Plainly elites in America don't want democracy. And why should they? Democracy is always harmful to elite interests. Almost by definition.

I don't see any possibility of Britain and the U.S. allowing a sovereign independent Iraq; that's almost inconceivable.

In America, we happen to be living in a third world country from the point of view of economic and social development. I came back from New York yesterday and I took the fastest train in the country, the Acela. My wife and I took the New York-Boston train sixty years ago - it wasn't called the Acela then - and I think it's improved by about fifteen minutes since then. Any other country in the world would be about half the time. In fact when it's riding along the Connecticut turnpike it's barely keeping up with traffic, which is just scandalous.

An effective regulatory system today would be one guided by a few basic premises that can be applied flexibly but also universally.

Stock ownership in the US is very highly concentrated. [Shareholder actions are] something, but it's like the old Communist Party in the USSR, it would be nice to see more protest inside the Communist Party but it's not democracy. It's not going to happen. [Shareholder actions] are a good step, but they're mostly symbolic.

The book [Manufacturing Consent] itself is then devoted to a series of case studies, selected, we hope [with Edward Herman], to offer a fair and in fact rather severe test of those conclusions.

When Israelis in the occupied territories now claim that they have to defend themselves, they are defending themselves in the sense that any military occupier has to defend itself against the population they are crushing. You can't defend yourself when you're militarily occupying someone else's land. That's not defense. Call it what you like, it's not defense.