asked his opinion on capital punishment in Secrets, Lies, and Democracy, he stated: He has commented on the use of the death penalty in Texas as well as other states. On August 26, 2011 he spoke out against the execution of Steven Woods in Texas. Views on copyright and patents Chomsky has criticized copyright laws as well as patent laws. On copyright he argued in a 2009 interview: On patents, he stated: Views on institutions Criticism of United States government Chomsky has been a consistent and outspoken critic of the United States government, and criticism of the foreign policy of the United States has formed the basis of much of his political writing. Chomsky gives reasons for directing his activist efforts to the state of which he is a citizen. He believes that his work can have more impact when directed at his own government, and that he holds a responsibility as a member of a particular country of origin to work to stop that country from committing crimes. He expresses this idea often with a comparison of other countries holding that every country has flexibility to address crimes by unfavored countries, but is always unwilling to deal with their own. Speaking in Nicaragua in 1986, Chomsky was asked "We feel that through what you say and write you are our friend but at the same time you talk about North American imperialism and Russian imperialism in the same breath. I ask you how you can use the same arguments as reactionaries?" to which Chomsky responded, He also contends that the United States, as the world's remaining superpower, acts in the same offensive ways as all superpowers. One of the key things superpowers do, Chomsky argues, is try to organize the world according to the interests of their establishment, using military and economic means. Chomsky has repeatedly emphasized that the overall framework of US foreign policy can be explained by the domestic dominance of US business interests and a drive to secure the state capitalist system. Those interests set the political agenda and the economic goals that aim primarily at US economic dominance. His conclusion is that a consistent part of the United States' foreign policy is based on stemming the "threat of a good example." This 'threat' refers to the possibility that a country could successfully develop outside the US-managed global system, thus presenting a model for other countries,