“All over the place, from the popular culture to the propaganda system, there is constant pressure to make people feel that they are helpless, that the only role they can have is to ratify decisions and to consume.”

Even in the 1950s, President Eisenhower was concerned about what he called a campaign of hatred of the U.S. in the Arab world, because of the perception on the Arab street that it supported harsh and oppressive regimes to take their oil.

If we don’t believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don’t believe in it at all.

I mean, to say it in a sentence, he describes elections as occasions in which groups of investors coalesce and invest to control the state.

The elections are run by the same industries that sell toothpaste on television.

France had a policy, initiated by General de Gaulle, of trying to turn Europe into what was then called a ‘third force,’ independent of the two superpowers, so Europe should pursue an independent course.

The truth is that the whole episode was almost insane.

The murder of Lumumba, in which the U.S. was involved, in the Congo destroyed Africa’s major hope for development. Congo is now total horror story, for years.

Human language appears to be a unique phenomenon, without significant analogue in the animal world.

The United States is unusual among the industrial democracies in the rigidity of the system of ideological control – ‘indoctrination’, we might say – exercised through the mass media.

They come from acceptance of American values, not a rejection of them, and recognition that they’re rejected by the U.S. government and by U.S. elites, which does lead to hatred and anger.

Any dictator would admire the uniformity and obedience of the U.S. media.

There’s a tremendous gap between public opinion and public policy.

Every time there has been an effort by the Haitian people to overcome the misery and poverty that comes from 200 years of bitter attacks, really bitter, the U.S. steps in and blocks it.

If you don’t like what someone has to say, argue with them.

It’s a near miracle that nuclear war has so far been avoided.

The probability of apocalypse soon cannot be realistically estimated, but it is surely too high for any sane person to contemplate with equanimity.

I was with them for all of it, but more like an echo than a participant.

I’m sure I had low-level scurvy all of my childhood.

Never give it all. You can never be yourself otherwise.

The all-time greatest Atlantic group – The Drifters

All of what the government said is lies upon lies.

Of course, many of them did support the Taliban. But you cannot equate all Pashtuns with the Taliban.

My professional persona never loosens its grip, keeping an eye on me at all times.

I never enquire into the origin of things, all Origin is a fallacy (in this I follow Nietzsche: origin is a very contested Cartesian illusion of reliability).