Noam Chomsky
Noam Chomsky
Avram Noam Chomskyis an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, historian, logician, social critic, and political activist. Sometimes described as "the father of modern linguistics", Chomsky is also a major figure in analytic philosophy, and one of the founders of the field of cognitive science. He has spent more than half a century at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he is Institute Professor Emeritus, and is the author of over 100 books on topics such as linguistics, war, politics, and...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionTeacher
Date of Birth7 December 1928
CityPhiladelphia, PA
CountryUnited States of America
In many respects, the United States is a great country. Freedom of speech is protected more than in any other country. It is also a very free society.
The internet, since it is publicly created, ought to be publicly controlled.
Judge Afiuni has suffered enough. She has been subject to acts of violence and humiliations to undermine her human dignity. I am convinced that she must be set free.
My speculation is that the U.S. does not want to establish the principle that it has to defer to some higher authority before carrying out the use of violence.
In Kosovo, the U.S. has chosen a course of action that escalates atrocities and violence. It is also a course of action that strikes a blow against the regime of international order, but which offers the weak at least some protection from predatory states.
What Wikileaks exposed is kind of superficial in a way.
I admire Ralph Nader and Denis Kucinich very much, and insofar as they bring up issues and carry out an educational and organisational function - that's important, and fine, and I support it.
I don't like the intellectual label.
It is a privilege to join the campaign to support Bradley Manning for his courage and integrity in serving his country by helping make the government accountable to its citizens, and to inform the world of what its people should know.
Civil disobedience's main goal typically is to try to arouse and inspire others to join and do something. Well, sometimes that is a good tactic, sometimes not.
I think individuals have a right to privacy, but that ought to include the right to prevent private institutions from monitoring what you do and building up a personal profile for you so that they can direct you in particular ways by their effective control over the internet, and that doesn't happen of course.
Markets have built in inefficiencies, serious inefficiencies which are well known.
Karl Marx was in favor of socialist and communist-socialist revolutions, but he had a pretty nuanced view about it.
If you're in favour of any policy - reform, revolution, stability, regression, whatever - if you're at least minimally moral, it's because you think it's somehow good for people. And good for people means conforming to their fundamental nature.