Noam Chomsky is the guy who defended Pol Pot and tried to deny and
then
minimize the Killing Fields, right?

On Sep 5, 10:45 am,

Who is Noam Chomsky?

Noam Chomsky is: ``arguably the most important living
intellectual'' (The New York Times), one of the ten most
frequently cited authors in the humanities, in the company
of Marx and Freud and Plato, the only one of the ten now
living...

One of Chomsky's many critics wonder; Why all the hoopla?:
Chomsky on terrorism

In response to U.S. declarations of a War on
Terrorism in 1981 and the redeclaration in 2001, Chomsky has
argued that the major sources of international terrorism are
the world's major powers, led by the United States.
He uses a definition of terrorism from a U.S. Army
manual, which describes it as,
"the calculated use of violence or the threat of
violence to inculcate fear; intended to coerce
or to intimidate governments or societies in the
pursuit of goals that are generally political,
religious, or ideological".

On the efficacy of terrorism:
"One is the fact that terrorism works. It doesn't fail.
It works. Violence usually works. That's world history.
Secondly, it's a very serious analytic error to say, as is
commonly done, that terrorism is the weapon of the weak.
Like other means of violence, it's primarily a weapon of
the strong, overwhelmingly, in fact. It is held to be a
weapon ...

read more =BB

Noam Chomsky is the guy who defended Pol Pot and tried to deny and
then
minimize the Killing Fields, right?

On Sep 5, 10:45 am,

Who is Noam Chomsky?

Noam Chomsky is: ``arguably the most important living
intellectual'' (The New York Times), one of the ten most
frequently cited authors in the humanities, in the company
of Marx and Freud and Plato, the only one of the ten now
living...

One of Chomsky's many critics wonder; Why all the hoopla?:
"...In any case, Chomsky is not a significant political
thinker, as he himself would probably admit. His
constructive ideals are not original with him, and barely
touched upon in his publications.
As for his criticisms of the existing state of affairs,
one should very much like to know how it has come to pass
that many of those who feel qualified to judge intellectual
eminence take it as a revelation that the United State of
America is an imperial power which has committed, supported
and denied atrocities all over the world, or that
centralizing the news media in the hands of large,
advertising-supported corporations, owned in whole or in
part by other huge companies, leads to bias. These are
important facts, of course, and they are news to many
people. So are the facts of evolution and the age of the
Earth, still unaccepted by approximately half of America's
adults. It is meritorious work to teach them, but hardly
a sign of unrivalled intellectual accomplishment."
--On Chomsky: a ``Study in Total Depravity''

Noam Chomsky
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Western Philosophy
20th-century philosophy
21st-century philosophy

Main interests: Linguistics, Psychology, Philosophy of
Language, Politics, Ethics

Notable ideas: Generative grammar, universal grammar
Influences: Bertrand Russell, John Dewey, Adam Smith,
Immanuel Kant, René Descartes, George Orwell.

Photo:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Chomsky_interviewed_by_F_Stock.jpg

* According to Chomsky: "I'm a boring speaker and
I like it that way.... I doubt that people are attracted to
whatever the persona is.... People are interested in the
issues, and they're interested in the issues because they
are important." "We don't want to be swayed by
superficial eloquence, by emotion and so on."

Avram Noam Chomsky (born December 7, 1928) is an American
linguist, philosopher, political activist, author, and
lecturer. He is an Institute Professor and professor
emeritus of linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology.

Chomsky is credited with the creation of the theory of
generative grammar, considered to be one of the most
significant contributions to the field of linguistics made
in the 20th century.
He also helped spark the cognitive revolution in
psychology through his review of B. F. Skinner's Verbal
Behavior, in which he challenged the behaviorist approach to
the study of behavior and language dominant in the 1950s.
His naturalistic approach to the study of language has
also affected the philosophy of language and mind (see
Harman and Fodor). He is also credited with the
establishment of the Chomsky hierarchy, a classification of
formal languages in terms of their generative power.

According to the Arts and Humanities Citation Index in
1992, Chomsky was cited as a source more often than any
other living scholar during the 1980-1992 time period, and
was the eighth-most cited scholar in any time period.

Beginning with his critique of the Vietnam War in the 1960s,
Chomsky has become more widely known - especially
internationally - for his media criticism and politics.

