Jean Bricmont (born 1952) is a Belgian theoretical physicist, philosopher of science and a professor at the Université catholique de Louvain. He works on renormalization group and nonlinear differential equations.

He is mostly known to the non-academic audience for co-authoring Fashionable Nonsense (also known as Intellectual Impostures) with Alan Sokal, in which they criticise relativism in the philosophy of science. Jean Bricmont also collaborates with activist Noam Chomsky and campaigns on a variety of progressive causes.

In 2005 he published Impérialisme humanitaire. Droits de l’homme, droit d’ingérence, droit du plus fort ?, published in English as Humanitarian Imperialism in 2006.

In 2006, he wrote the preface to L'Atlas alternatif - Frédéric Delorca (ed), Pantin, Temps des Cerises . He is a member of the Division of Sciences of the Royal Academy for Sciences, Letters and Arts of Belgium.

In 2007, he wrote an article in French discussing the possibility of a US invasion of Iran. "Pourquoi Bush peut déclencher une attaque contre l’Iran"

References

Category:1952 births Category:Living people Category:Belgian scientists Category:Belgian physicists Category:Louvain alumni

Coordinates	52°05′36″N5°7′10″N
Region	Western Philosophy
Era	20th / 21st-century philosophy
Color	#B0C4DE
Name	Avram Noam Chomsky
Image name	Chomsky.jpg
Caption	Noam Chomsky visiting Vancouver, Canada in 2004
Birth date	December 07, 1928
Birth place	Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Alma mater	University of Pennsylvania (BA 1949, MA 1951, Ph.D 1955)
School tradition	Generative linguistics, Analytic philosophy
Main interests	Linguistics PsychologyPhilosophy of languagePhilosophy of mind Politics Ethics
Alma mater	University of Pennsylvania
Religion	Atheist
Notable ideas	Generative grammar, universal grammar, transformational grammar, government and binding, X-bar theory, Chomsky hierarchy, context-free grammar, principles and parameters, Minimalist program, language acquisition device, poverty of the stimulus, Chomsky–Schützenberger theorem, Chomsky Normal Form, propaganda model
Influences	Pāṇini, Bertrand Russell, Ludwig Wittgenstein, John Dewey, Mikhail Bakunin, Karl Marx, Wilhelm von Humboldt, Adam Smith, Zellig Harris, Rudolf Rocker, Immanuel Kant, René Descartes, George Orwell, C. West Churchman, Alan Turing, W.V.O. Quine
Influenced	Niall McLaren, Colin McGinn, Edward Said, Christopher Hitchens, Steven Pinker, Peter Ludlow, Tanya Reinhart, Morris Halle, Gilbert Harman, Jerry Fodor, Howard Lasnik, Robert Fisk, Neil Smith, Ray Jackendoff, Norbert Hornstein, Jean Bricmont, Marc Hauser, Norman Finkelstein, Robert Lees, Hugo Chavez, Bill Hicks, Mark Baker, Julian Boyd, Ray C. Dougherty, Derek Bickerton, Amy Goodman, Michael Albert.

Avram Noam Chomsky (; born December 7, 1928), known as Noam Chomsky, is an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, and political activist. He is an Institute Professor and professor emeritus of linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Chomsky is well known in the academic and scientific community as one of the fathers of modern linguistics, and a major figure of analytic philosophy. referring to himself as a libertarian socialist. Chomsky is the author of more than 150 books and has received worldwide attention for his views, despite being typically absent from the mainstream media.

In the 1950s, Chomsky began developing his theory of generative grammar, which has undergone numerous revisions and has had a profound influence on linguistics. His approach to the study of language emphasizes "an innate set of linguistic principles shared by all humans" known as universal grammar, "the initial state of the language learner," and discovering an "account for linguistic variation via the most general possible mechanisms." He elaborated on these ideas in 1957's Syntactic Structures, which then laid the groundwork for the concept of transformational grammar. He also established the Chomsky hierarchy, a classification of formal languages in terms of their generative power. In 1959, Chomsky published a widely influential review of B. F. Skinner's theoretical book Verbal Behavior. In this review and other writings, Chomsky broadly and aggressively challenged the behaviorist approaches to studies of behavior and language dominant at the time, and contributed to the cognitive revolution in psychology. His naturalistic approach to the study of language has influenced the philosophy of language and mind. and a libertarian socialist, principles he regards as grounded in the Age of Enlightenment and as "the proper and natural extension of classical liberalism into the era of advanced industrial society."

Chomsky's social criticism has also included (1988), co-written with Edward S. Herman, an analysis articulating the propaganda model theory for examining the media.

According to the Arts and Humanities Citation Index in 1992, Chomsky was cited as a source more often than any other living scholar from 1980 to 1992. He is also the eighth most cited source of all time, and is considered the "most cited living author". He is also considered a prominent cultural figure, while his status as a leading critic of U.S. foreign policy has made him controversial.

Life and career

at MIT, in which Chomsky holds his office in the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy.]] Chomsky was born on the morning of December 7, 1928 to Jewish parents in the affluent East Oak Lane neighborhood of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the son of noted professor of Hebrew at Gratz College and IWW (Industrial Workers of the World) member William Chomsky (1896–1977), a native of Ukraine. His mother, Elsie Chomsky (née Simonofsky), a native of what is present-day Belarus, grew up in the United States and, unlike her husband, spoke "ordinary New York English." Chomsky's parents' first language was Yiddish, but Chomsky said it was "taboo" in his family to speak it. Chomsky was also influenced by being a part of a Hebrew-based, Zionist organization as well as hanging around anarchist bookstores. Chomsky also describes tensions he personally experienced with Irish Catholics and German Catholics and anti-semitism in the mid-1930s. He recalls "beer parties" celebrating the fall of Paris to the Nazis.

Chomsky remembers the first article he wrote was at age 10 while a student at Oak Lane Country Day School about the threat of the spread of fascism, following the fall of Barcelona in the Spanish Civil War. From the age of 12 or 13, he identified more fully with anarchist politics.

A graduate of Central High School of Philadelphia, Chomsky began studying philosophy and linguistics at the University of Pennsylvania in 1945, taking classes with philosophers such as C. West Churchman and Nelson Goodman and linguist Zellig Harris. Harris's teaching included his discovery of transformations as a mathematical analysis of language structure (mappings from one subset to another in the set of sentences). Chomsky referred to the morphophonemic rules in his 1951 Master's Thesis, The Morphophonemics of Modern Hebrew, as transformations in the sense of Carnap's 1938 notion of rules of transformation (vs. rules of formation), and subsequently reinterpreted the notion of grammatical transformations in a very different way from Harris, as operations on the productions of a context-free grammar (derived from Post production systems). Harris's political views were instrumental in shaping those of Chomsky. Chomsky earned a BA in 1949 and an MA in 1951.

In 1949, he married linguist Carol Schatz. They remained married for 59 years until her death from cancer in December 2008. The couple had two daughters, Aviva (b. 1957) and Diane (b. 1960), and a son, Harry (b. 1967). With his wife Carol, Chomsky spent time in 1953 living in HaZore'a, a kibbutz in Israel. Asked in an interview whether the stay was "a disappointment" Chomsky replied, "No, I loved it," however he "couldn't stand the ideological atmosphere" and "fervent nationalism" in the early 1950s at the kibbutz, with Stalin being defended by many of the left-leaning kibbutz members who chose to paint a rosy image of future possibilities and contemporary realities in the USSR. Chomsky notes seeing many positive elements in the commune-like living of the kibbutz, in which parents and children lived in rooms of separate houses together, and when asked whether there were "lessons that we have learned from the history of the kibbutz," responded, that in "some respects, the Kibbutzim came closer to the anarchist ideal than any other attempt that lasted for more than a very brief moment before destruction, or that was on anything like a similar scale. In these respects, I think they were extremely attractive and successful; apart from personal accident, I probably would have lived there myself – for how long, it's hard to guess."

Chomsky received his PhD in linguistics from the University of Pennsylvania in 1955. He conducted part of his doctoral research during four years at Harvard University as a Harvard Junior Fellow. In his doctoral thesis, he began to develop some of his linguistic ideas, elaborating on them in his 1957 book Syntactic Structures, one of his best-known works in linguistics.

Chomsky joined the staff of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1955 and in 1961 was appointed full professor in the Department of Modern Languages and Linguistics (now the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy). From 1966 to 1976 he held the Ferrari P. Ward Professorship of Modern Languages and Linguistics, and in 1976 he was appointed Institute Professor. As of 2010, Chomsky has taught at MIT continuously for 55 years.

In February 1967, Chomsky became one of the leading opponents of the Vietnam War with the publication of his essay, "The Responsibility of Intellectuals", in The New York Review of Books. This was followed by his 1969 book, American Power and the New Mandarins, a collection of essays that established him at the forefront of American dissent. His far-reaching criticisms of U.S. foreign policy and the legitimacy of U.S. power have made him a controversial figure: largely shunned by the mainstream media in the United States, he is frequently sought out for his views by publications and news outlets internationally. In 1977 he delivered the Huizinga Lecture in Leiden, The Netherlands, under the title: Intellectuals and the State.

Chomsky has received death threats because of his criticisms of U.S. foreign policy. He was also on a list of planned targets created by Theodore Kaczynski, better known as the Unabomber; during the period that Kaczynski was at large, Chomsky had all of his mail checked for explosives.

The Principles and Parameters approach (P&P;)—developed in his Pisa 1979 Lectures, later published as (LGB)—makes strong claims regarding universal grammar: that the grammatical principles underlying languages are innate and fixed, and the differences among the world's languages can be characterized in terms of parameter settings in the brain (such as the pro-drop parameter, which indicates whether an explicit subject is always required, as in English, or can be optionally dropped, as in Spanish), which are often likened to switches. (Hence the term principles and parameters, often given to this approach.) In this view, a child learning a language need only acquire the necessary lexical items (words, grammatical morphemes, and idioms), and determine the appropriate parameter settings, which can be done based on a few key examples.

Proponents of this view argue that the pace at which children learn languages is inexplicably rapid, unless children have an innate ability to learn languages. The similar steps followed by children all across the world when learning languages, and the fact that children make certain characteristic errors as they learn their first language, whereas other seemingly logical kinds of errors never occur (and, according to Chomsky, should be attested if a purely general, rather than language-specific, learning mechanism were being employed), are also pointed to as motivation for innateness.

More recently, in his Minimalist Program (1995), while retaining the core concept of "principles and parameters," Chomsky attempts a major overhaul of the linguistic machinery involved in the LGB model, stripping from it all but the barest necessary elements, while advocating a general approach to the architecture of the human language faculty that emphasizes principles of economy and optimal design, reverting to a derivational approach to generation, in contrast with the largely representational approach of classic P&P.;

Chomsky's ideas have had a strong influence on researchers of the language acquisition in children, though many researchers in this area such as Elizabeth Bates and Michael Tomasello argue very strongly against Chomsky's theories, and instead advocate emergentist or connectionist theories, explaining language with a number of general processing mechanisms in the brain that interact with the extensive and complex social environment in which language is used and learned.

His best-known work in phonology is The Sound Pattern of English (1968), written with Morris Halle (and often known as simply SPE). This work has had a great significance for the development in the field. While phonological theory has since moved beyond "SPE phonology" in many important respects, the SPE system is considered the precursor of some of the most influential phonological theories today, including autosegmental phonology, lexical phonology and optimality theory. Chomsky no longer publishes on phonology.

Generative grammar

The Chomskyan approach towards syntax, often termed generative grammar, studies grammar as a body of knowledge possessed by language users. Since the 1960s, Chomsky has maintained that much of this knowledge is innate, implying that children need only learn certain parochial features of their native languages. The innate body of linguistic knowledge is often termed Universal Grammar. From Chomsky's perspective, the strongest evidence for the existence of Universal Grammar is simply the fact that children successfully acquire their native languages in so little time. Furthermore, he argues that there is an enormous gap between the linguistic stimuli to which children are exposed and the rich linguistic knowledge they attain (the "poverty of the stimulus" argument). The knowledge of Universal Grammar would serve to bridge that gap.

Chomsky's theories have been immensely influential within linguistics, but they have also received criticism. One recurring criticism of the Chomskyan variety of generative grammar is that it is Anglocentric and Eurocentric, and that often linguists working in this tradition have a tendency to base claims about Universal Grammar on a very small sample of languages, sometimes just one. Initially, the Eurocentrism was exhibited in an overemphasis on the study of English. However, hundreds of different languages have now received at least some attention within Chomskyan linguistic analyses. In spite of the diversity of languages that have been characterized by UG derivations, critics continue to argue that the formalisms within Chomskyan linguistics are Anglocentric and misrepresent the properties of languages that are different from English. Thus, Chomsky's approach has been criticized as a form of linguistic imperialism. In addition, Chomskyan linguists rely heavily on the intuitions of native speakers regarding which sentences of their languages are well-formed. This practice has been criticized on general methodological grounds. Some psychologists and psycholinguists, though sympathetic to Chomsky's overall program, have argued that Chomskyan linguists pay insufficient attention to experimental data from language processing, with the consequence that their theories are not psychologically plausible. Other critics (see language learning) have questioned whether it is necessary to posit Universal Grammar to explain child language acquisition, arguing that domain-general learning mechanisms are sufficient.

