have understood it.

http://www.smh.com.au/news/0112/29/spectrum/spectrum5.html

best