The U.S. directed the war against South Vietnam. There was a political settlement in 1954. But in the late '50's the United States organized an internal repression in South Vietnam, not using its troops, but using the local apparatus it was constructing. This was a very significant and very effective campaign of violence and terrorism against the Vietminh - which was the communist-led nationalist force that fought the French. And the Vietminh at that time was adhering to the Geneva Accords, hoping that the political settlement would work out in South Vietnam.

In the mid to late nineteenth century, the gun manufacturers recognized that they had a limited market. Remember that this is a capitalist society, you've got to expand your market. They were selling guns to the military. That's a pretty limited market. What about all the rest of the people? So what started was all kinds of fantastic stories about Wyatt Earp and the gunmen and the Wild West, how exciting it was to have these guys with guns defending themselves against all sorts of things.

America is a very fundamentalist society. It's like Iran in the degree of fanatic religious commitment.

Poor whites didn't have rights. They made all kind of restrictions on voting. So person meant relatively well - off, free white man.

Jingoism, racism, fear, religious fundamentalism: these are the ways of appealing to people if you're trying to organize a mass base of support for policies that are really intended to crush them.

You also have to get beyond that to dismantle the system of production for profit rather than production for use. That means dismantling at least large parts of market systems.

I don't claim to know a lot about Mexico, but I did talk to quite a number of left Mexican intelectuals, and they all said the same thing. That there's a lot of popular, kind of, concern and activism, but it is very fragmented. That the groups have very specific, narrow agendas and they don't interact and cooperate with one another. Ok, that's something you have to overcome to build a mass popular movement. And that's, media can help, but they also benefit from it.