I think such an inquiry will reveal a rather different picture: namely, it will reveal a very strong tendency for the intellectuals who are respected and privileged to be those who subordinate themselves to power.

From the U.S. point of view, negotiations are, in effect, a way for Israel to continue its policies of systematically taking over whatever it wants in the West Bank, maintaining the brutal siege on Gaza, separating Gaza from the West Bank and, of course, occupying the Syrian Golan heights, all with full U.S. support.

If you read people like say Bruce Blair one of the leading, most sober, knowledgeable specialists, he says, look, [Donald Trump] statements are all over the map, but his personality is frightening, he's a complete megalomaniac.

The United States is the Godfather when it establishes edicts. Others had better live up to them, or else. We have to demonstrate that. So that's what the bombing of Syria was to have demonstrated.

The criminalization of Black life was something specific to the United States in the post-Reconstruction period and there's something like it happening today with mass incarceration, directed largely against black males.

The Republican Party among the public is a minority party.

Balochistan, and to some extent Sindh too, has a general feeling that they are not part of the decision-making process in Pakistan and are ruled by a Punjabi dictatorship. There is a lot of exploitation of the rich resources [in Balochistan] which the locals are not gaining from. As long as this goes on, it is going to keep providing grounds for serious uprisings and insurgencies.