The US is to an unusual extent a business-run society, where short-term concerns of profit and market share displace rational planning.

It's been a real success - one of the great business successes in the United States - to break down organization, to separate people too: it's part of consumerism. If you can drive people toward individual consumption, that's the highest goal in life. And furthermore, drive them into debt so they're trapped. You don't have to worry about a democracy function because people are trapped and they're alone.

Clinton, Kennedy, they all carried out mass murder, but they didn't think that that was what they were doing - nor does Bush. You know, they were defending justice and democracy from greater evils.

The crime of liberation theology was that it takes the Gospels seriously. That's unacceptable. The Gospels are radical pacifist material, if you take a look at them . . . Liberation theology, in Brazil particularly, brought the actual Gospel to peasants. They said, let's read what the Gospels say, and try to act on the principles they describe. That was the major crime that set off the Reagan wars of terror.

The 'free-floating intellectual' may occupy himself with problems because of their inherent interest and importance, perhaps to little effect.

Haiti, which has been the main target of US intervention throughout the 20th century, is the poorest. And Guatemala, which is maybe the third major target of US intervention, probably ranks third poorest.

Part of the uprising of Latin America, particularly in the last 10 to 15 years, has been a reaction to [neoliberal regime], and they have thrown out a lot of these measures and moved in a different direction. In earlier years, the US would have overthrown the governments or, one way or another, curtailed them. Now, it can't do that.