I just went along with political activists and interested in other intellectual interests which I pursued kind of at random. I never had a real college education. I got a degree, but it was just patching together courses here and there.

The Washington leadership has put aside non-proliferation programmes and devoted its energies and resources to driving the country to war by extraordinary deceit, then trying to manage the catastrophe it created in Iraq.

Latin America, for the first time in 500 years, is moving towards a degree of independence.

These are fashionable people who call themselves philosophers.

In fact, some leaders come right out and say it. Mario Draghi the president of the European Central Bank had an interview with the Wall St Journal in which he said the social contract's dead; we finally got rid of it.

In fact, it's doing it all over the world. Obama, first of all, is running the biggest terrorist operation that exists, maybe in history. The drone assassination campaigns, which are just part of it. All of these operations, they are terror operations.

Looking at polls of Arab public opinion, you look at popular figures, the most popular figure is the prime minister of Turkey, Erdogan, and then it goes down the list. You get Osama Bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, you don't get Obama, or in fact any western leader. The public doesn't want the whole imperial project. So if you had democracy, it would be all over.