I've occasionally been asked to talk on Israel-Palestine. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it elicits hysteria in the community.

One might ask why tobacco is legal and marijuana not. A possible answer is suggested by the nature of the crop. Marijuana can be grown almost anywhere, with little difficulty. It might not be easily marketable by major corporations. Tobacco is quite another story.

Colombia was a big wheat producer in the 1950's. That was eliminated by what sounds like a nice plan, called "Food for Peace. " It's a plan by which US taxpayers subsidized US agribusiness to send food to poor countries. This, of course, destroyed the domestic agricultural markets of these countries, opening these markets to US agribusiness.

The respected intellectuals are those who conform and serve power interests.

The very idea that there should be a certain class of people who give orders by virtue of their ownership of wealth and another huge class who take on orders and follow them because of their lack of access to wealth and power, that's unacceptable. So, sure it should be abolished.

Right now, we happen to be in a general period of regression, not just in education. A lot of what's happening is sort of backlash to the 60s; the 60s were a democratizing period.

In a society that has very high concentration of capital in a narrow sector of the population, that's going to influence everything in different ways.