At a news conference after his spirited address to the UN on Wednesday, President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela expressed one regret: not having met that icon of the American left, the linguist Noam Chomsky, before his death.
On Thursday, a call to Chomsky's house found him very much alive. In fact, he was struggling through "10,000 e-mails" he had received since the remarks by Chavez, who urged Americans to read one of Chomsky's books instead of watching Superman and Batman movies, which he said "make people stupid."
At 77, Chomsky has joined the exclusive club of luminaries, like the actor Abe Vigoda and Mark Twain, who were reported dead before their time, only to contradict the reports by continuing to breathe.
"I continue to work and write," he said, speaking from his house in Lexington, Massachusetts.
Chavez, while addressing world leaders at the UN, flagged Hegemony or Survival: America's Quest for Global Dominance, which Chomsky published in 2003, as a must-read. Chomsky said he was glad that Chavez liked his book, but he would not describe himself as flattered.
"We should look at ourselves through our own eyes and not other people's eyes," he said.
Chomsky said he had taken no offense at Chavez's remarks about his being dead. In fact, Chavez's promotion of the book propelled it on Thursday into Amazon's top 10 best sellers.
While retired from teaching full time, Chomsky still goes to his office at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, occasionally lecturing and also working on a new book.
At the UN, the remarks by Chavez on Wednesday set off a firestorm that nearly overshadowed the visit by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, whose country has been under intense global scrutiny for its nuclear ambitions. From the podium of the General Assembly, the Venezuelan leader said he smelled lingering sulfur, left by US President George W. Bush, who had spoken there the day before and whom he branded "the devil."
Chomsky said that he would not choose to use the same harsh oratory, but added that the Ven-ezuelan leader was simply expressing the views of many in the world. And he said Chavez's anger was understandable.
"The Bush administration backed a coup to overthrow his government," he said. "Suppose Venezuela supported a military coup that overthrew the government of the United States? Would we think it was a joke?"
Proving that he was still up for a lively debate, Chomsky then went on to talk about income inequality in Latin America, the history of the UN, Iraq, Iran, Fidel Castro and, finally, the man who so fervently admires him, Chavez.
"I have been quite interested in his policies," Chomsky said. "Personally, I think many of them are quite constructive."
So would Chomsky oblige Chavez's wish for a meeting, helping ensure that the South American leader will not have that regret to live with anymore?
"I would be happy to meet him," Chomsky said.
Chavez was due to return to Venezuela today.
‘THEY KILLED HOPE’: Four presidential candidates were killed in the 1980s and 1990s, and Miguel Uribe’s mother died during a police raid to free her from Pablo Escobar Colombian presidential candidate Miguel Uribe has died two months after being shot at a campaign rally, his family said on Monday, as the attack rekindled fears of a return to the nation’s violent past. The 39-year-old conservative senator, a grandson of former Colombian president Julio Cesar Turbay (1978-1982), was shot in the head and leg on June 7 at a rally in the capital, Bogota, by a suspected 15-year-old hitman. Despite signs of progress in the past few weeks, his doctors on Saturday announced he had a new brain hemorrhage. “To break up a family is the most horrific act of violence that
HISTORIC: After the arrest of Kim Keon-hee on financial and political funding charges, the country has for the first time a former president and former first lady behind bars South Korean prosecutors yesterday raided the headquarters of the former party of jailed former South Korean president Yoon Suk-yeol to gather evidence in an election meddling case against his wife, a day after she was arrested on corruption and other charges. Former first lady Kim Keon-hee was arrested late on Tuesday on a range of charges including stock manipulation and corruption, prosecutors said. Her arrest came hours after the Seoul Central District Court reviewed prosecutors’ request for an arrest warrant against the 52-year-old. The court granted the warrant, citing the risk of tampering with evidence, after prosecutors submitted an 848-page opinion laying out
North Korean troops have started removing propaganda loudspeakers used to blare unsettling noises along the border, South Korea’s military said on Saturday, days after Seoul’s new administration dismantled ones on its side of the frontier. The two countries had already halted propaganda broadcasts along the demilitarized zone, Seoul’s military said in June after the election of South Korean President Lee Jae-myung, who is seeking to ease tensions with Pyongyang. The South Korean Ministry of National Defense on Monday last week said it had begun removing loudspeakers from its side of the border as “a practical measure aimed at helping ease
CONFLICT: The move is the latest escalation of the White House’s pitched battle with Harvard University as more than US$2 billion is suspended US President Donald Trump’s administration threatened to assume ownership of hundreds of millions of dollars worth of patents from Harvard University, accusing the Ivy League college of failing to comply with the law on federal research grants. In a letter to Harvard president Alan Garber on Friday, US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick said the university is failing its obligations to US taxpayers, paving the way for a process that could result in the government seizing its patents under the Bayh-Dole Act. Harvard has until Sept. 5 to prove it is complying with the requirements, including whether it showed a
RSS