A colonial war is a very dirty kind of war. You're not fighting armed forces. You're fighting mostly unarmed people. And to fight that kind of war requires professional killers, which means mercenaries.

The Saudi, Arabian ruling class, for example, have rights because they are performing a service for Western power, ensuring that oil profits go to the West and not to the regional population. The local gendarmes like Israel, Turkey and so on have rights, at least in their ruling groups. Others do not.

Whenever there is injustice, oppression, aggression, violence, it's standard for it to be supported by those we now call "intellectuals," but typically not by all; there is typically a fringe of dissidents. With very rare exceptions - in fact, it's hard to think of any - they suffer in one or another way; how depends on the nature of the society.

If the United States loses the economic weapons of control, it is very much weakened.

There is Pakistan's relationship with Afghanistan which will also be a very tricky issue in the coming years. Then there is a large part of Pakistan which is being torn apart from American drone attacks. The country is being invaded constantly by a terrorist superpower. Again, this is not a small problem.

We don't live in tyrannies, you know, the king doesn't decide what's legitimate, and there's much more freedom than there was in the past.

The world was warned of extremely severe dangers unless urgent steps are taken to deal with global warming.