The internet, since it is publicly created, ought to be publicly controlled.

If you go to one demonstration and then go home, that's something, but the people in power can live with that. What they can't live with is sustained pressure that keeps building, organisations that keep doing things, people that keep learning lessons from the last time and doing it better the next time.

It was declared by Congress that marijuana makes people insane. But . . . lawyers, defense lawyers, got the idea, OK, I can use this for an insanity defense.

There are many cases around the world in which the presence of UN peace-keeping forces has had a somewhat beneficial effect.

Dissidents are not imprisoned as in the domains of the Kremlin, in the old days. They do not have their brains blown out by elite forces armed and trained by the reigning superpower, as happens in Washington's domains - with no particular concern at home - an important fact, one of many that help us learn about ourselves, if we choose.

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.

The principle that human nature, in its psychological aspects, is nothing more than a product of history and given social relations removes all barriers to coercion and manipulation by the powerful.