We naturally assume that our mental structures are universal. But I suppose an outside biologist looking at us would see something very different. He would see that, like other organisms, we have a narrow sphere within which we are very good, but that sphere is very limited. And that, in fact, the very achievements we can have within that sphere are related to lack of achievements in other spheres.

Suppose that the US really is trying to get rid of drugs in Colombia. Does Colombia then have the right to fumigate tobacco farms in Kentucky? They are producing a lethal substance far more dangerous than cocaine. More Colombians die from tobacco-related illnesses than Americans die from cocaine. Of course, Colombia has no right to do that.

When I was growing up in the 1930s and '40s anti-Semitism was rampant. It wasn't like Nazi Germany but it was pretty serious - it was part of life.

WikiLeaks is a service to the population. Assange should get an award for - presidential medal of honor.

The senate was wealthy people and it wasn't elected, it was chosen through legislatures, which themselves were under private influence, powerful influence. They were remote from the population and that's where power was suppose to reside.

The neoliberal programs of the last generation have in fact been, and were intended to be, a pretty serious attack on democracy, but also they've led to stagnation or decline for large parts of the population - the working class, the lower middle class, these people have essentially been cast aside.

The US intervened in the Philippines to uplift and christianize the backward people, killing a couple of hundred thousand of them and destroying the place. The same thing happened in Haiti, the same thing happened with other countries.