The Republican Primaries were quite interesting. The establishment had its candidate, [Mitt] Romney, a kind of a Wall Street lawyer and investor, and they wanted him in. But the base didn't want him.

We live in this world, not another one that we'd prefer, and sometimes it's necessary to follow painful paths if we hope to provide at least a little help for suffering people.

The Bush Administration do have moral values. Their moral values are very explicit: shine the boots of the rich and the powerful, kick everybody else in the face, and let your grandchildren pay for it. That simple principle predicts almost everything that's happening.

What happened in Syria was, President [Barack] Obama had made a statement announcing what he called his "red line": You can't use chemical weapons, you can do anything else but [use] chemical weapons.

This would be a very good moment to institute a call for imposing the Chemical Weapons Convention on the Middle East. The actual Chemical Weapons Convention. Not the version that [Barack] Obama presented in his address to the nation and that media commentators repeat. What he said is that the convention bars the use of chemical weapons. He knows better. And so do the commentators. The Chemical Weapons Convention calls for banning the production, storage and use of chemical weapons, not just the use. So why omit production and storage?

Wanton killing of innocent civilians is terrorism, not a war against terrorism.

Latin America is now exploring new and often promising paths in rejecting the doctrinal notions of "globalization," and also in the remarkable growth of popular movements and authentic participation in the political systems. How successful this will be is more a matter for action than for speculation.