Take, say, the solidarity movement in Central America, which I think is what you probably had in mind. To a large extent, it comes out of mainstream Christianity, based on beliefs that have had outrageous human consequences in the past, and that I think are totally indefensible. In this case, they happen to lead to some of the most courageous, heroic, and honourable human action that's taking place anywhere in the world. Well, that's how life is, I guess. It doesn't come in neat little packages.

Markets have built in inefficiencies, serious inefficiencies which are well known.

In the major state capitalists economies, Europe and the US, it's low growth and stagnation and a very sharp income differentiation a shift - a striking shift - from production to financialization.

If you look at US internal documents, they explain very clearly what the threat of Cuba was. So, back in the early 1960s the State Department described the threat of Cuba as Castro's successful defiance of US policy, going back to the Monroe Doctrine. The Monroe Doctrine established the US claim to dominate the Western hemisphere and Castro was successfully defying that. That's not tolerable. It is like somebody saying "let's have democracy in Greece," and we just can't tolerate that so we have to destroy the threat at its roots.

We have to remember that literally within months after Castro's taking office the planes from Florida were beginning to bomb Cuba. Within a year, the Eisenhower administration secretly, but formally, decided to overthrow the government. Then came the Bay of Pigs invasion. The Kennedy administration was furious about the failure of the invasion and immediately launched a major terrorist war and economic war that got harsher through the years. Under these conditions it is kind of amazing that Cuba survived.

It is only natural to expect that guilds will tend to "protect their turf" and to resist challenge.

The crimes against Palestinians in the Occupied Territories and elsewhere, particularly Lebanon, are so shocking that the only emotionally valid reaction is rage and a call for extreme actions. But that does not help the victims. And, in fact, it's likely to harm them.