Today there are many different branches of generative grammar; one can view grammatical frameworks such as head-driven phrase structure grammar, lexical functional grammar and combinatory categorial grammar as broadly Chomskyan and generative in orientation, but with significant differences in execution.

Chomsky hierarchy

Chomsky is famous for investigating various kinds of formal languages and whether or not they might be capable of capturing key properties of human language. His Chomsky hierarchy partitions formal grammars into classes, or groups, with increasing expressive power, i.e., each successive class can generate a broader set of formal languages than the one before. Interestingly, Chomsky argues that modeling some aspects of human language requires a more complex formal grammar (as measured by the Chomsky hierarchy) than modeling others. For example, while a regular language is powerful enough to model English morphology, it is not powerful enough to model English syntax. In addition to being relevant in linguistics, the Chomsky hierarchy has also become important in computer science (especially in compiler construction and automata theory).

Contributions to psychology

Chomsky's work in linguistics has had profound implications for modern psychology. For Chomsky, linguistics is a branch of cognitive psychology; genuine insights in linguistics imply concomitant understandings of aspects of mental processing and human nature. His theory of a universal grammar was seen by many as a direct challenge to the established behaviorist theories of the time and had major consequences for understanding how children learn language and what, exactly, the ability to use language is.

In 1959, Chomsky published an influential critique of B.F. Skinner's Verbal Behavior, a book in which Skinner offered a theoretical account of language in functional, behavioral terms. He defined "Verbal Behavior" as learned behavior that has characteristic consequences delivered through the learned behavior of others. This makes for a view of communicative behaviors much larger than that usually addressed by linguists. Skinner's approach focused on the circumstances in which language was used; for example, asking for water was functionally a different response than labeling something as water, responding to someone asking for water, etc. These functionally different kinds of responses, which required in turn separate explanations, sharply contrasted both with traditional notions of language and Chomsky's psycholinguistic approach. Chomsky thought that a functionalist explanation restricting itself to questions of communicative performance ignored important questions. (Chomsky—Language and Mind, 1968). He focused on questions concerning the operation and development of innate structures for syntax capable of creatively organizing, cohering, adapting and combining words and phrases into intelligible utterances.

In the review Chomsky emphasized that the scientific application of behavioral principles from animal research is severely lacking in explanatory adequacy and is furthermore particularly superficial as an account of human verbal behavior because a theory restricting itself to external conditions, to "what is learned," cannot adequately account for generative grammar. Chomsky raised the examples of rapid language acquisition of children, including their quickly developing ability to form grammatical sentences, and the universally creative language use of competent native speakers to highlight the ways in which Skinner's view exemplified under-determination of theory by evidence. He argued that to understand human verbal behavior such as the creative aspects of language use and language development, one must first postulate a genetic linguistic endowment. The assumption that important aspects of language are the product of universal innate ability runs counter to Skinner's radical behaviorism.

Chomsky's 1959 review has drawn fire from a number of critics, the most famous criticism being that of Kenneth MacCorquodale's 1970 paper On Chomsky’s Review of Skinner’s Verbal Behavior (Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, volume 13, pages 83–99). MacCorquodale's argument was updated and expanded in important respects by Nathan Stemmer in a 1990 paper, Skinner's Verbal Behavior, Chomsky's review, and mentalism (Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, volume 54, pages 307–319). These and similar critiques have raised certain points not generally acknowledged outside of behavioral psychology, such as the claim that Chomsky did not possess an adequate understanding of either behavioral psychology in general, or the differences between Skinner's behaviorism and other varieties. Consequently, it is argued that he made several serious errors. On account of these perceived problems, the critics maintain that the review failed to demonstrate what it has often been cited as doing. As such, it is averred that those most influenced by Chomsky's paper probably either already substantially agreed with Chomsky or never actually read it. The review has been further critiqued for misrepresenting the work of Skinner and others, including by quoting out of context. Chomsky has maintained that the review was directed at the way Skinner's variant of behavioral psychology "was being used in Quinean empiricism and naturalization of philosophy."

It has been claimed that Chomsky's critique of Skinner's methodology and basic assumptions paved the way for the "cognitive revolution", the shift in American psychology between the 1950s through the 1970s from being primarily behavioral to being primarily cognitive. In his 1966 Cartesian Linguistics and subsequent works, Chomsky laid out an explanation of human language faculties that has become the model for investigation in some areas of psychology. Much of the present conception of how the mind works draws directly from ideas that found their first persuasive author of modern times in Chomsky.

There are three key ideas. First is that the mind is "cognitive," or that the mind actually contains mental states, beliefs, doubts, and so on. Second, he argued that most of the important properties of language and mind are innate. The acquisition and development of a language is a result of the unfolding of innate propensities triggered by the experiential input of the external environment. The link between human innate aptitude to language and heredity has been at the core of the debate opposing Noam Chomsky to Jean Piaget at the Abbaye de Royaumont in 1975 (Language and Learning. The Debate between Jean Piaget and Noam Chomsky, Harvard University Press, 1980). Although links between the genetic setup of humans and aptitude to language have been suggested at that time and in later discussions, we are still far from understanding the genetic bases of human language. Work derived from the model of selective stabilization of synapses set up by Jean-Pierre Changeux, Philippe Courrège and Antoine Danchin, and more recently developed experimentally and theoretically by Jacques Mehler and Stanislas Dehaene in particular in the domain of numerical cognition lend support to the Chomskyan "nativism". It does not, however, provide clues about the type of rules that would organize neuronal connections to permit language competence. Subsequent psychologists have extended this general "nativist" thesis beyond language. Lastly, Chomsky made the concept of "modularity" a critical feature of the mind's cognitive architecture. The mind is composed of an array of interacting, specialized subsystems with limited flows of inter-communication. This model contrasts sharply with the old idea that any piece of information in the mind could be accessed by any other cognitive process (optical illusions, for example, cannot be "turned off" even when they are known to be illusions).

Approach to science

Chomsky sees science as a straightforward search for explanation, and rejects the views of it as a catalog of facts or mechanical explanations. In this light, the majority of his contributions to science have been frameworks and hypotheses, rather than "discoveries."

As such, he considers certain so-called post-structuralist or postmodern critiques of logic and reason to be nonsensical:

I have spent a lot of my life working on questions such as these, using the only methods I know of; those condemned here as "science", "rationality," "logic," and so on. I therefore read the papers with some hope that they would help me "transcend" these limitations, or perhaps suggest an entirely different course. I'm afraid I was disappointed. Admittedly, that may be my own limitation. Quite regularly, "my eyes glaze over" when I read polysyllabic discourse on the themes of poststructuralism and postmodernism; what I understand is largely truism or error, but that is only a fraction of the total word count. True, there are lots of other things I don't understand: the articles in the current issues of math and physics journals, for example. But there is a difference. In the latter case, I know how to get to understand them, and have done so, in cases of particular interest to me; and I also know that people in these fields can explain the contents to me at my level, so that I can gain what (partial) understanding I may want. In contrast, no one seems to be able to explain to me why the latest post-this-and-that is (for the most part) other than truism, error, or gibberish, and I do not know how to proceed.

Although Chomsky believes that a scientific background is important to teach proper reasoning, he holds that science in general is "inadequate" to understand complicated problems like human affairs:

Science talks about very simple things, and asks hard questions about them. As soon as things become too complex, science can’t deal with them... But it’s a complicated matter: Science studies what’s at the edge of understanding, and what’s at the edge of understanding is usually fairly simple. And it rarely reaches human affairs. Human affairs are way too complicated.

Debates

Chomsky has been known to vigorously defend and debate his views and opinions, in philosophy, linguistics, and politics. Michel Foucault, William F. Buckley, Jr., Christopher Hitchens, Richard Perle, Hilary Putnam, Willard Quine, and Alan Dershowitz, to name a few. In response to his speaking style being criticized as boring, Chomsky said that "I'm a boring speaker and I like it that way…. I doubt that people are attracted to whatever the persona is…. People are interested in the issues, and they're interested in the issues because they are important." "We don't want to be swayed by superficial eloquence, by emotion and so on."

Political views

(Porto Alegre) in 2003.]] Chomsky has stated that his "personal visions are fairly traditional anarchist ones, with origins in The Enlightenment and classical liberalism" He calls himself an anarcho-syndicalist He published a book on anarchism titled Chomsky on Anarchism, published by the anarchist book collective AK Press in 2006.

Chomsky has engaged in political activism all of his adult life and expressed opinions on politics and world events, which are widely cited, publicized and discussed. Chomsky has in turn argued that his views are those the powerful do not want to hear and for this reason he is considered an American political dissident.

Chomsky asserts that power, unless justified is inherently illegitimate and that the burden of proof is on those in authority. If this burden can't be met, the authority in question should be dismantled and authority for its own sake is inherently unjustified. An example given by Chomsky of a legitimate authority is that exerted by an adult to prevent a young child from wandering into traffic. He contends that there is no difference between slavery and renting one's self to an owner or "wage slavery". He feels that it is an attack on personal integrity that undermines individual freedom. He holds that workers should own and control their workplace, a view held (as he notes) by the Lowell Mill Girls.

Chomsky has strongly criticized the foreign policy of the United States. He claims double standards in a foreign policy preaching democracy and freedom for all while allying itself with non-democratic and repressive organizations and states such as Chile under Augusto Pinochet and argues that this results in massive human rights violations. He often argues that America's intervention in foreign nations, including the secret aid given to the Contras in Nicaragua, an event of which he has been very critical, fits any standard description of terrorism, including "official definitions in the US Code and Army Manuals in the early 1980s." Before its collapse, Chomsky also condemned Soviet imperialism; for example in 1986 during a question/answer following a lecture he gave at Universidad Centroamericana in Nicaragua, when challenged about how he could "talk about North American imperialism and Russian imperialism in the same breath," Chomsky responded: "One of the truths about the world is that there are two superpowers, one a huge power which happens to have its boot on your neck; another, a smaller power which happens to have its boot on other people's necks. I think that anyone in the Third World would be making a grave error if they succumbed to illusions about these matters."

He has argued that the mass media in the United States largely serve as a propaganda arm and "bought priesthood" of the U.S. government and U.S. corporations, with the three parties intertwined through common interests. In a famous reference to Walter Lippmann, Chomsky along with his coauthor Edward S. Herman has written that the American media manufactures consent among the public. Chomsky has condemned the 2010 supreme court ruling revoking the limits on campaign finance, calling it "corporate takeover of democracy."

Chomsky opposes the U.S. global "war on drugs", claiming its language is misleading, and refers to it as "the war on certain drugs." He favors drug policy reform, in education and prevention rather than military or police action as a means of reducing drug use. In an interview in 1999, Chomsky argued that, whereas crops such as tobacco receive no mention in governmental exposition, other non-profitable crops, such as marijuana are attacked because of the effect achieved by persecuting the poor: He has stated:

U.S. domestic drug policy does not carry out its stated goals, and policymakers are well aware of that. If it isn't about reducing substance abuse, what is it about? It is reasonably clear, both from current actions and the historical record, that substances tend to be criminalized when they are associated with the so-called dangerous classes, that the criminalization of certain substances is a technique of social control.

Chomsky is critical of the American "state capitalist" system and big business, he describes himself as a socialist, specifically an anarcho-syndicalist and is therefore strongly critical of "authoritarian" Marxist and/or Leninist and/or Maoist branches of socialism. He also believes that socialist values exemplify the rational and morally consistent extension of original unreconstructed classical liberal and radical humanist ideas to an industrial context. He believes that society should be highly organized and based on democratic control of communities and work places. He believes that the radical humanist ideas of his two major influences, Bertrand Russell and John Dewey, were "rooted in the Enlightenment and classical liberalism, and retain their revolutionary character."

Chomsky has stated that he believes the United States remains the "greatest country in the world", a comment that he later clarified by saying, "Evaluating countries is senseless and I would never put things in those terms, but that some of America's advances, particularly in the area of free speech, that have been achieved by centuries of popular struggle, are to be admired." He has also said "In many respects, the United States is the freest country in the world. I don't just mean in terms of limits on state coercion, though that's true too, but also in terms of individual relations. The United States comes closer to classlessness in terms of interpersonal relations than virtually any society."

Chomsky objects to the criticism that anarchism is inconsistent with support for government welfare, stating in part:

One can, of course, take the position that we don't care about the problems people face today, and want to think about a possible tomorrow. OK, but then don't pretend to have any interest in human beings and their fate, and stay in the seminar room and intellectual coffee house with other privileged people. Or one can take a much more humane position: I want to work, today, to build a better society for tomorrow – the classical anarchist position, quite different from the slogans in the question. That's exactly right, and it leads directly to support for the people facing problems today: for enforcement of health and safety regulation, provision of national health insurance, support systems for people who need them, etc. That is not a sufficient condition for organizing for a different and better future, but it is a necessary condition. Anything else will receive the well-merited contempt of people who do not have the luxury to disregard the circumstances in which they live, and try to survive.

