There is still much debate about whether torture has been effective in eliciting information - the assumption being, apparently, that if it is effective, then it may be justified.

It is now well-known that the Taliban's creation was facilitated by the CIA and the ISI as part of the 1980s anti-Soviet war.

From the 1970s, there has been a significant change in the US economy, as planners, private and state, shifted it toward financialization and the offshoring of production, driven in part by the declining rate of profit in domestic manufacturing.

Starting with [Ronald] Regan it became quite open, the attack on unions. It wasn't the Pinkertons anymore, but it was just not applying the laws.

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.

The intellectual world is deeply conformist... We talk a lot about the crimes of others. When it comes to our own crimes, we are nationalists in the Orwellian sense.

People are capable of seeing the deceit they're ensnared in. They just have to make the effort.