Propaganda is to a democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state...

There are leaks from the Embassy in Honduras. There was a coup in 2009. Obama broke with most of Latin America and even Europe and supported the military coup, still does. The ambassador in Honduras sent back a detailed analysis saying the coup was military, illegal, unconstitutional, and that the legitimate president was thrown out. Okay, we now know that Washington was perfectly aware of that and decided to support the military coup anyway. We should have known that at the time. The government has no right to keep that information secret.

Those lucky enough to qualify as "intellectuals" have their own special responsibilities, deriving from their good fortune. Among these is the task that [Edward] Said describes, surely an important one.

I doubt that national languages will disappear. In fact, to some extent they're becoming more diverse, like in Europe.

The September 11 attacks were major atrocities. . . . This was a horrendous crime . . . The primary victims . . . were working people: janitors, secretaries, firemen, etc. It is likely to prove to be a crushing blow to Palestinians . . . It is also likely to lead to harsh security controls, with many possible ramifications for undermining civil liberties and internal freedom.

As far as Marx's analysis of capitalism, there's a lot of very useful ideas in it, but he's developing an abstract model of 19th century capitalism. It's abstract and it's changed.

It is familiar to mainstream academic scholarship. One very prominent political scientist, in his standard text American Politics 20 years ago, observes that "The architects of power in the United States must create a force that can be felt but not seen."