Chomsky holds views that can be summarized as anti-war but not strictly pacifist. He prominently opposed the Vietnam War and most other wars in his lifetime. He expressed these views with tax resistance and peace walks. He published a number of articles about the war in Vietnam, including "The Responsibility of Intellectuals". He maintains that U.S. involvement in World War II to defeat the Axis powers was probably justified, with the caveat that a preferable outcome would have been to end or prevent the war through earlier diplomacy. He believes that the dropping of nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were "among the most unspeakable crimes in history".

Chomsky has made many criticisms of the Israeli government, its supporters, the United States' support of the government and its treatment of the Palestinian people, arguing that " 'supporters of Israel' are in reality supporters of its moral degeneration and probable ultimate destruction" and that "Israel's very clear choice of expansion over security may well lead to that consequence." Chomsky disagreed with the founding of Israel as a Jewish state, saying, "I don't think a Jewish or Christian or Islamic state is a proper concept. I would object to the United States as a Christian state." Chomsky hesitated before publishing work critical of Israeli policies while his parents were alive, because he "knew it would hurt them" he says, "mostly because of their friends, who reacted hysterically to views like those expressed in my work." On May 16, 2010, Israeli authorities detained Chomsky and ultimately refused his entry to the West Bank via Jordan. A spokesman for the Israeli Prime Minister indicated that the refusal of entry was simply due to a border guard who "overstepped his authority" and a second attempt to enter would likely be allowed. Chomsky disagreed, saying that the Interior Ministry official who interviewed him was taking instructions from his superiors. With reference to the United States diplomatic cables leak, Chomsky suggested that "perhaps the most dramatic revelation ... is the bitter hatred of democracy that is revealed both by the U.S. Government -- Hillary Clinton, others -- and also by the diplomatic service." Chomsky refuses to take legal action against those who may have libeled him and prefers to counter libels through open letters in newspapers. One notable example of this approach is his response to an article by Emma Brockes in The Guardian which alleged he denied the existence of the Srebrenica massacre.

Chomsky has frequently stated that there is no connection between his work in linguistics and his political views and is generally critical of the idea that competent discussion of political topics requires expert knowledge in academic fields. In a 1969 interview, he said regarding the connection between his politics and his work in linguistics:

I still feel myself that there is a kind of tenuous connection. I would not want to overstate it but I think it means something to me at least. I think that anyone's political ideas or their ideas of social organization must be rooted ultimately in some concept of human nature and human needs.

Some critics have accused Chomsky of hypocrisy when, in spite of his political criticism of American and European military imperialism, parts of his linguistic research have been substantially funded by the American military. Chomsky makes the argument that because he has received funding from the U.S. Military, he has an even greater responsibility to criticize and resist its actions.

Influence in other fields

Chomskyan models have been used as a theoretical basis in several other fields. The Chomsky hierarchy is often taught in fundamental computer science courses as it confers insight into the various types of formal languages. This hierarchy can also be discussed in mathematical terms and has generated interest among mathematicians, particularly combinatorialists. Some arguments in evolutionary psychology are derived from his research results.

The 1984 Nobel Prize laureate in Medicine and Physiology, Niels K. Jerne, used Chomsky's generative model to explain the human immune system, equating "components of a generative grammar … with various features of protein structures". The title of Jerne's Stockholm Nobel lecture was "The Generative Grammar of the Immune System".

Nim Chimpsky, a chimpanzee who was the subject of a study in animal language acquisition at Columbia University, was named after Chomsky in reference to his view of language acquisition as a uniquely human ability.

Famous computer scientist Donald Knuth admits to reading Syntactic Structures during his honeymoon and being greatly influenced by it. "…I must admit to taking a copy of Noam Chomsky's Syntactic Structures along with me on my honeymoon in 1961 … Here was a marvelous thing: a mathematical theory of language in which I could use a computer programmer's intuition!".

Another focus of Chomsky's political work has been an analysis of mainstream mass media (especially in the United States), its structures and constraints, and its perceived role in supporting big business and government interests.

Edward S. Herman and Chomsky's book (1988) explores this topic in depth, presenting their "propaganda model" of the news media with numerous detailed case studies demonstrating it. According to this propaganda model, more democratic societies like the U.S. use subtle, non-violent means of control, unlike totalitarian systems, where physical force can readily be used to coerce the general population. In an often-quoted remark, Chomsky states that "propaganda is to a democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state." (Media Control)

The model attempts to explain this perceived systemic bias of the mass media in terms of structural economic causes rather than a conspiracy of people. It argues the bias derives from five "filters" that all published news must "pass through," which combine to systematically distort news coverage.

In explaining the first filter, ownership, he notes that most major media outlets are owned by large corporations. The second, funding, notes that the outlets derive the majority of their funding from advertising, not readers. Thus, since they are profit-oriented businesses selling a product—readers and audiences—to other businesses (advertisers), the model expects them to publish news that reflects the desires and values of those businesses. In addition, the news media are dependent on government institutions and major businesses with strong biases as sources (the third filter) for much of their information. Flak, the fourth filter, refers to the various pressure groups that attack the media for supposed bias. Norms, the fifth filter, refer to the common conceptions shared by those in the profession of journalism. (Note: in the original text, published in 1988, the fifth filter was "anticommunism". However, with the fall of the Soviet Union, it has been broadened to allow for shifts in public opinion.) The model describes how the media form a decentralized and non-conspiratorial but nonetheless very powerful propaganda system, that is able to mobilize an élite consensus, frame public debate within élite perspectives and at the same time give the appearance of democratic consent.

Chomsky and Herman test their model empirically by picking "paired examples"—pairs of events that were objectively similar except for the alignment of domestic élite interests. They use a number of such examples to attempt to show that in cases where an "official enemy" does something (like murder of a religious official), the press investigates thoroughly and devotes a great amount of coverage to the matter, thus victims of "enemy" states are considered "worthy". But when the domestic government or an ally does the same thing (or worse), the press downplays the story, thus victims of US or US client states are considered "unworthy."

They also test their model against the case that is often held up as the best example of a free and aggressively independent press, the media coverage of the Tet Offensive during the Vietnam War. Even in this case, they argue that the press was behaving subserviently to élite interests.

Academic achievements, awards and honors

In the spring of 1969, he delivered the John Locke Lectures at Oxford University; in January 1970, the Bertrand Russell Memorial Lecture at University of Cambridge; in 1972, the Nehru Memorial Lecture in New Delhi; in 1977, the Huizinga Lecture in Leiden; in 1988 the Massey Lectures at the University of Toronto, titled "Necessary Illusions: Thought Control in Democratic Societies"; in 1997, The Davie Memorial Lecture on Academic Freedom in Cape Town, and many others.

Chomsky has received many honorary degrees from universities around the world, including from the following: {| | valign="top" | |} He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Sciences, and the American Philosophical Society. In addition, he is a member of other professional and learned societies in the United States and abroad, and is a recipient of the Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award of the American Psychological Association, the Kyoto Prize in Basic Sciences, the Helmholtz Medal, the Dorothy Eldridge Peacemaker Award, the 1999 Benjamin Franklin Medal in Computer and Cognitive Science, and others. He is twice winner of The Orwell Award, granted by The National Council of Teachers of English for "Distinguished Contributions to Honesty and Clarity in Public Language" (in 1987 and 1989).

He is a member of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts in Department of Social Sciences.

Chomsky is a member of the Faculty Advisory Board of MIT Harvard Research Journal.

In 2005, Chomsky received an honorary fellowship from the Literary and Historical Society.

In 2007, Chomsky received The Uppsala University (Sweden) Honorary Doctor's degree in commemoration of Carolus Linnaeus.

In February 2008, he received the President's Medal from the Literary and Debating Society of the National University of Ireland, Galway.

Since 2009 he is honorary member of IAPTI.

In 2010, Chomsky received the Erich Fromm Prize in Stuttgart, Germany.

Chomsky has an Erdős number of four.

Chomsky was voted the leading living public intellectual in The 2005 Global Intellectuals Poll conducted by the British magazine Prospect. He reacted, saying "I don't pay a lot of attention to polls". In a list compiled by the magazine New Statesman in 2006, he was voted seventh in the list of "Heroes of our time".

Actor Viggo Mortensen with avant-garde guitarist Buckethead dedicated their 2006 album, called Pandemoniumfromamerica to Chomsky.

On January 22, 2010, a special honorary concert for Chomsky was given at Kresge Auditorium at MIT. The concert, attended by Chomsky and dozens of his family and friends, featured music composed by Edward Manukyan and speeches by Chomsky's colleagues, including David Pesetsky of MIT and Gennaro Chierchia, head of the linguistics department at Harvard University.

Bibliography

Filmography

, Director: Mark Achbar and Peter Wintonick (1992)

Last Party 2000, Director: Rebecca Chaiklin and Donovan Leitch (2001)

Power and Terror: Noam Chomsky in Our Times, Director: John Junkerman (2002)

Distorted Morality—America's War On Terror?, Director: John Junkerman (2003)

Noam Chomsky: Rebel Without a Pause (TV), Director: Will Pascoe (2003)

The Corporation, Directors: Mark Achbar and Jennifer Abbott; Writer: Joel Bakan (2003)

Peace, Propaganda & the Promised Land, Directors: Sut Jhally and Bathsheba Ratzkoff (2004)

On Power, Dissent and Racism: A discussion with Noam Chomsky, Journalist: Nicolas Rossier; Producers: Eli Choukri, Baraka Productions (2004)

Lake of Fire, Director: Tony Kaye (2006)

, Director: Richard Hall (2008)

In the Time We've Got, Director: Christopher Ives (2008)

Chomsky & Cie Director: Olivier Azam (out in 2008)

An Inconvenient Tax, Director: Christopher P. Marshall (out in 2009)

The Money Fix, Director: Alan Rosenblith (2009)

Pax Americana and the Weaponization of Space, Director: Denis Delestrac (2010)

, Director: Juan Manuel Biaiñ (2010)

See also

American philosophy

Axiom of categoricity

Chomsky normal form

Chomskybot

Chomsky–Schützenberger theorem

Colorless green ideas sleep furiously

Criticisms of Noam Chomsky

English studies

Important publications in computability

Intellectual worker

Language acquisition

Nim Chimpsky

Noam Chomsky's political views

Propaganda model

List of American philosophers

References

External links

chomsky.info : The Noam Chomsky Website

Noam Chomsky at MIT

Noam Chomsky's page on Academia.edu

Noam Chomsky at Zmag

Talks by Noam Chomsky at A-Infos Radio Project

Interview about Human Rights by scholars (English with French subtitles) – 2009

Chomsky media files at the Internet Archive

Articles and videos featuring Noam Chomsky at AnarchismToday.org

The Political Economy of the Mass Media Part 1

Noam Chomsky: "The Center Cannot Hold: Rekindling the Radical Imagination" - 1 hour interview by Democracy Now!

Noam Chomsky interviewed by Alyssa McDonald on New Statesman September 2010.

The Real News (TRNN) ">Noam Chomsky Interviews on The Real News (TRNN)

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Coordinates	52°05′36″N5°7′10″N
Name	Norman Finkelstein
Caption	Finkelstein giving a talk at Suffolk University in 2005
Birth date	December 08, 1953
Education	Binghamton University (B.A.)Princeton University (M.A.) Princeton University (Ph.D.)
Parents	Mother: Maryla Husyt Finkelstein Father: Zacharias Finkelstein
Nationality	American
Influences	Mohandas Gandhi, Noam Chomsky, John Stuart Mill
Website	normanfinkelstein.com

Norman Gary Finkelstein (born December 8, 1953) is a Jewish-American political scientist, author, who has been described as an anti-Zionist dissident. His primary fields of research are the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the politics of the Holocaust. He is a graduate of Binghamton University and received his Ph.D in Political Science from Princeton University. He has held faculty positions at Brooklyn College, Rutgers University, Hunter College, New York University, and, most recently, DePaul University, where he was an assistant professor from 2001 to 2007.

Amidst considerable public debate, there were attempts by Alan Dershowitz, a notable opponent of Finkelstein's, to deny Finkelstein's tenure bid at DePaul. An official statement from DePaul strongly defended the decision to deny Finkelstein tenure, stated that outside influence played no role in the decision, and praised Finkelstein "as a prolific scholar and outstanding teacher."

Personal background and education

Finkelstein has written of his parents' experiences during World War II. His mother, Maryla Husyt Finkelstein, grew up in Warsaw, Poland, survived the Warsaw Ghetto, the Majdanek concentration camp, and two slave labor camps. Her first husband died in the war. She considered the day of her liberation as the most horrible day of her life, as she realized that she was alone with her parents and siblings gone. Norman's father, Zacharias Finkelstein, was a survivor of both the Warsaw Ghetto and the Auschwitz concentration camp.

Finkelstein grew up in New York City. In his forthcoming memoir, Finkelstein recalls his strong youthful identification with the outrage that his mother, witness to the genocidal atrocities of World War II, felt at the carnage wrought by the United States in Vietnam. One childhood friend recalls his mother's "emotional investment in left-wing humanitarian causes as bordering on hysteria." He had 'internalized (her) indignation', a trait which he admits rendered him 'insufferable' when talking of the Vietnam War, and which imbued him with a 'holier-than-thou' attitude at the time which he now regrets. But Finkelstein regards his absorption of his mother's outlook — the refusal to put aside a sense of moral outrage in order to get on with one's life — as a virtue. Subsequently, his reading of Noam Chomsky played a seminal role in tailoring the passion bequeathed to him by his mother to the necessity of maintaining intellectual rigor in the pursuit of the truth.

