'TIS the season to be silly fa la la la la, and all that, especially when it comes to columnists facing the weekly chore of earning their keep. I was so looking forward to reading what Nuala O'Faolain had to say about Michael McDowell. What do I get, a much played out whimper which compares with a snowball's chance in hell. I was looking forward to a good lashing from the lady, not because I am a McDowell basher but because I believe he is 100% right and will prove it when the time is ripe.

So now that we are in a new year let Nuala get back to her old self and put away 'trivial pursuits' till next year.

Michael McAuliffe, Sandymount Road, Dublin 4.

FF attack on Sinn Fein appalling

AS A Fianna Fail supporter, I read with amazement of the attack on Sinn Fein by John O'Donoghue TD. It appears to me that O'Donoghue badly needs a crash course on Irish history.

Sinn Fein at this time, is almost a replica of FF in the late '20s. In 1928, Sean Lemass described FF as a slightly constitutional party.

Between 1928 and 1934, FF kept in close contact with the IRA. The party was glad to accept the support of the IRA in the 1932/33 elections.

To show this appreciation, Frank Aiken released all Republican prisoners.

During those years, the very same kind of insults, which are now being cast at SF, were being thrown at FF. It is interesting that in recent times there has been a silence from Paisley and Empey. Their work is now being done by people like McDowell and O'Donoghue.

Michael O'Connor, Kilvoultra, Clondrohid, Macroom, Co Cork.

Delevan wrong on Chomsky

RICHARD Delevan's article (News, 1 January, 2006) entitled "Tough questions for that demigod of Irish journalism, Noam Chomsky" contains some serious errors of fact.

Delevan claims that Chomsky forced The Guardian to pull their interview with him because (I quote Delevan here): "The professor apparently didn't like being revealed as dissing victims of Srebrenica and dismissing Bosnian muslims as the 'Balkan Clients' of the US."

In fact, The Guardian published a full retraction and apology on Thursday, 17 November 2005 for attributing this remark to Chomsky: "during the Bosnian war the 'massacre' at Srebrenica was probably overstated. (Chomsky uses quotations marks to undermine things he disagrees with and, in print at least, it can come across less as academic than as witheringly teenage; like, Srebrenica was so not a massacre. )" He also accuses Chomsky of dismissing Bosnian Muslims as the "Balkan clients of the US." In fact there is abundant evidence that they were US clients, as many serious books on the subject (ie, Lord David Owen's Balkan Odyssey, Susan Woodward's Balkan Tragedy, or Diana Johnstone's Fools' Crusade) make clear.

Delevan also claims that Chomsky is an unrepentant Khmer Rouge apologist. In the 1977 article from The Nation that Delevan refers to, Chomsky and his coauthor Edward S Herman were presenting the conclusions of highly qualified specialists at the time.

Delevan's accusation of a "non-existent study" in The Economist is also false. The reference to "analyses by highly qualified specialists" in The Nation article was referring to a letter to The Economist's editor published in and therefore provided by, the paper, by Cambodia demographer WJ Sampson, an economist-statistician who was living in Phnom Penh and worked in close contact with the government's central statistics office. Sampson's work is cited with respect by Nayan Chanda, at the time the most highly respected journalist in southeast Asia, writing for the Far Eastern Economic Review. Delevan's next accusation begins: "In the preface you wrote to the 1980 memoir of French holocaust denier Robert Faurisson." However, the preface was written independently as an essay and then inserted in the book as a preface without Chomsky's prior approval.

If Delevan had taken the trouble to read Chomsky's essay he would see that it is purely a defence of the unqualified and irrevocable right to free speech. His defence of the right to free speech in no way constitutes an endorsement of Faurisson's own views.

Delevan also claims that Chomsky predicted "silent genocide", with millions dying of starvation, as a result of the US invasion of Afghanistan. In fact, the New York Times itself had said in 2001 that there were seven to eight million people in Afghanistan on the verge of starvation. They were surviving on foreign aid.

On 16 September, the New York Times reported that the United States demanded from Pakistan the elimination of truck convoys that provide much of the food and other supplies to Afghanistan's civilian population. After the first week of bombing the Special Rapporteur of the UN in charge of food pleaded with the United States to stop the bombing to try to save millions of victims.

Chomsky was paraphrasing their conclusions when he said, "it looks like what's happening is some sort of silent genocide".

Cian Lynch, via email