The Russian ambassador at the United Nations did make some proposals for a political settlement in which Bashar Assad would be slowly eased out. The West dismissed it immediately, and we don't know if it was real, because it didn't come from the Kremlin, and it was informal. But the point is every such proposal is immediately scotched. And you just don't know if they're real.

The developing world voice can be amplified enormously by support from the wealthy and the privileged, otherwise it's very likely to be marginalized.

Armed attack has a definition in international law. It means sudden, overwhelming, instantaneous ongoing attack.

Most of the population in America is disenfranchised. It doesn't matter what they think. Just look at the passionate rhetoric about how we can't stand by when a country uses weapons to kill innocent civilians.

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.

Predatory capitalism created a complex industrial system and an advanced technology; it permitted a considerable extension of democratic practice and fostered certain liberal values, but within limits that are now being pressed and must be overcome. It is not a fit system for the mid-twentieth century.

The Russians were doing a lot of rotten things, you can point to them. But the idea that if you consider what Hans Morgenthau called "I called abuse of reality," the picture of the world was almost the opposite of what they presented. But somehow this sells and is continually repeated, at least in this kind of situation.