By Jawed Naqvi
NEW DELHI, Nov 5: American dissident and renowned scholar Prof Noam Chomsky took apart the United States and India for their human rights record on Monday , accusing one of being the world's biggest rogue state
and the other of suppressing democratic freedoms in Kashmir.

NEW DELHI, Nov 5: American dissident and renowned scholar Prof Noam
Chomsky took apart the United States and India for their human rights
record on Monday , accusing one of being the world's biggest rogue state
and the other of suppressing democratic freedoms in Kashmir.

Speaking at a surprisingly large non-religious anti-war congregation in
New Delhi of some 3,000 students, teachers, trade union workers, social
activists and intellectuals, Chomsky declared that the real terrorism
was being perpetrated on innocent people of Afghanistan where he quoted
UN figures to suggest a million or two could perish due to starvation
induced by the US-led war against Osama bin Laden.

Chomsky's remarks came on the day visiting US Defence Secretary Donald
Rumsfeld tersely told New Delhi and Islamabad during a brief hyphenated
visit to the rival capitals that there was a need to continue the war
during the month of Ramazan starting later this month. While Rumsfeld
refused to be publicly drawn into a discussion on Kashmir, Chomsky
vented his feelings at least twice.

"How about criticizing the government for outright terrorism," Chomsky
said in a comment on the role of the media in manufacturing consent on
behalf of their governments. "Say for example the major international
human rights groups like Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International
have reams of material on Indian state terrorism in Kashmir and in fact
elsewhere."

He linked Washington's present bombing campaigns in Afghanistan to its
other foreign policy quests including the anti-missile defence
programme, saying militarization of space and the assault on Afghanistan
were part of a hegemonistic design.

"If you go back to the 19th century, Britain was one of the major rogue
states. In the latter part of the 20th century, the US is supreme in
these respects and not surprisingly it behaves like the others. I mean
it could get away with it, but it can't," Chomsky told Star TV as part
of a two-week lecture tour.

"The record is extremely clear on that. We can take a case that is
totally uncontroversial because we can appeal to the decisions of the
highest international authorities - the International Court of Justice
and the Security Council of the United Nations. So this is an
uncontroversial case. The world court has condemned one state for
international terrorism, namely the United States. The victim -
Nicaragua. This was not a minor act of terrorism. This left tens of
thousands of people killed and the country virtually destroyed. It may
not recover."

Chomsky told his audience at the public meeting, which included
dissident author Arundhati Roy and celebrated social activist Aruna Roy,
that India's decision to endorse the American missile defence project
had been applauded in Washington by "a lot of hawks and jingoists for
its enthusiasm to join" the only other two countries that favour
militarization of space, namely Israel and the United States.

Earlier, Chomsky told a gathering including Defence Minister George
Fernandes and Pakistan High Commissioner Ashraf Jehangir Qazi, that the
United States was a leading terrorist country which borrowed its
anti-terrorism manual from the Nazis.

The propagandist version of terrorism was as clearly defined in the
United States as anywhere else as it is that which is directed against
the United States, its friends and allies. Only its underlying
philosophy was not entirely untainted by completely anti-democratic
influences.

"The Nazis for example bitterly condemned terrorism and conducted what
they 'counter-terrorism' against terrorist partisans," Chomsky said.