He completed his undergraduate studies at Binghamton University in New York in 1974, after which he studied at the École Pratique des Hautes Études in Paris. He went on to earn his Master's degree in political science from Princeton University in 1980, and later his PhD in political studies, also from Princeton. Finkelstein wrote his doctoral thesis on Zionism, and it was through this work that he first attracted controversy. Before gaining academic employment, Finkelstein was a part-time social worker with teenage dropouts in New York. He then taught successively at Rutgers University, New York University, Brooklyn College, and Hunter College and, until recently, taught at DePaul University in Chicago. According to the New York Times he left Hunter College in 2001 "after his teaching load and salary were reduced" by the college administration. have dealt with politically charged topics such as Zionism, the demographic history of Palestine and his allegations of the existence of a "Holocaust Industry" that exploits the memory of the Holocaust to further Israeli and financial interests. Citing linguist and political activist Noam Chomsky as an example, Finkelstein notes that it is "possible to unite exacting scholarly rigor with scathing moral outrage," Its content has been praised by eminent historians such as Raul Hilberg and Avi Shlaim,

Academic career and controversies

On From Time Immemorial

In Finkelstein's doctoral thesis, he examined the claims made in Joan Peters's From Time Immemorial, a best-selling book at the time.

Peters's "history and defense" of Israel deals with the demographic history of Palestine. Demographic studies had tended to assert that the Arab population of Ottoman-controlled Palestine, a 94% majority at the turn of the century, had dwindled towards parity due to massive Zionist immigration. Peters radically challenged this picture by arguing that a substantial part of the Palestinian people were descended from emigrants from other Arab countries from the early 19th century onwards. It followed, for Peters and many of her readers, that the picture of a native Palestinian population overwhelmed by Jewish immigration was little more than propaganda, and that in actuality two almost simultaneous waves of immigration met in what had been a relatively unpopulated land.

From Time Immemorial had been effusively praised in mainstream United States media sources by figures as varied as Barbara Tuchman, Theodore H. White, Elie Wiesel, and Lucy Dawidowicz. Saul Bellow, for one, wrote in a jacket endorsement that: :"Millions of people the world over, smothered by false history and propaganda, will be grateful for this clear account of the origins of the Palestinians."

Finkelstein asserted that the book was nothing more than what he now calls a "monumental hoax". He later opined that, while Peters's book received widespread interest and approval in the United States, a scholarly demonstration of its fraudulence and unreliability aroused little attention:

:"By the end of 1984, From Time Immemorial had...received some two hundred [favorable] notices ... in the United States. The only 'false' notes in this crescendoing chorus of praise were the Journal of Palestine Studies, which ran a highly critical review by Bill Farrell; the small Chicago-based newsweekly In These Times, which published a condensed version of this writer's findings; and Alexander Cockburn, who devoted a series of columns in The Nation exposing the hoax. ... The periodicals in which From Time Immemorial had already been favorably reviewed refused to run any critical correspondence (e.g. The New Republic, The Atlantic Monthly, Commentary). Periodicals that had yet to review the book rejected a manuscript on the subject as of little or no consequence (e.g. The Village Voice, Dissent, The New York Review of Books). Not a single national newspaper or columnist contacted found newsworthy that a best-selling, effusively praised 'study' of the Middle East conflict was a threadbare hoax."

Noam Chomsky later reminisced:

:"I warned him, if you follow this, you're going to get in trouble—because you're going to expose the American intellectual community as a gang of frauds, and they are not going to like it, and they're going to destroy you."

In 1986, the New York Review of Books published Yehoshua Porath's review and an exchange with critics of the review in which he criticized the assumptions and evidence on which Peters's thesis relied, thus lending independent support from an expert in Palestinian demographics to Finkelstein's doctoral critique. later described Finkelstein's critique of From Time Immemorial as a "landmark essay" and a "victory to his credit", in its "demonstration" of the "shoddy scholarship" of Peters's book.

According to Noam Chomsky, the controversy that surrounded Finkelstein's research caused a delay in his earning his Ph.D. at Princeton University. Chomsky wrote in Understanding Power that Finkelstein "literally could not get the faculty to read [his dissertation]" and that Princeton eventually granted Finkelstein his doctorate only "out of embarrassment [for Princeton]" but refused to give him any further professional backing. He also alleges what he calls a "double shakedown" by "a repellent gang of plutocrats, hoodlums and hucksters" seeking enormous legal damages and financial settlements from Germany and Switzerland, moneys which then go to the lawyers and institutional actors involved in procuring them, rather than actual Holocaust survivors.

The book met with a hostile reception in some quarters, with critics charging that it was poorly researched and/or allowed others to exploit it for antisemitic purposes. For example, German historian Hans Mommsen disparaged the first edition as "a most trivial book, which appeals to easily aroused anti-Semitic prejudices." Israeli holocaust historian Israel Gutman called the book "a lampoon," stating "this is not research; it isn't even political literature... I don't even think it should be reviewed or critiqued as a legitimate book." The book was also harshly criticized by Brown University Professor Omer Bartov and University of Chicago Professor Peter Novick.

Finkelstein also had his supporters however. Raul Hilberg, widely regarded as the founder of Holocaust studies, said the book expressed views Hilberg himself subscribed to in substance, in that he too found the exploitation of the Holocaust, in the manner Finkelstein describes, 'detestable.' Asked on another occasion if Finkelstein's analysis might play into the hands of neo-Nazis for antisemitic purposes, Hilberg replied: 'Well, even if they do use it in that fashion, I'm afraid that when it comes to the truth, it has to be said openly, without regard to any consequences that would be undesirable, embarrassing.'

Criticism of Alan Dershowitz's The Case for Israel

Shortly after the publication of the book The Case for Israel by Alan Dershowitz, Finkelstein derided it as "a collection of fraud, falsification, plagiarism, and nonsense". During a debate on Democracy Now!, Finkelstein asserted that Dershowitz lacked knowledge about specific contents of his own book, Finkelstein also claimed that Dershowitz did not write the book, and may not have even read it. Finkelstein suggests that this copying of quotations amounts to copying ideas. Examining a copy of a proof of Dershowitz's book he managed to obtain, he found evidence that Dershowitz had his secretarial assistant, Holly Beth Billington, check in the Harvard library the sources he had read in Peters's book. Dershowitz answered the charge in a letter to the University of California's Press Director Lynne Withey, arguing that Finkelstein had made up the smoking gun quotation, in that he had changed its wording (from 'cite' to 'copy') in his book. In public debate he has stated that if "somebody borrowed the quote without going to check back on whether Mark Twain had said that, obviously that would be a serious charge"; however, he insisted emphatically that he himself did not do that, that he had indeed checked the original source by Twain. Finkelstein also removed the charge that Dershowitz was not the true author of The Case for Israel because, as the publisher said, "he couldn't document that."

Asserting that he did consult the original sources, Dershowitz says that Finkelstein is simply accusing him of good scholarly practice: citing references he learned of initially from Peters's book. Dershowitz denies that he used any of Peters's ideas without citation. "Plagiarism is taking someone else's words and claiming they're your own. There are no borrowed words from anybody. There are no borrowed ideas from anybody because I fundamentally disagree with the conclusions of Peters's book." In a footnote in The Case for Israel which cites Peters's book, Dershowitz explicitly denies that he "relies" on Peters for "conclusions or data".

James O. Freedman, the former president of Dartmouth College, the University of Iowa, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, has defended Dershowitz:

I do not understand [Finkelstein's] charge of plagiarism against Alan Dershowitz. There is no claim that Dershowitz used the words of others without attribution. When he uses the words of others, he quotes them properly and generally cites them to the original sources (Mark Twain, Palestine Royal Commission, etc.) [Finkelstein's] complaint is that instead he should have cited them to the secondary source, in which Dershowitz may have come upon them. But as The Chicago Manual of Style emphasizes: 'Importance of attribution. With all reuse of others' materials, it is important to identify the original as the source. This not only bolsters the claims of fair use, it also helps avoid any accusation of plagiarism.' This is precisely what Dershowitz did.

Responding to an article in The Nation by Alexander Cockburn, Dershowitz also cited The Chicago Manual of Style:

Cockburn's claim is that some of the quotes should not have been cited to their original sources but rather to a secondary source, where he believes I stumbled upon them. Even if he were correct that I found all these quotations in Peters's book, the preferred method of citation is to the original source, as The Chicago Manual of Style emphasizes: "With all reuse of others' materials, it is important to identify the original as the source. This...helps avoid any accusation of plagiarism...To cite a source from a secondary source ('quoted in...') is generally to be discouraged...."

...to which Cockburn responded:

Quoting The Chicago Manual of Style, Dershowitz artfully implies that he followed the rules by citing "the original" as opposed to the secondary source, Peters. He misrepresents Chicago here, where "the original" means merely the origin of the borrowed material, which is, in this instance, Peters.

Now look at the second bit of the quote from Chicago, chastely separated from the preceding sentence by a demure three-point ellipsis. As my associate Kate Levin has discovered, this passage ("To cite a source from a secondary source...") occurs on page 727, which is no less than 590 pages later than the material before the ellipsis, in a section titled "Citations Taken from Secondary Sources." Here's the full quote, with what Dershowitz left out set in bold: "'Quoted in.' To cite a source from a secondary source ("quoted in") is generally to be discouraged, since authors are expected to have examined the works they cite. If an original source is unavailable, however, both the original and the secondary source must be listed."

So Chicago is clearly insisting that unless Dershowitz went to the originals, he was obliged to cite Peters. Finkelstein has conclusively demonstrated that he didn't go to the originals. Plagiarism, QED, plus added time for willful distortion of the language of Chicago's guidelines, cobbling together two separate discussions.

In April 2007, Dr. Frank Menetrez, a former Editor-in-Chief of the UCLA Law Review, published an analysis of the charges made against Finkelstein by Alan Dershowitz, finding no merit in any single charge, and that, on the contrary, "Dershowitz is deliberately misrepresenting what Finkelstein wrote". In a follow-up analysis he concluded that he could find 'no way of avoiding the inference that Dershowitz copied the quotation from Twain from Peters's From Time Immemorial, and not from the original source', as Dershowitz claimed.

Tenure denial and resignation

In early 2007 the DePaul University Political Science department voted nine to three, and the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Personnel Committee five to zero, in favor of giving Finkelstein tenure. The three opposing faculty members subsequently filed a minority report opposing tenure, supported by the Dean of the College, Chuck Suchar. Suchar stated he opposed tenure because Finkelstein's "personal and reputation demeaning attacks on Alan Dershowitz, Benny Morris, and the holocaust authors Elie Wiesel and Jerzy Kosinski" were inconsistent with DePaul's "Vincentian" values. In June 2007, a 4-3 vote by DePaul University's Board on Promotion and Tenure (a faculty board), affirmed by the university's president, the Rev. Dennis Holtschneider, denied Finkelstein tenure.

The university denied that Alan Dershowitz, who had been criticized for actively campaigning against Finkelstein's tenure, played any part in this decision. Finkelstein stated that he would engage in civil disobedience if attempts were made to bar him from teaching his students.

The Faculty Council later affirmed the right of Professors Finkelstein and Larudee to appeal, which a university lawyer said was not possible. Council President Anne Bartlett said she was "'terribly concerned' correct procedure was not followed". DePaul's faculty association considered taking no confidence votes in administrators, including the president, because of the tenure denials. In a statement issued upon Finkelstein's resignation, DePaul called him "a prolific scholar and an outstanding teacher."

Reception

Finkelstein's books are an attempt to examine the works of mainstream scholarship. The authors whose work he has thus targeted, including Daniel Jonah Goldhagen and Alan Dershowitz, along with others such as Benny Morris whose work Finkelstein has also cited approvingly, have in turn accused Finkelstein of grossly misrepresenting their work, and selectively quoting from their books.

Finkelstein's work has attracted a number of supporters and detractors across the political spectrum. Notable supporters include Noam Chomsky, prominent intellectual and political critic; Raul Hilberg, Holocaust historian; Avi Shlaim, New Historian; and Mouin Rabbani, Palestinian jurist and analyst. According to Hilberg, Finkelstein displays "academic courage to speak the truth when no one else is out there to support him... I would say that his place in the whole history of writing history is assured, and that those who in the end are proven right triumph, and he will be among those who will have triumphed, albeit, it so seems, at great cost." Peter Novick, Professor of History at the University of Chicago and a noted Holocaust historian whose work Finkelstein says inspired "The Holocaust Industry," has also strongly criticized the latter's work, describing it as "trash." Similarly, Alan Dershowitz, whose book The Case for Israel and Finkelstein's response Beyond Chutzpah sparked an ongoing feud between the two, has claimed Finkelstein's complicity in a conspiracy against pro-Israel scholars: "The mode of attack is consistent. Chomsky selects the target and directs Finkelstein to probe the writings in minute detail and conclude that the writer didn't actually write the work, that it is plagiarized, that it is a hoax and a fraud," arguing that Finkelstein has leveled charges against many academics, calling at least 10 "distinguished Jews 'hucksters', 'hoaxters' (sic), 'thieves,' 'extortionists', and worse." Omer Bartov, writing for The New York Times Book Review, judged The Holocaust Industry to be marred by the same errors he denounces in those who exploit the Holocaust for profit or politics:

'It is filled with precisely the kind of shrill hyperbole that Finkelstein rightly deplores in much of the current media hype over the Holocaust; it is brimming with the same indifference to historical facts, inner contradictions, strident politics and dubious contextualizations; and it oozes with the same smug sense of moral and intellectual superiority... Like any conspiracy theory, it contains several grains of truth; and like any such theory, it is both irrational and insidious.'

