If you go to former Yugoslav states, the Balkan states, Croatia, Serbia, Montenegro, Slovenia, the situation is dire. Not to mention Bosnia, which is just run like a colony. The way they used to stand up and sing hymns to President Tito, they now salute the EU flag. It's a very strange transition that we're witnessing in most of Europe, and I don't think it's going to work.

In many parts of the world, including the Arab world, the Latin American world, and even parts of the Western world, there is a tradition of writers being quite engaged. Particularly in the Arab world you have had very, very strong traditions of literature and poetry and most of the writers have been deeply committed to the cause of the Arab nation.

Most Iraqis, even if they hated Saddam and suffered, say life was much better under him than it was under the occupation and what's going on today.

If you go to former Yugoslav states, the Balkan states, Croatia, Serbia, Montenegro, Slovenia, the situation is dire. Not to mention Bosnia, which is just run like a colony. The way they used to stand up and sing hymns to President Tito, they now salute the EU flag. It's a very strange transition that we're witnessing in most of Europe, and I don't think it's going to work.

The function of a bourgeois democracy is to secure the consent of the masses to their own exploitation and oppression.

There are different versions of Islam... it is meaningless to claim to speak in the name of a ‘real’ Islam.

We have populations now in the West with a very short memory span. One reason for this short memory span is that television over the last fifteen years has seen a big decline in the coverage of the rest of the world.