If in fact, the US story is correct, if it is true that Syria used chemical weapons, then it wouldn't be a major crime to send a kind of shot across the bow saying you can't do this anymore. Not the best thing in the world, but not a major crime, either. So, I think at the very least there should have been an inquiry into what happened. But just joining the bandwagon about how we're finally standing up to crimes in Syria, that's ridiculous.

I just don't care about popular culture. It looks to me pointless and superficial. If I had free time I'd rather read a 19th century novel.

Most of what is done I think is to kept secret so the public won't know. The same is true of what Wikileaks exposed.

The people of the Third World need our sympathetic understanding and, much more than that, they need our help. We can provide them with a margin of survival by internal disruption in the United States. Whether they can succeed against the kind of brutality we impose on them depends in large part on what happens here.

I think that has a lot of dangers, as does government surveillance, which is way too high.

The press is owned by wealthy men who only want certain things to reach the public.

A property of an organism enters into its life (and survival) in many different ways, some more salient than others. But there is no simple notion of its being "for" some function.