By Myles Palmer
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MACY’s at 170 O’Farrell Street is to the place to be at 5pm Thursday – pop in to see the Swede !
LOCAL AD :
Meet Fredrik Ljungberg, World renowned soccer star and Calvin Klein Underwear model.Men’s store, Level 1.
It’s been a long day, so I will keep it brief tonight.
Latest Spurs rumour : Morten Olsen.
Liverpool do NOT want Martin O’Neill.
They will hire Benitez, Mourinho or Curbishley this week.
TONIGHT I WENT to see Chomsky.
The invitation said, “The 2004 Royal Institute of Philosophy Annual Lecture will be given by Professor Noam Chomsky and is called, ‘Simple Truths, Hard Choices: Some Thoughts on Terror, Justice and Self-defense’.
“The lecture is free and open to the public. There are no tickets, and no reservations can be made. We suggest you arrive early to be sure of a seat.”
It was a 5.30 kick-off and I got there at 4.20 pm and found 600 people queueing outside the Logan Hall.
The hall holds 900, a steward assured me, and the overspill hall has a screen and holds 800.
It’s lovely to see him and hear him.
The room is packed and he tells us that Bush does the job, a bit like our Queen.
He says that our counter-terrorism is terrorism, that most intellectuals are conformists, that John Kerry would be slightly less ugly than Bush, that there are some very brave dissidents in Turkey now, that the world would be hugely improved if everyone adhered to international law and there was proper behaviour between states, and he talked about the USA harbouring and training terrorists.
Chomsky said what I’ve always said about fighting terrorism post-9/11 : it should be police work.
He said, “Norms are established by the powerful, in their own interests, and with the acclaim of responsible intellectuals.”
Chomsky is not a charismatic speaker, but he can be droll.
He said, “The press recently reported from Iraq that if Iraquis ever see Saddam Hussein the dock, they want his former American allies shackled beside him. That inconceivable event would be a radical revision of the fundamental principle of international tribunals, which must in principle be restricted to the crimes of others – the defeated. The victors are not only immune from punishment, but even from acknowledgement.”
So it was fun.
To me a good article is anything I agree with, a good book is one I wish I had written, and a good lecture tells me things I already know.
Although, of course, we all need to have our ideas challenged from time to time.
He answers questions till 7.30 and then I zoom out and buy one of his books – Hegemony and Survival – and walk quickly up the street, past many bikes chained to a steel fence, and jump on a tube and get home at 8.15 and find my wife’s mechanic under her car.
He says Jan and two friends went out to dinner 10 minutes ago.
No rush to see Valencia – Marseilles, I know Valencia will win, but I forgot to put a bet on it.
Also, I figure it will be 0-0 at half-time.
Valencia will spend the first half sussing Marseilles out.
So they won’t score, but they won’t concede either
So I go in and switch on BBC2 and it’s 31 minutes and 0-0 and I heat some carrot & coriander soup and watch the rest of the first half and in the 45th minute Barthez brings down Mista recklessly and gets sent off and Vicente converts the penalty.
If Barthez is as dodgy as this, England may just have a chance of a draw on June 13th.
Second half, Mista makes it 2-0, a terrific left-footed finish from Vicente’s cross.
Valencia win the UEFA Cup.
20th May 2004.