What our leaders and pundits never let slip is that the terrorists-whatever else they might be-might also be rational human beings ; which is to say that in their own minds they have a rational justification for their actions. Most terrorists are people deeply concerned by what they see as social, political, or religious injustice and hypocrisy, and the immediate grounds for their terrorism is often retaliation for an action of the United States.

No matter how paranoid or conspiracy-minded you are, what the government is actually doing is worse than you imagine.

Propaganda is to a democracy what violence is to a dictatorship.

Change comes from a degree of discomfort that allows for and spurs thought and action.

The de facto censorship which leaves so many Americans functionally illiterate about the history of US foreign affairs may be all the more effective because it is not official, heavy-handed or conspiratorial, but woven artlessly into the fabric of education and media. No conspiracy is needed.

The leaders of the empire, the imperial mafia-George W. Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, Richard Cheney, Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, et al. ... are as fanatic and as fundamentalist as Osama bin Laden.

The "trickle-down" theory: the principle that the poor, who must subsist on table scraps dropped by the rich, can best be served by giving the rich bigger meals.