I wouldn't say that the efforts of academics to critique the media's messages are "half-hearted." As far as I am aware, the efforts scarcely exist: very few even pay attention to the question.

The kind of work that should be the main part of life is the kind of work you would want to do if you weren't being paid for it. It’s work that comes out of your own internal needs, interests and concerns.

There was very little international support, even England wouldn't support [bombing of Syria], which is amazing.

We must present a national persona of being irrational and vindictive, because that's going to terrify people. And then, they'll back off. And this is not [Donald] Trump, this is [Bill] Clinton. It's not [Richard] Nixon, you know. We have to be irrational and vindictive, because that's going to frighten people.

Reagan was extreme. Beginning of his administration, one of the first things was to call in scabs - hadn't been done for a long time, and it's illegal in most countries - in the air controller strike.

A 1998 study was done in Hebrew by an Israeli scholar, Yosef Grodzinsky, and the English translation of the title is Good Human Material. That's what they wanted sent to Palestine for colonization and for the eventual conflict that took place some years later. These policies were somewhat complementary to the U.S. policy of pressuring England to allow Jews to go to Palestine, but not allowing them here. The British politician Ernest Bevin was quite bitter about it, asking, "if you want to save the Jews, why send them to Palestine when you don't admit them?"

You might recall, perhaps, that we were probably the only commentators to rely on the most knowledgeable source, State Department intelligence.