Who is Noam Chomsky?

Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez mentioned a man and a book in a speech at the United Nations

In the middle of September, on a Wednesday, the president of Venezuela began his speech to the United Nations, by waving around a book. The book was: Hegemony or Survival; America's Quest for Global Dominance. The author of this book is Noam Chomsky. Okay, so who is Noam Chomsky?

Chomsky is an American, born in late 1928 in Philadelphia*. He is Institute Professor at MIT, of Linguistics. In fact, Chomsky is considered by some to be the father of modern linguistics. Linguistics, you say, is that all?

Chomsky is in excellent company, both as a writer and as an eloquent and articulate commentator. The Nobel prizewinning author of Disgrace, South African JM Coetzee** also studied linguistics, as did JRR Tolkien***.

Thanks to Chavez endorsement of Chomsky's book, first published in 2003, sales have increased strongly, with Amazon ordering 25 000 copies and commissioning 25 000 more. Hegemony or Survival is currently ranked 3rd on Amazon's**** bestseller list.

Chomsky for years has been speaking his own truths about democracy - in fact, 'real democracy'. His has been a soft voice criticising the US government, and the 77 -year old's popularity continues unabated. His speeches continue to sweep up campus crowds especially, across the USA.

What makes Chomsky so compelling is the detail and clarity of his information. His articles are filled with researched facts and historic details that are not found in mainstream media. He appears genuinely altruistic, and what he says makes obvious sense. The more one listens to Chomsky, the more one becomes aware both of his unfettered intelligence, and the subversive forces at play.

Here is an extract from Chomsky's blog*****, under the title: On the US-Israeli Invasion of Lebanon:

'The standard Western version is that the July 2006 invasion was justified by legitimate outrage over capture of two Israeli soldiers at the border. The posture is cynical fraud. The US and Israel, and the West generally, have little objection to capture of soldiers, or even to the far more severe crime of kidnapping civilians (or of course to killing civilians). That had been Israeli practice in Lebanon for many years, and no one ever suggested that Israel should therefore be invaded and largely destroyed.'

It is this voice, clear as a bell, ringing on (and from) American soil that assures us that there is a voice of reason in the West, but also concerns us because those in power appear to be ignoring it.

What is significant is that Chavez, an ostensibly powerful man, waved a book at the most powerful leaders in the world, and asked: 'Are you listening?'

It is to Chavez' credit that he poked a hole through the charade of US foreign policy. The USA may be many good things, but it is not benign, and the democracy it espouses is no longer genuine. Increasingly, the world has become intelligent to this trend thanks to people like Chomsky. The question that remains is: does the survival of the USA preclude the survival of the Rest Of The World. Their strategy appears to be Last Man Standing***** (particularly given attitudes to oil, and recent adventures in the Middle East).

Eric R. Snyder, commenting on Chomsky's book on Amazon, writes:
'The influence of the U.S. has undeniably been a mixed bag. America is neither a monster leaving [in] its trail unmitigated evil nor the child-like narrative of the "white hats" and good guys standing tall in an unstable world.'******

The last word on America ought to go to Chomsky, but in the end it is a matter of opinion. History, after all, is not written linguists, but by the winners.

"...to paraphrase Thucydides, the powerful are entitled to do as they wish, while the weak suffer as they must." - Noam Chomsky