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Local News & Opinion
Ref. : Local Newsbriefs Travel
Films, Arts & Education
Letters
Ref. : Letters to the editor Open Letters:
06.24 Mr. Holder, You Must Hold Torturers Accountable Health & Environment
06.29 Thinking about Climate 06.26 False Health-Scare Ad on CNN 06.25 Louella Learns the Limits of Medicare 06.23 The Simple Answer to America’s Health Care Crisis: Medicare for All 06.23 Tell ABC: Include Single-Payer in Healthcare Debate 06.23 Serving the Medical-Industrial Complex 06.22 Thinking about Recoveries 06.20 Obama's Health Care Waterloo 06.15 Obama, Like Clinton Before Him, is Blowing the Chance for Real Health Care Reform 06.11 Two Key Health-Care Numbers 06.10 Big Breakthroughs for Single Payer Health Care 06.10 Readying Americans for Dangerous, Mandatory Vaccinations Media Watching
06.29 WP's Connolly Back, on Health Reform 06.17 Hypocrisy and Hope: Western Coverage, Iranian Courage 06.15 Excusing Outrages of the Right 06.11 Tying Obama to Bush's Budget Mess US Politics, Policy & Culture
06.30 Obama's Torture Hypocrisy 06.30 Court Circular: Annals of Imperial Continuity 06.29 Obama, They Want You to Fail 06.26 Who to Trust on a Truth Commission? 06.26 Tarnished Shields: The Morally Bankrupt 'Family Values' Republican Leadership 06.25 America's "Bases of Empire" 06.24 Twelve Angry White People: Jury Nullification in a Pennsylvania Coal Town 06.24 Touring Empire's Ruins 06.23 Employers are Undermining the Economic Stimulus Program 06.19 Criminalizing Dissent: Obama Pot Calls Iranian Kettle Black 06.17 Afghanistan's Operation Phoenix 06.16 Are You Ready for War with a Demonized Iran? 06.13 Where's the Anger as the Wheels Come Off Obama's and the Democrats' Recovery Program? 06.10 Waiving the Rules for Old Glory 06.10 Obama's Era of Openness Is Closed High Crimes?
07.03 Reviewing Marjorie Cohn and Kathleen Gilberd's "Rules of Disengagement" 07.01 Iraq: A Bitter Strategic Failure 06.25 It's All Good, Again: 'Uptick' in the American-Made Tides of Violence in Iraq 06.22 Obama Opposes Plame-gate Release 06.21 Dexter's Legions: The "Good" Killers of the "Good" War 06.18 Extending the Tradition: Proudly Taking American Torture Into the Future 06.15 New UN Report Denounces America's Human Rights Record 06.14 Fear Rules Economics & Business Non/Mis/Malfeasance
07.01 Michael Hudson's "Super Imperialism:" The Economic Strategy of Imperial America 06.23 Obama's Financial Reform Proposal - A Stealth Scheme for Global Monetary Control 06.10 Cyberscares About Cyberwars Equal Cybermoney International
07.01 Pirates of the Mediterranean 06.29 Color Revolutions, Old and New 06.25 Iran Divided & the 'October Suprise' 06.23 Astringent Corrective: AbuKhalil on Iran's Turmoil 06.20 Are the Iranian Protests Another US Orchestrated “Color Revolution?” 06.20 Through a Glass Darkly: Sifting Myth and Fact on Iran 06.19 Iran's Election and US - Iranian Elections 06.16 The Ir-Af-Pak War: Obama Looses the Manhunters 06.12 Israeli War Crimes Against Children During Operation Cast Lead We are a non-profit Internet-only newspaper publication founded in 1973. Your donation is essential to our survival.
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BACKGROUND:Who is Noam Chomsky?While Chávez is a fiery independent socialist, Chomsky is a methodical and systematic doubter in the tradition of Bertrand Russell and René Descartes.
Dr. Noam Chomsky received second billing to the devil this past week during a speech presented by Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez to the U.N. General Assembly. Chávez went to verbal and visual lengths to encourage Americans to read Chomsky’s book, Hegemony or Survival: America's Quest for Global Dominance. It is his recommendation that has been heeded; the book has reached number one in sales on Amazon.Chávez has a reputation as an edgy leader. Chomsky is equally considered edgy, though most are unfamiliar with his particular methods of rabble-rousing. While Chávez is a fiery independent socialist, Chomsky is a methodical and systematic doubter in the tradition of Bertrand Russell and René Descartes. In most respects, the suggested reading by Chávez was an unexpected and enigmatic presentation, and it was sufficiently noteworthy as to provoke the public into acts of purchase. It remains to be seen whether those who buy the book will actually read it. As has been widely reported recently in the U.S. press, Chomsky is an icon in Europe, yet remains a controversial figure in America. This disparity is both easy and difficult to fathom. His body of work is enormous and spans disciplines and decades. His critics largely focus on his recent writings centered around criticism of the foreign policies of the U.S. and Israel. He is frequently described by the catch-phrase, “The world’s leading intellectual,” though most would not be able to explain why he has earned that title. Criticism that appears at street level and on blogs usually follow along the lines of, “he hates America,” and, “I don’t care for his opinions on society.” In the most unguarded cases, he is described as “the worst kind of Jew; a self-hating Jew.” What can be said about Chomsky with little equivocation is that his work in linguistics, beginning in the 1950s up until the present, has been revolutionary. His theories on transformational/generative/universal grammar, syntactic structures, language competence and acquisition have become the bedrock of modern linguistics. Chomsky has been an advocate of the idea that intellectuals have an ethical obligation to involve themselves in a public way with contemporary politics.
His reputation as an activist and proponent of the far left emerged during the Vietnam War. Chomsky was an outspoken critic of U.S. involvement in Vietnam and equally was an advocate of the idea that intellectuals have an ethical obligation to involve themselves in a public way with contemporary politics. In the 1967 article, “The Responsibility of Intellectuals,” Chomsky wrote, “For a privileged minority, Western democracy provides the leisure, the facilities, and the training to seek the truth lying hidden behind the veil of distortion and misrepresentation, ideology and class interest, through which the events of current history are presented to us.”Chomsky’s life as a responsible intellectual, or, as he is often called, a dissenter, is not a separate identity from that of the linguistics professor and scholar. His identity, if viewed panoramically, is a logical extension of the Western and Talmudic intellectual traditions applied to the landscape of contemporary politics and active engagement. And at the age of 77, Chomsky continues to walk his talk. For all those who oppose or iconically extol the persona and work of Noam Chomsky, the voluminous footnotes are there. Likewise, the reading recommendation by President Chávez is an insightful footnote as to what the world might be reading and the ways in which they may be thinking in the very near future. Laray Polk is a political writer and activist who lives in Dallas, Texas. She can be contacted at laraypolk@earthlink.net.
Copyright © 2006 The Baltimore Chronicle. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of Baltimore Chronicle content is expressly prohibited without their prior written consent. This story was published on September 26, 2006. |
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