Democracy doesn't mean much if people have to confront concentrated systems of economic power as isolated individuals. Democracy means something if people can organize to gain information, to have thoughts for that matter, to make plans, to enter into the political system in some active way, to put forth programs and so on. If organizations of that kind exist, then democracy can exist too. Otherwise it's a matter of pushing a lever every couple of years; it's like having the choice between Coca-Cola and Pepsi-Cola.

Human language is nothing like the signalling systems of other animals.

I was told by journalists who can't publish it that there are in Mexico, close to the U.S. border, big areas that used to be devoted to agriculture that are now devoted to poppies. They say you can't get in there because they're guarded, first by the cartels, but also by the army, which goes hand in hand with the cartels.

It turned out that [Bill] Clinton had authorized Texaco to illegally ship oil to the military junta [in Haiti] during a time when we were supposedly opposing the military junta and supporting democracy instead.

Sooner or later, jihadist-style terror and WMD are going to come together and the consequences could be horrendous.

It happened: the first 9/11, it happened on September 11, 1973, in Chile. We did it. Was that interfering or hacking a party? This record is all over the world, constantly overthrowing governments, invading, forcing people to follow what we call democracy, as in the cases I mentioned. As I say, if every charge is accurate, it's a joke, and I'm sure half the world is collapsing in laughter about this, because people outside the United States know it. You don't have to tell people in Chile about the first 9/11.

Democracy was regarded as entering into a crisis in the 1960s. The crisis was that large segments of the population were becoming organized and active and trying to participate in the political arena.