In case you missed it, a few days ago Noam Chomsky berated Bertie Ahern and the Irish government for allowing US military aircraft to use Shannon as a stopover for refuelling.

He says "Is Mr Ahern following the will of the Irish people or is he following orders from Washington?". A reasonable question to ask you'd have to agree, considering 150,000 people around the country protested against US aircraft refuelling in Shannon. I'm still waiting for 150,000 to go out and march in support of such activity and in support of the war in general.

Chomsky goes on to say

It can only be justified if the goal of the government is to be the obedient servant of the global superpower. This tells you that western politicians despise democracy and prefer to shine the shoes of the power.

These remarks have been made in advance of Chomsky's annual Amnesty lecture to be held on January 18th in the RDS.

Richard Delevan has an interesting take on the phenomenon that is Noam Chomsky in this week's Tribune. Unfortunately, I don't have the paper to hand so I'll refrain from trying to quote him verbatim in case I make a mistake.

But the general gist of the piece is that people should ask Chomsky some critical questions regarding statements he made in the past instead of fawning in his presence. These critical questions that never get asked can all be found gift-wrapped in the Wikipedia page - Criticisms of Noam Chomsky.

I think it's clear that Delevan doesn't like him. But even I had my own hatred for Chomsky back in my college days. See, Chomsky had the bright idea to come up with what is called the "Chomsky Hierarchy". He describes four categories of formal grammars that generate formal languages. I never had a frigging clue what the whole thing was about, all I saw were pages of stuff like this ...

S → ABS
S → ε (where ε is the empty string)
BA → AB
BS → b
Bb → bb
Ab → ab
Aa → aa

Thankfully, Chomsky's breakdown of all things political is at the other end of the clarity scale.

Published by Colm.