I was in Mexico City. It's a very pleasant city in many ways. It's vibrant, lively, pretty exciting society, but also depressing in other ways, and sometimes almost hopeless, you know. So it's a combination of vibrancy and, I wouldn't say despair, but hopelessness, you know. Doesn't have to be, but it is. I mean, there is almost no economy.

If you look back to the anti-intervention movements, what were they? Let's take the Vietnam War - the biggest crime since the Second World War. You couldn't be opposed to the war for years. The mainstream liberal intellectuals were enthusiastically in support of the war. In Boston, a liberal city where I was, we literally couldn't have a public demonstration without it being violently broken up, with the liberal press applauding, until late 1966.

Nobody can successfully defy the master of the hemisphere [America], in fact of the world, hence the savagery.

Like most terms of political discourse, socialism has more or less, lost its meaning. Socialism used to mean something. If you go back far enough it meant basically control of production by producers, elimination of wage labor, democratization of all spheres of life; production, commerce, education, media, workers control of factories, community control of communities, and so on. That was socialism once. But it hasn't meant that for a hundred years. Socialism meant something different.

To speak truth to power is not a particularly honorable vocation. One should seek out an audience that matters - and furthermore (another important qualification), it should not be seen as an audience, but as a community of common concern in which one hopes to participate constructively.

In societies that profess some respect for law, suspects are apprehended and brought to fair trial. I stress 'suspects.'

Every book that comes out, every article that comes out, talks about how - while it may have been a "mistake" or an "unwise effort" - the United States was defending South Vietnam from North Vietnamese aggression. And they portray those who opposed the war as apologists for North Vietnam. That's standard to say. The purpose is obvious: to obscure the fact that the United States did attack South Vietnam and the major war was fought against South Vietnam.