One might ask why tobacco is legal and marijuana not. A possible answer is suggested by the nature of the crop.

It's like these people are programmed by Karl Rove. What he wants is to have liberal critics ridicule Bush because he says 'nucular' and 'misunderestimate' and talks with a probably fake Texas accent and so on, because then can come back with the big propaganda apparatus saying, 'See, those elite liberals who run the world and are sitting around drinking French wine and eating quiche don't understand us ordinary guys'; regular guys like the guy working on the assembly line and George Bush, who is going back to his ranch to cut brush.

[Antonio] Gramsci's words and actions explain their assessment, though I think we should refrain from using the term "model intellectual" for him or others.

Humans may be destroying their chances for decent survival. It won't kill everybody, but it would change the world dramatically.

There are some very general ideas that people can keep in mind; they're kind of truisms. It's only worth mentioning them because they're always denied.

One might ask why tobacco is legal and marijuana not. A possible answer is suggested by the nature of the crop. Marijuana can be grown almost anywhere, with little difficulty. It might not be easily marketable by major corporations. Tobacco is quite another story.

The Russian ambassador at the United Nations did make some proposals for a political settlement in which Bashar Assad would be slowly eased out. The West dismissed it immediately, and we don't know if it was real, because it didn't come from the Kremlin, and it was informal. But the point is every such proposal is immediately scotched. And you just don't know if they're real.