I can understand the idea that there is a conspiracy. In fact, in much of the world there is a sense of an ultra-powerful CIA manipulating everything that happens, such as running the Arab Spring, running the Pakistani Taliban, etc. That is just nonsense. They [CIA] created a monster and now they are appalled by it.

What the polls don't tell you is, though other polls do, is that if you do a study of CEOs, top executives in corporations, they're liberal.

[For business after WWII ] democracy means getting people to regard government as an alien force that's robbing them and oppressing them, not as their government. In a democracy it would be your government.

It also seems beyond controversy that moral responsibilities are greater to the extent that people "have the resources, the training, the facilities and opportunities to speak and act effectively."

Edward Said is a very honorable representative of the "intellectual" in the sense of the term that he defines.

But on the contrary Wikileaks is under heavy attack by the government and corporations are participating in that by closing down their websites.

Major efforts have to be undertaken to bring the general public to understand the real reasons for their plight, and the possibilities for radical social and political change to construct meaningful popular control of all institutions - in communities, in the workplace, in the larger society, and on to the international order.