Chomsky believes that science is a good way to start

understanding history, politics, and human affairs:

"I think studying science is a good way to get
into fields like history. The reason is,
you learn what an argument means, you learn what
evidence is, you learn what makes sense to postulate
and when, what's going to be convincing.
You internalize the modes of rational inquiry, which
happen to be much more advanced in the sciences than
anywhere else. On the other hand, applying relativity
theory to history isn't going to get you anywhere. So
it's a mode of thinking." [24]

Political views
Some highlights of his political views:

* He has argued that the mass media in the United States
largely serve as a propaganda arm and "bought priesthood" of
the U.S. government and U.S. corporations, with the three
parties all largely intertwined through common interests.
In a famous reference to Walter Lippmann, Chomsky has
said that the American media _manufactures consent_
among the public.

* Power is always illegitimate unless it proves itself
to be legitimate. The burden of proof is on the authority.
If it can't be proven, it should be dismantled. Authority
that puts some above others is illegitimate by assumption
similarly to the use of violence by a nation.
* That there isn't much difference between slavery, and
renting yourself to an owner, or "wage slavery."
He feels that it is an attack on personal integrity that
destroys and undermines our freedoms. He holds that those
that work in the mills should run them.
* Chomsky argues that while the U.S. may preach
democracy and freedom for all, the U.S. has a history of
promoting, supporting and allying itself with non-democratic
and repressive organizations and states.

* He has opposed the U.S. global war on drugs, claiming
its language to be misleading, and referring to it as "the
war on certain drugs." He favors education and prevention
in the issue, as opposed to military and police action.
In an interview in 1999, Chomsky argued that, whereas
crops such as tobacco receive no mention in governmental
exposition, other non-profitable crops, such as marijuana,
are specifically targeted due to the consequences incurred
in persecuting the poor.[33]
"US domestic drug policy does not carry out its stated
goals, and policymakers are well aware of that. If it
isn't about reducing substance abuse, what is it about?
It is reasonably clear, both from current actions and the
historical record, that substances tend to be criminalized
when they are associated with the so-called dangerous
classes, that the criminalization of certain substances is
a technique of social control."[34]

* Critical of big business, Chomsky believes in a highly
organized society based on democratic control of communities
and work places. He believes that the radical humanist
ideas of his two major influences, Bertrand Russell and John
Dewey, were "rooted in the Enlightenment and classical
liberalism, and retain their revolutionary character."[35]

* Chomsky has stated that he believes the United States
remains the "greatest country in the world,"[36] a comment
that he later clarified by saying, "Evaluating countries is
senseless and I would never put things in those terms, but
that some of America's advances, particularly in the area of
free speech, that have been achieved by centuries of popular
struggle, are to be admired."[37]

* He holds views that can be summarized as anti-war but
not strictly pacifist. He prominently opposed the Vietnam
War and most other wars in his lifetime. However, he
maintains that U.S. involvement in World War II was probably
justified, with the caveat that a preferable outcome would
have been to end or prevent the war through earlier
diplomacy. In particular, he believes that the dropping
of nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was "among the
most unspeakable crimes in history."[40]

* He has a view of broad free-speech rights, especially
in the mass media; he opposes censorship and refuses to take
legal action against those who may have libeled him.

Chomsky has stated that his "personal visions are
fairly traditional anarchist ones, with origins in The
Enlightenment and classical liberalism" and he has praised
libertarian socialism.

Libertarian socialism is a group of political
philosophies that aim to create a society without political,
economic or social hierarchies - a society in which all
violent or coercive institutions would be dissolved, and in
their place every person would have free, equal access to
tools of information and production, or a society in which
such coercive institutions and hierarchies were drastically
reduced in scope.
This equality and freedom would be achieved through
the abolition of authoritarian institutions and private
property, in order that direct control of the means of
production and resources will be gained by the
working class and society as a whole.
Libertarian socialism also constitutes a tendency of
thought that informs the identification, criticism and
practical dismantling of illegitimate authority in all
aspects of social life.
Accordingly they believe that "the exercise of power in
any institutionalized form - whether economic, political,
religious, or sexual - brutalizes both the wielder of
power and the one over whom it is exercised."

Chomsky on terrorism

In response to U.S. declarations of a War on
Terrorism in 1981 and the redeclaration in 2001, Chomsky has
argued that the major sources of international terrorism are
the world's major powers, led by the United States.
He uses a definition of terrorism from a U.S. Army
manual, which describes it as,
"the calculated use of violence or the threat of
violence to inculcate fear; intended to coerce
or to intimidate governments or societies in the
pursuit of goals that are generally political,
religious, or ideological".

On the efficacy of terrorism:
"One is the fact that terrorism works. It doesn't fail.
It works. Violence usually works. That's world history.
Secondly, it's a very serious analytic error to say, as is
commonly done, that terrorism is the weapon of the weak.
Like other means of violence, it's primarily a weapon of
the strong, overwhelmingly, in fact. It is held to be a
weapon ...

read more »