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Fifth Column

Noam Chomsky attacks 'terrorist state' U.S., Israel while visiting Hezbollah leader

2006-05-13

Drudge link. Hat tip http://extremecentre.org/.

Radical American thinker and MIT professor Noam Chomsky met with Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in Beirut today and branded the U.S. a terrorist state.

"I think that Nasrallah has a reasoned argument and a persuasive argument that they (the weapons) should be in the hands of Hizbollah as a deterrent to potential aggression and there is plenty of background and reasons for that. So, I think his position, if I am reporting it correctly, and it seems to be a reasonable position, is that until there is a general political settlement in the region and the threat of aggression and violence is reduced or eliminated, there has to be a deterrent. The Lebanese army cannot be a deterrent."

MORE:

"There is a meaning to the word terrorist, in fact you can read a definition of term terrorist is the U.S. code of laws. It gives a very clear, precise, adequate definition of the word terrorist. have been writing about terrorism for 25 years always using the official U.S. definition [of the word "terrorist"], but that definition is un-usable, and the reason is that when you use that definition it turns out, not surprisingly, that the U.S is one of the leading terrorist states, and the other states become terrorist or non-terrorist depending on how they are relating to U.S. goals."

MORE:

"The regional superpower Israel is threatening to attack it [Iran], the U.S. is threatening to attack it. These threats alone are outright violations international law and of the U.N. charter. Iran is in difficulty. Iran has been trying for some years to negotiate settlement but the U.S. just refuses."

Developing...

Posted by:anonymous5089

#17 You'd have to marinate the miserable bastard in truthiness for a couple of hundred years first!

Fuzzy Wuzzy Angels

Posted by: Fuzzy Wuzzy Angel #1 2006-05-13 23:48

#16 irony tastes.... sweet n sour ....

Posted by: Frank G 2006-05-13 21:18

#15 Gee Frank, what did the natives of New Guinea do to piss you off that you would wish Chomsky on them?

Posted by: CrazyFool 2006-05-13 21:09

#14 ;-)

Posted by: lotp 2006-05-13 20:56

#13 I'd just hope he'd travel to New Guinea and be eaten by natives....who spoke english

Posted by: Frank G 2006-05-13 20:46

#12 Given we are all descended from the same small pool of common ancestors 80K years ago. Were language as we know it today well developed at that stage I would expect the form of language such as its grammar to be in part hardwired into our genes

This discursion is dreadfully off topic, but ... you're confusing the capability for language with specific linguistic mechanisms.

Just to start with, "capability for language" means a lot of different things to different researchers ... by some definitions, birds and most mammals have a genetic capability for language, including syntax, individual names and shared (and evolving) semantic structures.

Those capabilities rather pre-date the genetic bottleneck in Homo Sapiens that resulted from the massive Toba volcanic eruption 75,000 years ago .... and we share the same brain structures that enable those abilities in other animals. What we've evolved in addition -- and this appears also to predate the bottleneck -- is a frontal cortex that goes beyond associative learning and is able to manipulate 2nd order symbols, i.e. the ability to talk about speech, to think about thinking.

Both associative reasoning (of the sort that predominates in mammals other than humans) and symbolic deductive reasoning are used in artificial intelligence (whether embodied in i.e. robots or in the form of intelligent agents residing elsewhere). There's a huge and hot and ongoing debate / contest within the AI community as to which approach is more powerful for what kinds of problems -- including computational processing of natural human language.

Okay ... we've diverted this thread enough. I could write a whole lot more on the topic ... and am doing so, in other venues. But I'll spare the good Rantburgers a longer dissertation on the topic ..... ;-)

Posted by: lotp 2006-05-13 20:23

#11 lotp, I beg to differ. The capability for language is genetic. Whilst we don't understand the mechanisms that result in how language is expressed, it doesn't alter the fact that it is genetic and all normal human's share the same general capability.

Given we are all descended from the same small pool of common ancestors 80K years ago. Were language as we know it today well developed at that stage I would expect the form of language such as its grammar to be in part hardwired into our genes (Thats what evolution does. It progressive and incrementally improves functions and makes them more efficient through genetic changes) and we all share those genes. The grammar aspect of language clearly isn't hardwired into our genes, which strongly indicates language with grammar is recent - a few tens of thousands of years at most.

Posted by: phil_b 2006-05-13 19:27

#10 #4, MIT has been strongly left-wing for at least a generation.

Phil_b, you're half right. The evidence is that Chomsky was wrong about generative grammar. But that does not in the least indicate that language is recent.

(Sorry for the pendantic response but language, meaning and computational understanding of natural human language by intelligent software agents is my doctoral research area.)

Posted by: lotp 2006-05-13 18:56

#9 Were I not aware of the evidence, I would expect to find something like Chomsky's universal grammar and it's interesting we don't. It indicates language is a far more recent development than is generally believed.

Posted by: phil_b 2006-05-13 18:14

#8 2X4, Chomsky was dead wrong 40 odd years ago about universal grammars and he has been in denial about it ever since.

The weird thing is he has this cult following who take all the accumulating evidence he was completely wrong and use it to try and argue Chomsky was right.

Posted by: phil_b 2006-05-13 18:06

#7 He is worshiped as a god in the US North East, Canada and around the world but is a fool and an antisimite waste of skin.

MIT is a crap school, any place that would keep this poision on hand and spewing and writing his hate for so long is a crap school. They may have been great at one time but the minds of those from MIT that I have encountered are ruined by the Leftist Philosophies they endorse and parrot.

I have a special place in mind for this commie self hating turd Chumpsky.

Posted by: SPoD 2006-05-13 15:51

#6 Chimpsky is an academic who things his works in Linguistics makes him an expert on anything else.

There is more and more voices in the field of linguistics that seem to suggest that the whole expert Gnome Chimpsky edifice in Linguistics is build from a pile of turds. As above, so below.

Posted by: twobyfour 2006-05-13 14:54

#5 He must be running for Attorney General in a Democrat primary somewhere.

Posted by: Mike 2006-05-13 13:56

#4 Do the leaders of MIT have any idea of just how much Chomsky has debased the image of an institution that the engineering dept took generations to build?

Posted by: ed 2006-05-13 13:50

#3 He's even less important now than he was on March 14th.

Posted by: 6 2006-05-13 12:55

#2 Bullet. Head.

But that woudl be too merciful. Chimpsky is an academic who things his works in Linguistics makes him an expert on anything else. He's bascially an irrational font of self-hatred, a defeated marxist who is angry at the world.

I feel sorry for him - he is going to be so surprised when he gets to hell. And the hooror that he will face on his deathbed when he looks back at what a bitter wasteland his life is.

Posted by: Oldspook 2006-05-13 12:22

#1 What a tool.

Posted by: Rex Mundi 2006-05-13 12:05

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