In 2003, Finkelstein published a considerably expanded second edition of this book, focusing especially on the Swiss Banks case. He identifies areas where people have attacked the book, but claims that none of them question his actual findings.

Finkelstein has accused Jeffrey Goldberg of "torturing" Palestinian prisoners during his IDF service in the First Intifada. Goldberg referred to the allegation as "ridiculous" and he had "never laid a hand on anybody." Goldberg said his "principal role" was "making sure prisoners had fresh fruit." He characterized Finkelstein as a "ridiculous figure" and accused him of "lying and purposely misreading my book."

Denied entry to Israel in 2008

On May 23, 2008 Finkelstein was denied entry to Israel, according to unnamed Shin Bet security officials, because "of suspicions involving hostile elements in Lebanon" and that he "did not give a full accounting to interrogators with regard to these suspicions." Finkelstein had previously visited south Lebanon and met with Lebanese families during the 2006 Lebanon War. He was banned from entering Israel for 10 years.

Finkelstein was questioned after his arrival at Ben Gurion Airport near Tel Aviv and detained for 24 hours in a holding cell. After speaking to Israeli attorney Michael Sfard he was placed on a flight back to Amsterdam, his point of origin. In an interview with Haaretz, Finkelstein stated "I did my best to provide absolutely candid and comprehensive answers to all the questions put to me. I am confident that I have nothing to hide... no suicide missions or secret rendezvous with terrorist organizations." He had been travelling to visit friends in the West Bank and stated he had no interest in visiting Israel. Sfard said banning Finkelstein from entering the country "recalls the behavior of the Soviet bloc countries."

Statements on Israel and Israelis

Finkelstein is a sharp critic of Israel. In a telephone interview with Today's Zaman, in 2009, Finkelstein stated:

I think Israel, as a number of commentators pointed out, is becoming an insane state. And we have to be honest about that. While the rest of the world wants peace, Europe wants peace, the US wants peace, but this state wants war, war and war. In the first week of the massacres, there were reports in the Israeli press that Israel did not want to put all its ground forces in Gaza because it was preparing attacks on Iran. Then there were reports it was planning attacks on Lebanon. It is a lunatic state.

When asked how he, as the son of Holocaust survivors, felt about Israel’s operation in Gaza Finkelstein replied:

It has been a long time since I felt any emotional connection with the state of Israel, which relentlessly and brutally and inhumanly keeps these vicious, murderous wars. It is a vandal state. There is a Russian writer who once described vandal states as Genghis Khan with a telegraph. Israel is Genghis Khan with a computer. I feel no emotion of affinity with that state. I have some good friends and their families there, and of course I would not want any of them to be hurt. That said, sometimes I feel that Israel has come out of the boils of the hell, a satanic state On being called an anti-Zionist Finkelstein has said: "It's a superficial term. I am opposed to any state with an ethnic character, not only to Israel."

"I don’t care about Hizbullah as a political organization. I don’t know much about their politics, and anyhow, it’s irrelevant. I don’t live in Lebanon. It’s a choice that the Lebanese have to make: Who they want to be their leaders, who they want to represent them. But there is a fundamental principle. People have the right to defend their country from foreign occupiers, and people have the right to defend their country from invaders who are destroying their country. That to me is a very basic, elementary and uncomplicated question."

During the Second Intifada, Finkelstein stated a moral equivalence exists between Hamas and the state of Israel in regards to the military policy of targeted killings. Finkelstein argued one of Israel’s primary motivation for launching the 2008 offensive in Gaza was because Hamas was “signaling that it wanted a diplomatic settlement of the conflict along the June 1967 border.” Finkelstein believes Hamas had joined the international community in “seeking a diplomatic settlement” and describes Hamas stance towards Israel prior to the war as a “peace offensive.”

2009 film about Finkelstein

is an award-winning documentary film about the life and career of Norman Finkelstein, released in 2009 and directed by David Ridgen and Nicolas Rossier. It has been screened in Amsterdam IDFA, in Toronto Hot Docs and in more than 40 other national and international venues, it received 100% freshness ratings on film review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes.

Bibliography

Books

2010: This Time We Went Too Far: Truth and Consequences of the Gaza Invasion. OR Books, New York: 2010.

2005: . U of California P, ISBN 0-520-24598-9. 2nd updated edition, U of Cal. P. June 2008, ISBN 0-520-24989-5, contains an appendix written by Frank J. Menetrez, ''Dershowitz vs Finkelstein. Who's Right and Who's Wrong?, p. 363-394,

2000: The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering, Verso, ISBN 1-85984-488-X.

1998: A Nation on Trial: The Goldhagen Thesis and Historical Truth (Co-author with Ruth Bettina Birn) Henry Holt and Co., ISBN 0-8050-5872-9.

1996: The Rise and Fall of Palestine: A Personal Account of the Intifada Years. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, ISBN 0-8166-2859-9.

1995: , Verso, ISBN 1-85984-442-1

1987: From the Jewish Question to the Jewish State: An Essay on the Theory of Zionism, thesis, Princeton University.

Articles and chapters

”Disinformation and the Palestine Question: The Not-So-Strange Case of Joan Peter's 'From Time Immemorial.'“ in . Ed. Edward W. Said and Christopher Hitchens. Verso Press, 1988. ISBN 0-86091-887-4. Chapter Two, Part One:

”Peace process or peace panic? - The scourge of Palestinian moderation”, Middle East Report, 19 (1989) 3/158 , pp. 25–26,28-30,42

”Zionist orientations”, Scandinavian Journal of Development Alternatives 9 (March 1990) 1. p. 41-69

”Bayt Sahur in year II of the intifada. - A personal account”, Journal of Palestine Studies 19 (Winter 1990) 2/74.p. 62-74

”Israel and Iraq. - A double standard”, Journal of Palestine Studies 20 (1991) 2/78. p. 43-56

"Reflections on Palestinian attitudes during the Gulf war", Journal of Palestine Studies, 21 (1992) 3/83 , p. 54-70

”Réflexions sur la responsabilité de l´État et du citoyen dans le conflit arabo-israélien” (Reflections on the responsibility of state and citizen in the Arab-Israeli conflict), in L' homme et la société, L'Harmattan 1994, 114, S. 37-50

”Whither the `peace process'?”, New Left Review, (1996) 218 , p. 138

”Securing occupation: The real meaning of the Wye River Memorandum”, New Left Review, (1998) 232, p. 128-139

Contributor to The Politics of Anti-Semitism. Ed. Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair. AK Press, 2001. ISBN 1-902593-77-4.

”Lessons of Holocaust compensation”, in . Ed. Naseer Aruri. Pluto Press, 2001, S. 272-275. ISBN 0-7453-1776-6.

”Abba Eban with Footnotes”, Journal of Palestine Studies, , vol 32. (2003), p. 74-89

”Prospects for Ending the Occupation”, Antipode, 35 (2003) 5 , p. 839-845

Contributor to Radicals, Rabbis and Peacemakers: Conversations with Jewish Critics of Israel, by Seth Farber. Common Courage Press, 2005. ISBN 1-56751-326-3.

”The Camp David II negotiations. - how Dennis Ross proved the Palestinians aborted the peace process”, Journal of Palestine Studies, vol. 36 (2007), p. 39-53

”Dennis Ross and the peace process: subordinating Palestinian rights to Israeli ‘needs’” Institute for Palestine Studies, 2007 ISBN 0-88728-308-X

Others on Finkelstein and his works

Academic reviews of books by Finkelstein

Massad, Joseph. "Deconstructing Holocaust Consciousness," Review Essay, Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol. 32, No. 1. (Autumn, 2002), pp. 78–89.

Cole, Tim. the Holocaust in America: Mixed Motives or Abuse?," The Public Historian, Vol. 24, No. 4. (Fall, 2002), pp. 127–131

Hooglund, Eric. Reviewed work: Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict by Norman Finkelstein, Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol. 33, No. 3, Special Issue in Honor of Edward W. Said. (Spring, 2004), pp. 123–124.

Pelham, Nicolas. Reviewed Work: Image and Reality in the Israel-Palestine Conflict. by Norman G. Finkelstein, International Affairs (Royal Institute of International Affairs 1944-), Vol. 72, No. 3, Ethnicity and International Relations. (July, 1996), pp. 627–628.

Pappe, Ilan. "Valuable New Perspectives," Reviewed Work: Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict. by Norman G. Finkelstein, Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol. 26, No. 4. (Summer, 1997), pp. 113–115.

Beinin, Joel. "The Palestinian-Israeli Conflict after Oslo," Reviewed work: Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict by Norman G. Finkelstein. Middle East Report, No. 201, Israel and Palestine: Two States, Bantustans or Binationalism?. (Oct. - Dec., 1996), pp. 45–47.

Reviews of books by Finkelstein

Blokker, Bas. Review of Beyond Chutzpah in NRC Handelsblad 24 February 2006.

Pappe, Ilan. Review of Beyond Chutzpah. BOOKFORUM Feb./March 2006.

De Zayas, Alfred. Review of Beyond Chutzpah in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 3 February 2006.

Merkley, Paul Charles. These Pigs on the Face of the Earth: Israel's most relentless critic. Review of Beyond Chutzpah in Christianity Today January/February 2006.

Desch, Michael C.. The Chutzpah of Alan Dershowitz. Review of Beyond Chutzpah in The American Conservative 5 Dec. 2005

Goldberger, Ernest. English translation of German review Review of Beyond Chutzpah. Neue Zürcher Zeitung 10 Dec. 2005

Marqusee, Mike. Israel, fraud and chutzpah Review of Beyond Chutzpah. Red Pepper (magazine) Jan. 2006

Prashad, Vijay. Z magazine reviews Beyond Chutzpah. Review of Beyond Chutzpah. Z Magazine November 2005 Volume 18 Number 11

McCarthy, Conor. The case against Israel Review of Beyond Chutzpah. Village Magazine, Ireland 17 Nov. 2005

Gordon, Neve. Neve Gordon: Review of Norman Finkelstein's, Beyond Chutzpah. Review of Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History, by Norman G. Finkelstein. History News Network 12 Oct. 2005

Nicolás, Rubén. El conflicto entre israelíes y palestinos sólo empeorará. Review of Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict, by Norman G. Finkelstein. El Mundo 23 Oct. 2003

Bogdanor, Paul. The Finkelstein Phenomenon. Review of The Holocaust Industry, by Norman Finkelstein. Judaism, Fall, 2002.

Abse, Tobias. Finkelstein's Follies: The Dangers of Vulgar Anti-Zionism Review of The Holocaust Industry, by Norman Finkelstein. New Interventions, vol. 10, no. 2, 2000.

Bartov, Omer. A Tale of Two Holocausts. Review of The Holocaust Industry, by Norman Finkelstein. New York Times Book Review 6 Aug. 2000.

Profiles of Finkelstein

Garner, Mandy. "The Good Jewish Boys Go into Battle." Times Higher Education Supplement 16 December 2005.

Naparstek, Ben. "His Own Worst Enemy." The Jerusalem Post 12 December 2005.

Rayner, Jay. "Finkelstein's List." The Observer 16 July 2000.

Sheleg, Yair. "The Finkelstein Polemic." Ha'aretz 30 March 2001.

Critics of Finkelstein and replies

Daniel Goldhagen, The New Discourse of Avoidance

* Norman Finkelstein, Response to Goldhagen

William Rubinstein et al., Uses of Holocaust, letters to the London Review of Books

Alex Callinicos, Finkelstein and the Holocaust, criticism in Socialist Worker

David Friedman, Anti-Defamation League letter, calling Finkelstein a Holocaust denier

* How the ADL Fights Anti-Semitism

* The Washington Post Publishes a Retraction, Marc Fisher, WP columnist, publishes a retraction of his charge of "holocaust revisionism

References

External links

http://www.americanradicalthefilm.com A documentary film on Norman Finkelstein

Official website of Norman G. Finkelstein, featuring biography, works by Finkelstein, past and upcoming speaking engagements, and other links to information about him and controversies in which he is involved.

Norman Finkelstein Solidarity Campaign Website Norman Finkelstein Solidarity Campaign - Supporters of Norman Finkelstein

"Depaul University -- Against" bibliography at "Norman G. Finkelstein Solidarity Campaign"

'An Interview with Norman Finkelstein' State of Nature interview with Norman Finkelstein (2008)

Video

Resolving the Israel-Palestine Conflict: University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Jan 21, 2009.

