Noam Chomsky's TCD / Amnesty International Lecture at the RDS, Dublin January 2006

national | anti-war / imperialism | other press

Tuesday January 24, 2006 20:39

by R. Isible

Transcript in Counterpunch magazine

Chomsky delivered the annual Amnesty International lecturehttp://www.indymedia.ie/newswire.php?story_id=73134. It was originally to be held at Trinity College Dublin and was then resecheduled to the Royal Dublin Society's Shelbourne Hall.

The lecture outlines 3 background premises for any serious discussion of terrorism: 1)don't gloss over facts; 2)morals matter; 3) try to define terms as clearly as possible.

Chomsky examines the definitions of terrorism and its likely causes. In the course of the lecture he asserts that the US "War against Terror" was started long before the Bush2 administration and that the US has been a leading terrorist whether one takes a general definition or one of the more specific definitions enshrined in treaties and other documents proposed and ratified by the US. He also asserts that contrary to the claim by Western governments that the invasion of Iraq is to protect us against terror, they are well aware that it is most likely to increase terrorist activity.

This is the lecture where Chomsky states that he has slightly overstated the case that the fundamental moral precept of applying the same (if not harsher) standards and laws to oneself has been violated by the West (especially the US).

Chomsky: "The reason is the same in all cases: the principle of universality is rejected, for the most part tacitly, though sometimes explicitly. Those are very sweeping statements. I purposely put them in a stark form to invite you to challenge them, and I hope you do. You will find, I think, that although the statements are somewhat overdrawn--purposely -- they nevertheless are uncomfortably close to accurate, and in fact very fully documented. But try for yourselves and see."

This is the phrase that made RTE interviewer Mark Little pee his pants during his turgid interview
http://www.indymedia.ie/newswire.php?story_id=73867
with Chomsky in which Little refused to "try for himself" and instead seized upon this as a type of admission that Chomsky didn't mean what he said.

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Noam Chomsky's TCD / Amnesty International Lecture at the RDS, Dublin January 2006