Language in the service of propaganda -- Israel: the strategic asset -- Terrorism: the politics of language -- The propaganda system -- Historical engineering -- Israel, the Holocaust and anti-semitism -- State power and the domestic enemy -- Elite power and the responsibility of intellectuals -- State economic planning -- U.S. intervention and the demise of the Soviet threat -- Substitutions for the "Evil empire" -- Prelude to the Gulf War -- World orders: old and new -- The global protection racket: reflections on the Gulf War -- Pascal's wager -- Pearl Harbor.