Rendition is a crime, pure and simple, argues Noam Chomsky, who explained some of his views to Deaglán de Bréadúnbefore his visit to Ireland
Noam Chomsky is a figure who has inspired both adulation and annoyance for many years.
He was recently voted the world's leading public intellectual in a poll conducted jointly by two weighty journals, British-based publication Prospect and the US magazine Foreign Policy. He is one of the most outspoken critics of the Bush administration, particularly the war in Iraq.
He is coming to Dublin to give a series of talks on January 17th to 19th.
His profile is high and his fame widespread, so when the linguistics professor from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology comes to town, he gets a hearing. It's a sensitive time in the Irish debate about Iraq. The use of Shannon Airport as a transit-point by US forces has been the subject of controversy since the war began three years ago.
But more recent suggestions that the Central Intelligence Agency may be transporting prisoners via Shannon, in a process known as "extraordinary rendition", and that these detainees are headed for Guantanamo Bay or some secret location in eastern Europe where they might be subject to torture or inhuman treatment, has brought still sharper criticism on the Government.
The US embassy has denied that any prisoners are being taken through Shannon but the recent call from the Human Rights Commission for these planes to be inspected has made this the most controversial foreign policy issue in a long time.
Minister for Agriculture Mary Coughlan said in a TV discussion there would be "huge consequences" if it turned out that prisoners were, in fact, on those planes.
During his visit Chomsky will doubtless repeat his forthright views on this issue. Responding by e-mail to a question from The Irish Times last week, he wrote: "Rendition is a shameful and cowardly crime. Any association with it is deplorable."
He declined to comment at this stage on the military use of Shannon because he "didn't have time for an essay, and that's a complex matter, unlike rendition, which is simply a scandal".
Defenders of the Government's policy on Shannon say it is vital not to offend the US which has directed so much investment towards this country.
Even in advance of his visit, Chomsky has been taken to task in the Irish media for something that, as he points out, he never actually said.
Reported as calling Bertie Ahern a "shoeshine boy" for President Bush, he was condemned for using "typical Chomsky insulting language towards the Taoiseach". This arose out of a report by the Press Association, a leading news agency, which he also disputes, where the actual quote attributed to him is as follows: "Western politicians despise democracy and prefer to shine the shoes of the power(i.e. the US)".
Chomsky's reputation has acquired a new lease of life among the young protesters against globalisation and its excesses who have taken his critique of the multinationals on board and adopted him as their icon and sage.
Avram Noam Chomsky was born in Philadelphia in 1928 and has been teaching at MIT since 1955. He has achieved a position of eminence in the academic world and his theory of transformational grammar is credited with revolutionising the study of language and communication. His fundamental thesis is that children are born with an innate knowledge of the basic universal grammar underlying all languages and his theories have been adapted to the study of computer science, mathematics and evolutionary psychology.
Chomsky's first major intervention in the political arena was in 1967 when his essay, "The Responsibility of Intellectuals" in the New York Review of Books, condemned the failure of liberal academics and writers to oppose the development of US war policies. He gave a reluctant endorsement to Senator John Kerry in the last US presidential election, although he described the Democratic candidate as Bush-lite.
A critic of totalitarianism, whether generated by the right or the left, Chomsky has aligned himself with the anarchist tradition of workers' control and opposition to hierarchy, as practised in Barcelona during the early days of the Spanish Civil War.
His Jewish background has not prevented him from making sharp criticisms of Israeli policy in the Palestinian territories. Although he condemned the 9/11 attacks outright, his insistence on pinning the ultimate blame on US foreign policy aroused considerable controversy.
Chomsky has strong views on the role of multinationals in today's world. He is opposed to what he sees as the efforts of global corporations to dominate world institutions and governments.
Chomsky is also a sharp critic of the role of the mass media, which he regards as systematically biased towards big business and government interests and has claimed that "propaganda is to a democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state". He has argued that news coverage is distorted by "five filters" - ownership, advertising and the profit motive, dependence on establishment sources for information, "flak" from pressure groups and the conservative bent of many journalists themselves.
Tickets for the various Chomsky events, taking place under the auspices of Amnesty International or UCD, are already becoming as scarce as gold dust.
Agree with him or not, his visit is unlikely to be dull.