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

We live, after all, in a world where illusions are sacred and truth profane.

I think the big tragedy of the Cuban Revolution was that it became dependent on the Soviet Union, and it became dependent on the Soviet Union under a very reactionary bureaucratic regime led by Leonid Brezhnev.

I think another crisis, which is being predicted now and which will be worse than what we saw in 2008, could bring the European Union down unless there are huge reforms from within to democratize, to give more power to the regions, etc. If this doesn't happen, the European Union will fall.

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

All these wars are similar in the way ideology is being used. It's the ideology of so-called humanitarian intervention. We don't want to do this, but we're doing this for the sake of the people who live there. This is, of course, a terrible sleight of hand because all sorts of people live there, and, by and large, they do it to help one faction and not the other.

At the moment we have a critical situation in Greece. Even as we speak, where there is an open attempt by the EU to destroy Syriza by splitting it. There is a German obstinacy and utter refusal to seriously consider an alternative. The reason isn't even a lack of money, because money swims around the EU coffers endlessly, and they could write off the debt tomorrow if they wanted. But they don't want to do so, because of the election of a left-wing government. They want to punish Syriza in public, to humiliate it so that this model doesn't go any further than Greece.