The past has too much knowledge embedded in it, and therefore it's best to forget it and start anew.

Even if you reject everything, it is always better to know what it is you are rejecting.

There was a good moment in Islam when people were actually challenging authority at every level. Very different from the world we live in.

At the time of German Reunification, it was no secret that Germany would soon become the strongest political entity in the European Union. And that has happened.

Economics and politics are so intertwined and interlinked that politics now, mainstream politics, extreme center politics, are little else but a version of concentrated economics. And this means that any alternative - alternative capitalism, left Keynesianism, intervention by the state to help the poor, rolling back the privatizations - becomes a huge issue. The entire weight of the extreme center and its media is turned against it, which in reality now is beginning to harm democracy.

The European Union is effectively a union dominated by the German political and economic elite. Its main function is to serve as a nucleus for financial capitalism and to ease the road for that capitalism. The other functions just irritate everyone: it's undemocratic; decisions are not made by parliament; the European Parliament is not sovereign.

Journalists go to press briefings at the Ministry of Defense in London or the Pentagon in Washington, and no critical questions are posed at all. It's just a news-gathering operation, and the fact that the news is being given by governments who are waging war doesn't seem to worry many journalists too much.