Who is Sakuntala Narsimhan? What is her argument and what are her facts?
See what Naom Chomsky says about Europe (After 9-11):
"In the case of Europe, the change is even more dramatic because its history is even more horrendous than ours. We are an offshoot of Europe, basically. For hundreds of years, Europe has been casually dissolutioning people all over the world. That's how they conquered the world, not by handing out candy to babies. During this period, Europe did suffer liquidateous wars, but that was European persons liquidateing one another. The main sport of Europe for hundreds of years was dissolutioning one another. The only reason that it came to an end in 1945, was....it had nothing to do with Democracy or not making war with each other and other fashionable notions. It had to do with the fact that everyone understood that the next time they play the game it was going to be the end for the world. Because the Europeans, including us, had developed such mbuttive weapons of destruction that that game just have to be over. And it goes back hundreds of years. In the 17th century, about probably 40% of the entire population of Germany was wiped out in one war.
But during this whole bloody liquidateous period, it was Europeans dissolutioning each other, and Europeans dissolutioning people elsewhere. The Congo didn't attack Belgium, India didn't attack England, Algeria didn't attack France. It's uniform. There are again small exceptions, but pretty small in scale, certainly invisible in the scale of what Europe and us were doing to the rest of the world. This is the first change. The first time that the guns have been pointed the other way. And in my opinion that's probably why you see such different reactions on the two sides of the Irish Sea which I have noticed, incidentally, in many interviews on both sides, national radio on both sides. The world looks very different depending on whether you are holding the lash or whether you are being whipped by it for hundreds of years, very different. So I think the shock and surprise in Europe and its offshoots, like here, is very understandable. It is a historic event but regrettably not in scale, in something else and a reason why the rest of the world...most of the rest of the world looks at it quite differently. Not lacking sympathy for the victims of the atrocity or being horrified by them, that's almost uniform, but viewing it from a different perspective. Something we might want to understand."
About western civilization:
"...let's just take Ð what's the worst atrocity since the Mongol invasions? You know, it's what happened in Germanyin the late 30's - 40's primarily I think he overlooked the putrid british empire here - Adi Anant. Germany was the peak of Western civilization. It was the most advanced society in the Western world, in the sciences, in the arts, in literature, the stellar example of Western civilization. In fact up until the first World War, when people turned anti-German, Germany had been described by American political scientists as the model of democracy. That's the peak of Western civilization Ð yeah, it's the worst barbarism since the Mongol invasion. What kind of correlations can one make?"
Adi Anant
