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
A basic principal of modern state capitalism is that costs and risks are socialized to the extent possible, while profit is privatized.
There is no plausible theory under which the record of the Pentagon Papers can be interpreted as relating to the national defense.
The poorest country in South America, Bolivia, had been devastated by neoliberal economic policies.
Its true that contemporary technology permits decentralization, it also permits centralization. It depends on how you use the technology.
Technology can also be used so that private individuals will have access to the way centralized decisions are being made.
Long before the technology revolution there was declassification of documents and I've spent quite a lot of time studying declassified internal documents and written a lot about them. In fact, anybody who's worked through the declassified record can see very clearly that the reason for classification is very rarely to protect the state or the society from enemies. Most of the time it is to protect the state from its citizens, so they don't know what the government is doing.
Technology can be used that way and it can also be used in other ways.
There is little doubt that a significant part of any serious solution will require advances of technology, but that can only be part of the solution. Other major changes are necessary.
Desktop publishing was a big innovation that meant small groups or even poor societies could do their own publication without the capital investment in a major printing press. That's a big difference. Same is true of more advanced technologies - it can offer plenty of liberatory possibilities - can - but whether it does or not or whether it serves for coercion depends on socioeconomic decisions.
Those are possibilities for technology, which don't tend to be used, because of the way power is concentrated. There are all kinds of possibilities, including for coercion. In China, technology is used to control and coerce. Here too, to an extent, but not to that extent.
Industrial production of meat makes a huge contribution to global warming.
I don't usually admire Sarah Palin, but when she was making fun of this 'hopey changey stuff,' she was right: there was nothing there.
Even the most cynical can hardly be surprised by the antics of Nixon and his accomplices as they are gradually revealed. It matters little, at this point, where the exact truth lies in the maze of perjury, evasion, and of contempt for the normal - hardly inspiring - standards of political conduct.
I would appear on Fox News more easily than I would NPR.