Interview in Aljazeera English: Tear down the walls

Interview Broadcasted on Lebanese TV January 20, 2008

VIDEO: Norman Finkelstein - Israel and Palestine: Roots of Conflict, Prospects for Peace, presentation in Seattle, Washington, May 8, 2008.

VIDEO: Norman Finkelstein - The Coming Breakup of American Zionism, presentation in Olympia, Washington, May 8, 2008.

VIDEO: Norman Finkelstein at Brown University, April 15, 2008

Finkelstein in a dual interview with former US-Israel ambassador Martin Indyk, discussing the US Role in Israel’s 2008-09 Assault on Gaza on Democracy Now, January 8, 2009.

Doha Debate at the Oxford Union Video of debate on whether the "pro-Israeli lobby has successfully stifled Western debate about Israel's actions" with Andrew Cockburn, Martin Indyk, and David Aaronovitch, May 1, 2007

Debate with Shlomo Ben-Ami on Democracy Now!, February 14, 2006

Norman Finkelstein Responds to Clinton, Netanyahu AIPAC Comments March 23, 2010

Category:1953 births Category:American atheists Category:American political scientists Category:American political writers Category:Binghamton University alumni Category:DePaul University faculty Category:American people of Polish-Jewish descent Category:Jewish American historians Category:Jewish American writers Category:Jewish atheists Category:Historians of Jews and Judaism Category:Historians of the Holocaust Category:Historians of the Middle East Category:Hunter College faculty Category:Jewish anti-Zionism Category:Living people Category:New York University faculty Category:Personae non gratae Category:Princeton University alumni Category:Rutgers University faculty Category:Writers on Zionism Category:Jewish peace activists

Michel Collon is a Belgian writer, journalist, and historian.

Biography

Michel Collon started his career in the Belgian weekly Solidaire. He continued his work independently by writing books, making films and an Internet newsletter broadcast to 40 000 subscribers. He's close to the Workers Party of Belgium, and has organised a network of civil observers in Yugoslavia and in Irak. He's a member of the "anti-imperialist" conference Axis for Peace.

Michel Collon denounced what he believed was misuse of a photograp to imply that Chinese soldiers had dressed up as Buddhist monks and provoked the 2008 Tibetan unrest. According to the Los Angeles Times, this photograph was taken from the Michelle Yeoh film The Touch, which was filmed in Lhassa between 2001 & 2002.

Bibliography

Attention, médias ! Médiamensonges du Golfe - Manuel Anti-manipulation, EPO, Brussels, 1992 (ISBN 9782872620876)

Poker menteur, Les grandes puissances, la Yougoslavie et les prochaines guerres, EPO, Brussels, 1998 (ISBN 2872621148)

Monopoly, L'Otan à la conquête du monde, EPO, Brussels, 2000 (ISBN 2872621717)

L'Empire en guerre, (ouvrage collectif), Le Temps des Cerises, Paris, 2001 (ISBN 284109331X)

et al., Médias et Censure (ouvrage collectif), Ed. Université de Liège, 2004 (ISBN 2930322705)

Bush, le cyclone, Les lois économiques qui mènent à la guerre, la pauvreté et d'autres crimes, Oser dire, 2005 (ISBN 2919937049)

Les 7 Péchés d'Hugo Chavèz, Investig'Action/Couleur livres, Brussels/Charleroi, 2009 (ISBN 2870035306)

Filmography

Report with Carlos Fittoria : Sous les bombes de l'Otan, 45', Brussels, 1999

Documentary with Vanessa Stojilkovic : Les Damnés du Kosovo, 78', Brussels, 2002

Speech at the Islamic and Cultural Centre of Liege, Le rôle des média et de l'union européenne, Liege, 2009

Notes

External links

Official site of Michel Collon

Category:Belgian writers Category:Belgian journalists Category:Year of birth missing (living people) Category:Living people

Coordinates	52°05′36″N5°7′10″N
Name	Muammar al-Gaddafiمعمر القذافـي
Office	Brotherly Leader and Guide of the Revolution
President	Mohamed Abu Al-Quasim al-Zwai
Primeminister	Baghdadi Mahmudi
Term start	1 September 1969()
Predecessor	Idris (King of Libya)
Office2	Secretary General of the General People's Congress
Primeminister2	Abdul Ati al-Obeidi
Term start2	2 March 1977
Term end2	2 March 1979
Predecessor2	Position established
Successor2	Abdul Ati al-Obeidi
Office3	Chairman of the Revolutionary Command Council
Primeminister3	Mahmud Sulayman al-MaghribiAbdessalam JalloudAbdul Ati al-ObeidiJadallah Azzuz at-Talhi
Term start3	8 September 1969
Term end3	2 March 1979
Predecessor3	Idris (King of Libya)
Successor3	Position abolished
Office4	Prime Minister of Libya
Term start4	16 January 1970
Term end4	16 July 1972
Predecessor4	Mahmud Sulayman al-Maghribi
Successor4	Abdessalam Jalloud
Office5	Chairperson of the African Union
Term start5	2 February 2009
Term end5	31 January 2010
Predecessor5	Jakaya Kikwete
Successor5	Bingu wa Mutharika
Birth date	June 07, 1942
Birth place	Sirt, Italian Libya
Religion	Sunni Islam
Signature	Muammar al-Gaddafi Signature.svg
Website	Official website

Muammar Abu Minyar al-Gaddafi¹ ( ; also known simply as Colonel Gaddafi; born 7 June 1942) has been the de facto leader of Libya since a coup in 1969.

From 1972, when Gaddafi relinquished the title of prime minister, he has been accorded the honorifics "Guide of the First of September Great Revolution of the Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya" or "Brotherly Leader and Guide of the Revolution" in government statements and the official press. With the death of Omar Bongo of Gabon on 8 June 2009, he became the longest serving of all current non-royal national leaders. He is also the longest-serving ruler of Libya since Libya, then Tripoli, became an Ottoman province in 1551.

Early life

Gaddafi was born in a Bedouin family near Sirt. Although this claim is not proven, there is speculation that his biological father was Albert Preziosi, a Free French Forces air officer of Corsican origins. Gaddafi's relatives are known as Mansor or the Aborawi family, a wealthy family since the 1970s. As a teenager, Gaddafi was an admirer of Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser and his Arab socialist and nationalist ideology. Gaddafi took a part in anti-Israel demonstrations during the 1956 Suez Crisis.

An early conspirator, he began his first plan to overthrow the monarchy while in military college. He received further military training in the United Kingdom. The slim 27-year-old Gaddafi, with a taste for safari suits and sunglasses, then sought to become the new "Che Guevara of the age". To accomplish this Gaddafi turned Libya into a haven for anti-Western radicals, where any group, supposedly, could receive weapons and financial assistance, provided they claimed to be fighting imperialism.

A Revolutionary Command Council was formed to rule the country, with Gaddafi as chairman. He added the title of prime minister in 1970, but gave up this title in 1972. Unlike some other military revolutionaries, Gaddafi did not promote himself to the rank of general upon seizing power, but rather accepted a ceremonial promotion from captain to colonel and has remained at this rank since then. While at odds with Western military ranking for a colonel to rule a country and serve as Commander-in-Chief of its military, in Gaddafi's own words Libya's society is "ruled by the people", so he needs no more grandiose title or supreme military rank. aspects of the welfare state, and what Gaddafi termed "popular democracy", or more commonly "direct, popular democracy". He called this system "Islamic socialism", and, while he permitted private control over small companies, the government controlled the larger ones. Welfare, "liberation" (or “emancipation” depending on the translation), and education were emphasized. He also imposed a system of Islamic morals, outlawing alcohol and gambling. Like previous revolutionary figures of the 20th century such as Mao and his Little Red Book, Gaddafi outlined his political philosophy in his Green Book to reinforce the ideals of this socialist-Islamic state and published in three volumes between 1975 and 1979.

In 1977, Gaddafi proclaimed that Libya was changing its form of government from a republic to a "jamahiriya" – a neologism that means "mass-state" or "government by the masses". In theory, Libya became a direct democracy governed by the people through local popular councils and communes. At the top of this structure was the General People's Congress, with Gaddafi as secretary-general. However, after only two years, Gaddafi gave up all of his governmental posts in keeping with the new egalitarian philosophy.

From time to time, Gaddafi has responded to domestic and external opposition with violence. His revolutionary committees called for the assassination of Libyan dissidents living abroad in April 1980, with Libyan hit squads sent abroad to murder them. On 26 April 1980, Gaddafi set a deadline of 11 June 1980 for dissidents to return home or be "in the hands of the revolutionary committees". Nine Libyans were murdered during that time, five of them in Italy.

External relations

in 1969]] President Josip Broz Tito (in blue) and Gaddafi (in brown) in 1975]] ]]

With respect to Libya's neighbors, Gaddafi followed Gamal Abdel Nasser's ideas of pan-Arabism and became a fervent advocate of the unity of all Arab states into one Arab nation. He also supported pan-Islamism, the notion of a loose union of all Islamic countries and peoples. After Nasser's death on 28 September 1970, Gaddafi attempted to take up the mantle of ideological leader of Arab nationalism. He proclaimed the "Federation of Arab Republics" (Libya, Egypt, and Syria) in 1972, hoping to create a pan-Arab state, but the three countries disagreed on the specific terms of the merger. In 1974, he signed an agreement with Tunisia's Habib Bourguiba on a merger between the two countries, but this also failed to work in practice and ultimately differences between the two countries would deteriorate into strong animosity.

Libya was also involved in a sometimes violent territorial dispute with neighbouring Chad over the Aouzou Strip, which Libya occupied in 1973. This dispute eventually led to the Libyan invasion of the country and to a conflict that was ended by a ceasefire reached in 1987. The dispute was in the end settled peacefully in June 1994 when Libya withdrew troops from Chad due to a judgement of the International Court of Justice issued on 13 February 1994.

Gaddafi also became a strong supporter of the Palestine Liberation Organization, which support ultimately harmed Libya's relations with Egypt, when in 1979 Egypt pursued a peace agreement with Israel. As Libya's relations with Egypt worsened, Gaddafi sought closer relations with the Soviet Union. Libya became the first country outside the Soviet bloc to receive the supersonic MiG-25 combat fighters, but Soviet-Libyan relations remained relatively distant. Gaddafi also sought to increase Libyan influence, especially in states with an Islamic population, by calling for the creation of a Saharan Islamic state and supporting anti-government forces in sub-Saharan Africa.

Notable in Gaddafi's politics has been his support for self-styled liberation movements, and also his sponsorship of rebel movements in West Africa, notably Sierra Leone and Liberia, as well as Muslim groups. In the 1970s and the 1980s, this support was sometimes so freely given that even the most unsympathetic groups could obtain Libyan support; often the groups represented ideologies far removed from Gaddafi's own. Gaddafi's approach often tended to confuse international opinion.

Throughout the 1970s, his regime was implicated in subversion and terrorist activities in both Arab and non-Arab countries. By the mid-1980s, he was widely regarded in the West as the principal financier of international terrorism. Reportedly, Gaddafi was a major financier of the "Black September Movement" which perpetrated the Munich massacre at the 1972 Summer Olympics, and was accused by the United States of being responsible for direct control of the 1986 Berlin discotheque bombing that killed three people and wounded more than 200, of whom a substantial number were U.S. servicemen. He is also said to have paid "Carlos the Jackal" to kidnap and then release a number of Saudi Arabian and Iranian oil ministers.

For his anti western policy, Gaddafi gained a negative reputation in western media and diplomatic circles. Referring to his criticism of moderate and pro-western Arab leaders, a US diplomat in 1974 has remarked:

While he and his regime do not have reputation among Libyans for spilling blood, we suspect this zealot is capable of justifying in his own mind any attempt to assassinate [Egyptian President] Sadat.

On the other hand, Egyptian diplomat Omar Hefni Mahmoud, at a private conversation, characterized Gaddafi as

brash "pure" young man who had not become corrupted by politics yet.

However, in 1976 another US diplomat referred to Gaddafi as

a more practical and pragmatic politician than we had given him credit for.

Tensions between Libya and the West reached a peak during the Ronald Reagan administration, which tried to overthrow Gaddafi. The Reagan administration viewed Libya as a belligerent rogue state because of its uncompromising stance on Palestinian independence, its support for revolutionary Iran in the 1980–1988 war against Saddam Hussein's Iraq (see Iran–Iraq War), and its backing of "liberation movements" in the developing world. Reagan himself dubbed Gaddafi the "mad dog of the Middle East". In December 1981, the US State Department invalidated US passports for travel to Libya, and in March 1982, the U.S. declared a ban on the import of Libyan oil and the export to Libya of U.S. oil industry technology; European nations did not follow suit. Libya has also been a supporter of the Polisario Front in their fight against Spanish colonialism and Moroccan military occupation.

