The most dramatic case is that of the Central Americans. Why are people fleeing Central America? It's because of the atrocities the U.S. committed there. Take Boston, where there's a fairly large Mayan population. These people are fleeing from the highlands of Guatemala, where there was virtual genocide in the early 1980s backed by Ronald Reagan. The region was devastated, and people are still fleeing to this day, yet they're sent back.

Travel from what is called Pakistan to Afghanistan has been made increasingly difficult and people are often labelled terrorists, even those who might be just visiting families.

We don't think about it, but it has a tremendous effect. But these are things you don't see right in front of your eyes. You need to think about them a little, to see what the consequences are.

There has to be spiritual transformation among the masses, who have to be willing to recognize that their oppression is not a law of nature. That's what Latin American bishops were doing when they formed base communities. They were trying to get peasants to recognize that you can take your fate into your own hands. That's what the civil-rights movement did here. That's what the women's movement did.

There are cases - for example, the American Revolution. George Washington's army lost just about every battle with the British, who had a much better army. The war was basically won by guerrilla forces that managed to undermine the British occupation.

In fact, it's pretty dramatic when you get to 1975, very revealing, the [Vietnam] war ends. Everybody had to write something about the war, what it meant. You also had polls of public opinion, and they're dramatically different.

One of the truths about the world is that there are two superpowers, one a huge power which happens to have its boot on your neck; another, a smaller power which happens to have its boot on other people's necks. I think that anyone in the Third World would be making a grave error if they succumbed to illusions about these matters