If you look at say, England and Germany a century ago, which had the most advanced navies then, they were dealing with extremely tricky technological problems. Putting a huge gun on a moving platform and ensuring that it could hit another moving target was one of the hardest technical problems of the early twentieth century.

The more there is a need to talk about the ideals of democracy, the less democratic the system usually is.

Well before September 11, it was understood that with modern technology, the rich and powerful will lose their near monopoly of the means of violence and can expect to suffer atrocities on home soil.

In a society that has very high concentration of capital in a narrow sector of the population, that's going to influence everything in different ways.

The government of Israel doesn't like the kinds of things I say, which puts them into the same category as every other government in the world.

In the US, first of all, the electoral system has been almost totally shredded. For a long time it's been pretty much run by private concentrated spending but now it's over the top. Elections increasingly over the years have been [public relations] extravaganzas.

What's called "liberal" in the intelectual culture means highly conformist to power, but mildly critical.