In 1984, British police constable Yvonne Fletcher was shot outside the Libyan Embassy in London while policing an anti-Gaddafi demonstration. A burst of machine-gun fire from within the building was suspected of killing her, but Libyan diplomats asserted their diplomatic immunity and were repatriated. The incident led to the breaking off of diplomatic relations between the United Kingdom and Libya for over a decade.

The U.S. attacked Libyan patrol boats from January to March 1986 during clashes over access to the Gulf of Sidra, which Libya claimed as territorial waters. On 15 April 1986, Ronald Reagan ordered major bombing raids, dubbed Operation El Dorado Canyon, against Tripoli and Benghazi killing 45 Libyan military and government personnel as well as 15 civilians. UN sanctions were thereupon suspended, but U.S. sanctions against Libya remained in force.

An alleged plot by Britain's secret intelligence service to assassinate Colonel Gaddafi, when rebels attacked Gaddafi's motorcade near the city of Sirte in February 1996, was described as "pure fantasy" by former foreign secretary Robin Cook, although the FCO later admitted: "We have never denied that we knew of plots against Gaddafi."

In August 2003, two years after Abdelbaset al-Megrahi's conviction, Libya wrote to the United Nations formally accepting 'responsibility for the actions of its officials' in respect of the Lockerbie bombing and agreed to pay compensation of up to US$2.7 billion – or up to US$10 million each – to the families of the 270 victims. The same month, Britain and Bulgaria co-sponsored a UN resolution which removed the suspended sanctions. (Bulgaria's involvement in tabling this motion led to suggestions that there was a link with the HIV trial in Libya in which 5 Bulgarian nurses, working at a Benghazi hospital, were accused in 1998 of infecting 426 Libyan children with HIV.) Forty percent of the compensation was then paid to each family, and a further 40% followed once U.S. sanctions were removed. Because the U.S. refused to take Libya off its list of state sponsors of terrorism, Libya retained the last 20% ($540 million) of the $2.7 billion compensation package. In October 2008 Libya paid $1.5 billion into a fund which will be used to compensate relatives of the #Lockerbie bombing victims with the remaining 20%; #American victims of the 1986 Berlin discotheque bombing; #American victims of the 1989 UTA Flight 772 bombing; and, #Libyan victims of the 1986 US bombing of Tripoli and Benghazi. As a result, President Bush signed restoring the Libyan government's immunity from terror-related lawsuits and dismissing all of the pending compensation cases in the US, the White House said.

On 28 June 2007, Megrahi was granted the right to a second appeal against the Lockerbie bombing conviction. One month later, the Bulgarian medics were released from jail in Libya. They returned home to Bulgaria and were pardoned by Bulgarian president, Georgi Parvanov.

Gaddafi's 2009 welcome to the return of convicted Lockerbie bomber Megrahi, who was released from prison on compassionate grounds, attracted criticism from Western leaders and has disrupted his first-ever visit to the United States to attend a UN General Session. Gaddafi often resides in a tent when travelling. His plans to erect a tent in Central Park and on Libyan government property in Englewood, New Jersey during Gaddafi's stay at the UN were both protested by community leaders and subsequently cancelled by Gaddafi. His tent finally found a home on an estate belonging to Donald Trump in Bedford.

23 September 2009 marked Gaddafi's first appearance at the United Nations General Assembly where he addressed world leaders at the annual gathering in New York. The Libyan leader while demanding representation for the African Union, used the occasion to scold the United Nations structure saying the 15-member body practised “security feudalism” for those who had a protected seat. The Libyan leader's appearance at the United Nations generated demonstrations both for and against Gaddafi.

Openness

Gaddafi also appeared to be attempting to improve his image in the West. Two years prior to the 11 September 2001 attacks, Libya pledged its commitment to fighting al-Qa'ida and offered to open up its weapons programme to international inspection. The Bush administration did not pursue the offer at the time since Libya's weapons program was not then regarded as a threat, and the matter of handing over the Lockerbie bombing suspects took priority. Following the attacks of 11 September, Gaddafi made one of the first, and firmest, denunciations of the Al-Qaeda bombers by any Muslim leader. Gaddafi also appeared on ABC for an open interview with George Stephanopoulos, a move that would have seemed unthinkable less than a decade earlier.

Following the overthrow of Saddam Hussein by US forces in 2003, Gaddafi announced that his nation had an active weapons of mass destruction program, but was willing to allow international inspectors into his country to observe and dismantle them. US President George W. Bush and other supporters of the Iraq War portrayed Gaddafi's announcement as a direct consequence of the Iraq War by stating that Gaddafi acted out of fear for the future of his own regime if he continued to keep and conceal his weapons. Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi, a supporter of the Iraq War, was quoted as saying that Gaddafi had privately phoned him, admitting as much. Many foreign policy experts, however, contend that Gaddafi's announcement was merely a continuation of his prior attempts at normalizing relations with the West and getting the sanctions removed. To support this, they point to the fact that Libya had already made similar offers starting four years prior to it finally being accepted. International inspectors turned up several tons of chemical weaponry in Libya, as well as an active nuclear weapons program. As the process of destroying these weapons continued, Libya improved its cooperation with international monitoring regimes to the extent that, by March 2006, France was able to conclude an agreement with Libya to develop a significant nuclear power program.

at a conference in Nigeria]]

In March 2004, British PM Tony Blair became one of the first Western leaders in decades to visit Libya and publicly meet Gaddafi. Blair praised Gaddafi's recent acts, and stated that he hoped Libya could now be a strong ally in the international War on Terrorism. In the run-up to Blair's visit, the British ambassador in Tripoli, Anthony Layden, explained Libya's and Gaddafi's political change thus: :"35 years of total state control of the economy has left them in a situation where they're simply not generating enough economic activity to give employment to the young people who are streaming through their successful education system. I think this dilemma goes to the heart of Colonel Gaddafi's decision that he needed a radical change of direction."

On 15 May 2006, the US State Department announced that it would restore full diplomatic relations with Libya, once Gaddafi declared he was abandoning Libya's weapons of mass destruction program. The State Department also said that Libya would be removed from the list of nations supporting terrorism. On 31 August 2006, however, Gaddafi openly called upon his supporters to "kill enemies" of his revolution and anyone who asks for political change within Libya.

In July 2007, French president Nicolas Sarkozy visited Libya and signed a number of bilateral and multilateral (EU) agreements with Gaddafi.

On 4 March 2008 Gaddafi announced his intention to dissolve the country's existing administrative structure and disburse oil revenue directly to the people. The plan includes abolishing all ministries, except those of defence, internal security, and foreign affairs, and departments implementing strategic projects.

In September 2008, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice visited Libya and met with Gaddafi as part of a North African tour. This was the first visit to Libya by a US Secretary of State since 1953.

In January 2009, Gaddafi contributed an editorial to the New York Times, suggesting that he was in favor of a single-state solution to the Israeli and Palestinian conflicts that moved beyond old conflicts and looked to a unified future of shared culture and mutual respect.

Cooperation with Italy

On 30 August 2008, Gaddafi and Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi signed a historic cooperation treaty in Benghazi. Under its terms, Italy will pay $5 billion to Libya as compensation for its former military occupation. In exchange, Libya will take measures to combat illegal immigration coming from its shores and boost investments in Italian companies. The treaty was ratified by Italy in 6 February 2009, In June Gaddafi made his first visit to Rome, where he met Prime Minister Berlusconi, President Giorgio Napolitano and Senate President Renato Schifani; Chamber President Gianfranco Fini cancelled the meeting because of Gaddafi's delay. and many protests were staged throughout Italy by human rights organizations and the Radical Party. Gaddafi also took part in the G8 summit in L'Aquila in July as Chairman of the African Union. then at summit's official dinner offered by Italian President Giorgio Napolitano US and Libyan leaders upset the ceremony and sat by the Italian Prime Minister and G8 host, Silvio Berlusconi. (According to ceremony, Gaddafi should seat three places after Berlusconi). During a two-day visit to Italy in August 2010 Gaddafi upset his hosts by stating that Europe should convert to Islam. It was during a lecture in front of 200 young women whom Gaddafi had paid a modeling agency to attend that he urged the women to convert to Islam and according to one of them said, "Islam should become the religion of all of Europe." Each of the women was given a copy of the Qur'an and allegedly three of them converted on the spot. Gaddafi also said that Christianity was unimportant.

Pan-Africanism

summit in Addis Ababa]] Gaddafi has also emerged as a controversial African leader. As one of the continent's longest-serving post-colonial heads of state, the Libyan leader enjoys a reputation among many Africans as a maverick statesman. In February 2009, upon being elected chairman of the African Union in Ethiopia, Gaddafi told the assembled African leaders: "I shall continue to insist that our sovereign countries work to achieve the United States of Africa." Gaddafi is also seen by many Africans as a humanitarian, pouring large amounts of money into sub-Saharan states. Large numbers of Africans have come to Libya to take advantage of the availability of jobs there, despite the weak private sector.

His views on African political and military unification have received a relatively lukewarm response from other African governments. On 29 August 2008, Gaddafi held a public ceremony in Benghazi in which he was self-handed the title "King of Kings of Africa" with over 200 African traditional rulers and kings as part of a grassroots effort to encourage African heads of state and government to join with Gaddafi toward a greater political cohesion; this was followed on 1 February 2009 by a coronation ceremony in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia simultaneous with the 53rd African Union Summit, at which he was elected head of the African Union for the year. His January 2009 forum for African kings, however, was cancelled by the Ugandan government (Uganda was to host the forum), since the invitation of traditional rulers to discussion of political affairs contravened Uganda's current constitution, and according to Ugandan foreign ministry spokesperson James Mugume, would have led to instability.

The title of "King of Kings" was reiterated by Gaddafi at the 2009 Arab League Summit, at which he claimed to be the King of Kings, "leader of the Arab leaders" and "imam of the Muslims" in his criticism of King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia prior to storming out of the summit.

Notwithstanding his claims of concern for his African roots, Gaddafi has often expressed an overt contempt for the Berbers, a non-Arab people of North Africa, and for their language, maintaining that the very existence of Berbers in North Africa is a myth created by colonialists. He adopted several measures forbidding the use of Berber, and often attacks this language in official speeches, with statements like: "If your mother transmits you this language, she nourishes you with the milk of the colonialist, she feeds you their poison" (1985).

'NATO of the South'

In September 2009, at a South America-Africa summit on Isla Margarita in Venezuela, Colonel Gaddafi joined the host, Hugo Chávez, in calling for an "anti-imperialist" front way across Africa and Latin America. Gaddafi proposed the establishment of a South Atlantic Treaty Organization to rival NATO, saying: "The world’s powers want to continue to hold on to their power. Now we have to fight to build our own power."

Expulsion of Palestinians

In 1995, Gaddafi expelled some 30,000 Palestinians living in Libya, in response to the peace negotiations that had commenced between Israel and the PLO

UN General Assembly speech

On 23 September 2009, Colonel Gaddafi addressed the 64th session of the United Nations General Assembly in New York, his first visit to the United States, in part because a Libyan diplomat, Ali Treki, has just become president of the General Assembly for 2009–10. Gaddafi spoke for one hour and 36 minutes. A translation of the speech courtesy of Jamahiriya News Agency (JANA) the official Libyan news agency, is available on the internet.

Gaddafi spoke in favor of the preamble to the United Nations Charter, but rejected several provisions of the rest of the Charter; and criticized the United Nations for failing to prevent 65 wars, and invited the General Assembly to investigate the wars that the Security Council had not authorized, and for those responsible to be brought before the International Criminal Court. He also defended the Taliban and Somali Pirates. He also claimed that a foreign military was responsible for the H1N1 outbreak, accused Israel of assassinating John F. Kennedy, and called for a one-state solution for Palestine and Israel, and referred to Barack Obama as "my son".

Following Colonel Gaddafi's speech, in which he criticized the UN Security Council (UNSC) calling it the "Terror Council", Gaddafi failed to attend a special Security Council heads-of-state meeting on 24 September 2009, when a resolution calling for a reduction in the number of nuclear weapons was passed unanimously.

Disappearance of Imam Musa al-Sadr

In August 1978, the Lebanese Shia leader Musa al-Sadr and two companions departed for Libya to meet with government officials. They were never heard from again. At the time, Musa al-Sadr founded Amal Movement, a liberal-Shia Lebanese resistance movement (which later went on to oppose the Israeli invasion of Lebanon). However Amal Movement became powerful much to the annoyance of the PLO which was based primarily in south Lebanon. Libya has consistently denied responsibility, claiming that al-Sadr and his companions left Libya for Italy. Some others have reported that he remains secretly in jail in Libya. Al-Sadr's disappearance continues to be a major dispute between Lebanon and Libya. Lebanese Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri claimed that the Libyan regime, and particularly the Libyan leader, were responsible for the disappearance of Imam Musa Sadr, London-based Asharq Al-Awsat, a Saudi-run pan-Arab daily reported on 27 August 2006.

According to Iranian General Mansour Qadar, the then head of Syrian security, Rifaat al-Assad, told the Iranian ambassador to Syria that Gaddafi was planning to kill al-Sadr. On 27 August 2008, Gaddafi was indicted in Lebanon for al-Sadr's disappearance.

