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(October 18th, 2001) How do you define terror? Do terrorists all live in caves or hide in small groups? Do similar actions take on a different label than "terrorist" when they are perpetrated by a government?

Does the rest of the world have a reason to look at us with a jaded eye?

Noam Chomsky discusses these and other questions in this MIT lecture on "The New War On Terror".

Chomsky has been a strong critic of oppression and power for the last 40 or so years. His research is always impeccable; his viewpoint always perceptive.

Chomsky has been professor of modern languages and linguistics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology since 1976. Through his study of language and, in particular, syntax, since the early 1950's, Chomsky is credited with transforming the way foreign languages are taught through his theory of a “universal grammar”, and of “revolutionising our view of the mind”.

Often referred to as the "father of modern linguistics", Chomsky was cited (According to the Arts and Humanities Citation Index in 1992) as a source more often than any other living scholar during the 1980–92 period, and was the eighth most-cited source. He has written and lectured widely on linguistics, philosophy, intellectual history, international affairs and U.S. foreign policy. A brief sampling of his prolific work includes: The Logical Structure of Linguistic Theory; Aspects of the Theory of Syntax; Language and Mind; American Power and the New Mandarins; Reflections on Language; Rules and Representations; Knowledge of Language; The Culture of Terrorism; Manufacturing Consent (with E.S. Herman); Understanding Power; Hegemony or Survival: America’s Quest for Global Dominance; and most recently, Imperial Ambitions: Conversations on the Post-9/11 World, (with David Barsamian).

Chomsky, who calls himself a libertarian socialist, became a well known opponent of the Vietnam War, in 1967, with the publication of his essay, "The Responsibility of Intellectuals", in The New York Review of Books. His critics come from the left, the right and the middle, as he criticizes hypocrisy and the corporate-controlled government and media.

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