Internal dissent

In October 1993, there was an unsuccessful assassination attempt on Gaddafi by elements of the Libyan army. On 14 July 1996, a football match in Tripoli, organised by his son, was followed by bloody riots as a protest against Gaddafi.

There are a number of political groups opposed to Gaddafi:

National Conference of the Libyan Opposition

National Front for the Salvation of Libya

Committee for Libyan National Action in Europe

A website, actively seeking his overthrow, was set up in 2006 and lists 343 victims of murder and political assassination. The Libyan League for Human Rights (LLHR) – based in Geneva – petitioned Gaddafi to set up an independent inquiry into the February 2006 unrest in Benghazi in which some 30 Libyans and foreigners were killed.

Fathi Eljahmi was a prominent dissident who has been imprisoned since 2002 for calling for increased democratization in Libya.

Public works projects

Great Manmade River

The Great Manmade River is a network of pipes that supplies 6,500,000 m³ of fresh water per day from beneath the Sahara Desert, from the Nubian Sandstone Aquifer System fossil aquifer, to the cities in the north of Libya, including Tripoli, Benghazi and Sirt. The project consists of more than 1,300 wells, most more than 500 m deep. According to the 2008 edition of Guinness Book of Records, it is the world's largest irrigation project.

Construction on the first phase started in 1984, and cost about $5 billion. The completed project may total $25 billion.

Muammar al-Gaddafi has described it as the "Eighth Wonder of the World" and presented the project as a gift to the Third World.

Astronomical observatory

The Libyan National Telescope Project, costing nearly 10 million euros, was ordered by Muammar al-Gaddafi, who has a passionate interest in astronomy. The robotic telescope, which will be two metres in diameter and remote-controlled, will be built by France's REOSC, the optical department of the SAGEM Group.

It will be housed in an air-conditioned building, with a network of four weather stations deployed at a distance of 10 kilometers around it to warn of impending sandstorms that could damage its fragile optics. A desert site at 2200 meters above sea level near Kufra may be chosen as the location for the observatory, which will be North Africa's largest astronomical observatory.

Personal life and family

He is married to Safia Farkash . Gaddafi has eight biological children, seven of them sons. He also had two adopted children. His adopted daughter was killed. His adopted son, Milad Abuztaia Al-Gaddafi is also his nephew. Milad is credited with saving Gaddafi's life during the April 1986 bombing of the Gaddafi compound.

His eldest son, Muhammad al-Gaddafi, was born to a wife now in disfavour, but runs the Libyan Olympic Committee.

The next eldest son by his second wife is Saif al-Islam Muammar Al-Gaddafi, who was born in 1972 and is an architect. He runs a charity (GIFCA) which has been involved in negotiating freedom for hostages taken by Islamic militants, especially in the Philippines. In 2006, after sharply criticizing his father's regime, Saif Al-Islam briefly left Libya, reportedly to take on a position in banking outside of the country. He returned to Libya soon after, launching an environment-friendly initiative to teach children how they can help clean up parts of Libya. He is involved in compensation negotiations with Italy and the United States.

The third eldest, Saadi Gaddafi, is married to the daughter of a military commander. Saadi runs the Libyan Football Federation and signed for various professional teams including Italian Serie A team U.C. Sampdoria, although without appearing in first team games.

Gaddafi's fourth son, Mutassim Gaddafi, was a Lieutenant Colonel in the Libyan army. He now serves as Libya's National Security Advisor, in which capacity he oversees the nation's National Security Council. Saif Al-Islam and Moatessem-Billah are both seen as possible successors to their father.

The fifth eldest, Hannibal Gaddafi once worked for General National Maritime Transport Company, a company that specializes in Libyan oil exports. He is most notable for being involved in a series of violent incidents throughout Europe. In 2001, Hannibal attacked three Italian policemen with a fire extinguisher; in September 2004, he was briefly detained in Paris after driving a Porsche at 90 mph in the wrong direction and through red lights down the Champs-Élysées while intoxicated; and in 2005, Hannibal in Paris allegedly beat model and then girlfriend Alin Skaf, who later filed an assault suit against him. He was fined and given a four month suspended prison sentence after this incident. In December 2009 police were called to Claridges Hotel in London after staff heard a scream from Hannibal's room. Aline Skaf, now his wife, was found to have suffered facial injuries including a broken nose, but charges were not pressed after she maintained she had sustained the injuries in a fall. On 15 July 2008, Hannibal and his wife were held for two days and charged with assaulting two of their staff in Geneva, Switzerland and then released on bail on 17 July. The government of Libya subsequently put a boycott on Swiss imports, reduced flights between Libya and Switzerland, stopped issuing visas to Swiss citizens, recalled diplomats from Bern, and forced all Swiss companies such as ABB and Nestlé to close offices. General National Maritime Transport Company, which owns a large refinery in Switzerland, also halted oil shipments to Switzerland. Two Swiss businessmen who were in Libya at the time have, ever since, been denied permission to leave the country, and even held hostage for some time. (see Switzerland-Libya conflict). At the 35th G8 summit in July 2009, Gaddafi called Switzerland a "world mafia" and called for the country to be split between France, Germany and Italy.

Gaddafi's two youngest sons are Saif Al Arab and Khamis, who is a police officer in Libya.

Gaddafi's only daughter is Ayesha al-Gaddafi, a lawyer who had joined the defense team of executed former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. She married a cousin of her father in 2006.

His adopted daughter, Hanna, was killed in the April 1986 United States bombing of Libya. At a "concert for peace", held on 15 April 2006 in Tripoli to mark the 20th anniversary of the bombing raid, U.S. singer Lionel Richie told the audience:

:"Hanna will be honoured tonight because of the fact that you've attached peace to her name."

In January 2002, Gaddafi purchased a 7.5% share of Italian football club Juventus for USD 21 million, through Lafico ("Libyan Arab Foreign Investment Company"). This followed a long-standing association with the Italian industrialist Gianni Agnelli and car manufacturer Fiat.

Gaddafi holds an honorary degree from Megatrend University in Belgrade conferred on him by former Yugoslav President Zoran Lilić.

Muammar Gaddafi fears flying over water, prefers staying on the ground floor and almost never travels without his trusted Ukrainian nurse, a “voluptuous blonde,” according to a US document released by WikiLeaks late 2010. Some US embassy contacts have claimed that Gaddafi and the then 38 year-old Galina Kolotnytska have a romantic relationship.

Quotes

"God damn America" – Time magazine, 2 April 1973 "Israel is a colonialist-imperialist phenomenon. There is no such thing as an Israeli people. Before 1948, world geography knew of no state such as Israel. Israel is the result of an invasion, of aggression." "The statements of our Kenyan brother of American nationality, Obama, on Jerusalem ... show that he either ignores international politics and did not study the Middle East conflict or that it [Barack Obama's expression of solidarity with Israel] is a campaign lie. We fear that Obama will feel that, because he is black with an inferiority complex, this will make him behave worse than the whites. This will be a tragedy. We tell him to be proud of himself as a black and feel that all Africa is behind him." "The black people’s struggle has vanquished racism. It was God who created colour. Today Obama, a son of Kenya, a son of Africa, has made it in the United States of America." "It is a response to greedy Western nations, who invade and exploit Somalia’s water resources illegally. It is not a piracy, it is self defence. It is defending the Somalia children’s food. If they (Western nations) do not want to live with us fairly, it is our planet and they can go to other planet." "I am an international leader, the dean of the Arab rulers, the king of kings of Africa and the imam (leader) of Muslims, and my international status does not allow me to descend to a lower level." "There are signs that Allah will grant Islam victory in Europe – without swords, without guns, without conquests. The 50 million Muslims of Europe will turn it into a Muslim continent within a few decades." "Any Muslim in any part of the world who works with Switzerland is an apostate – is against Muhammad, God and the Quran," "It should not be called the Security Council. It should be called the terror council." – At UN General Assembly, 23 Sep. 2009

Name

Because of the lack of standardization of transliterating written and regionally pronounced Arabic, Gaddafi's name has been transliterated in many different ways into English and other Latin alphabet languages. Even though the Arabic spelling of a word does not change, the pronunciation may vary in different varieties of Arabic, which may cause a different romanization. In standard Arabic the name معمر القذافي (pointed مُـعَـمَّـرُ الـقَـذافـي) is pronounced . Here represents a pharyngeal sound (ع), not present in English. The is geminated (doubled), but can be simplified. In spoken Libyan Arabic the voiceless uvular plosive (ق) may be replaced with or (or even ; and (ذ) (same as English "th" in "this") may be replaced with (sometimes geminated) or . Vowel alternates with in spoken Arabic. Case endings are dropped: → ). Thus, may be pronounced colloquially. The definite article al- (ال) is often omitted. Here, the initial is silent because of the preceding .

In short, if the alternative spellings for each place of his name is shown in brackets:

$\{\backslash color\{OliveGreen\}m\; \backslash begin\{cases\}u\backslash \backslash o\backslash end\{cases\}\; a\; \backslash begin\{cases\}mm\backslash \backslash m\backslash end\{cases\}\; ar\; \backslash begin\{cases\}u\backslash \backslash \backslash varnothing\backslash end\{cases\}\}\; ~~~~\; \{\backslash color\{RedViolet\}\backslash begin\{cases\}al-\backslash \backslash \backslash varnothing\backslash end\{cases\}\; \backslash begin\{cases\}Q\backslash \backslash G\backslash \backslash K\backslash \backslash Kh\backslash end\{cases\}\; \backslash begin\{cases\}aa\backslash \backslash a\backslash end\{cases\}\; \backslash begin\{cases\}dd\backslash \backslash d\backslash \backslash t\backslash end\{cases\}\; \backslash begin\{cases\}h\backslash \backslash \backslash varnothing\backslash end\{cases\}\; afi\}$ and the maximum number of combinations is $2*2*2*2*4*2*3*2\; =\; 3*2^8\; =\; 768\backslash ,\backslash !$ However, not all are possible, as some alternatives are most probably combined with others, or even impossible with other (for example, simplification of geminated [m:] usually implies simplification of [a:]).

An article published in the London Evening Standard in 2004 lists a total of 37 spellings of his name, while a 1986 column by The Straight Dope quotes a list of 32 spellings known at the Library of Congress. This extensive confusion of naming was used as the subject for a segment of Saturday Night Live's Weekend Update in the early 1980s.

"Muammar Gaddafi" is the spelling used by TIME magazine, BBC News, the majority of the British press and by the English service of Al-Jazeera. The Associated Press, CNN, and Fox News use "Moammar Gadhafi". The Edinburgh Middle East Report uses "Mu'ammar Qaddafi" and the U.S. Department of State uses "Mu'ammar Al-Qadhafi". The Xinhua News Agency uses "Muammar Khaddafi" in its English reports.

In 1986, Gaddafi reportedly responded to a Minnesota school's letter in English using the spelling "Moammar El-Gadhafi". The title of the homepage of algathafi.org reads "Welcome to the official site of Muammar Al Gathafi".

The show

In September 2006, at the ENO in London, the UK-based electronic band Asian Dub Foundation created and did six performances of a show commissioned by Channel 4 and based on Gaddafi's story, called "Gaddafi: A Living Myth". The title role was played by Ramon Tikaram. The book was by Shan Khan and the direction by David Freeman. Although critics were generally unflattering in the English-speaking press, coverage in Muslim countries was more positive.

Postage stamps

The Libyan Posts (GPTC General Posts and Telecommunications Company) released many postage issues (stamps, souvenir sheets, postal stationery, booklets, etc.) including the subject of Muammar al-Gaddafi. The first issue was a souvenir sheet celebrating the 6th Anniversary of the September Revolution in 1975 (ref. Scott catalogue n.583 – Michel catalogue block 18).

Bodyguards

Gaddafi is a controversial figure worldwide due to his choice of bodyguards. His 40-member bodyguard contingent, known as the Amazonian Guard, is entirely female. All women who qualify for duty must be virgins, and are hand-picked by Gaddafi himself. They are trained in the use of firearms and martial arts at a special academy before entering service.

Books and other Writings

In addition to The Green Book (1975), Gaddafi has authored other works, including:

Escape to Hell and Other Stories (1998)

"The One-State Solution", an op-ed piece which appeared in the New York Times in 2009

See also

Al-Gaddafi International Prize for Human Rights

HIV trial in Libya

List of national leaders

References

External links

Muammar Gaddafi: 40 Years in Power: Libya's Last Bedouin

Official personal website

Gaddafi: The Last Supervillain? – slideshow by Life magazine

Colonel Gaddafi: with friends like these ... by The Daily Telegraph

Gaddafi's 40th Anniversary – slideshow by The First Post

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Category:1942 births Category:Arab nationalist heads of state Category:Chadian–Libyan conflict Category:Cold War leaders Category:Conspiracy theorists Category:Current national leaders Category:Heads of state of Libya Category:Leaders who took power by coup Category:Libyan revolutionaries Category:Libyan Sunni Muslims Category:Living people Category:International activists against apartheid in South Africa Category:Attempted assassination survivors Category:Pan-Africanism Category:People from Sirt Category:Place of birth missing (living people) Category:Members of the General People's Committee of Libya Category:Libyan military personnel Category:Prime Ministers of Libya