"The President, Vice-President, and all civil officers of the United States, shall be removed from office on impeachment for, and conviction of, treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors."
—Constitution of the United States
"It is not the case as the naive might think that indoctrination is inconsistent with democracy, rather . . . it's the essence of democracy. The point is that in a military state or a feudal state or what we would now call a totalitarian state, it doesn't much matter because you've got a bludgeon over their heads and you can control what they do. But when the state loses the bludgeon, when you can't control people by force, and when the voice of the people can be heard you have this problem—it may make people so curious and so arrogant that they don't have the humility to submit to a civil rule, and therefore you have to control what people think. And the standard way to do this is to resort to what in more honest days used to be called propaganda, manufacture of consent, creation of necessary illusion. Various ways of either marginalizing the public or reducing them to apathy in some fashion."
—Dr. Noam Chomsky, from Manufacturing Consent "These sectors of the doctrinal system serve to divert the unwashed masses and reinforce basic social values: passivity,
submissiveness to authority, the overriding virtue of greed and personal gain, lack of concern for others, fear of real or
imagined enemies, etc. The goal is to keep the bewildered herd bewildered."
—Dr. Noam Chomsky, from What Uncle Sam Really Wants "We stare at TV screens and try to comprehend the suffering in the aftermath of terrorism. At the same time, we're
witnessing an onslaught of media deception. Silence, rigorously selective, pervades the media coverage of recent days. ABC
News analyst Vincent Cannistraro helped to put it all in perspective for millions of TV viewers. Cannistraro was in charge of the
CIA's covert aid to Afghan guerrillas. In other words, Cannistraro has a long history of assisting terrorists—first, Contra soldiers
who routinely killed Nicaraguan civilians; then, mujahedeen rebels in Afghanistan ... like Osama bin Laden. How can a longtime
associate of terrorists now be credibly denouncing "terrorism?" It's easy. All that's required is for media coverage to remain in a
kind of history-free zone that has no use for any facets of reality."
—Norman Solomon, Creators Syndicate, September 13, 2001 "We are on the verge of a global transformation. All we need is the right major crisis and the nations will accept the New World Order. "
--David Rockefeller
“The citizen who sees his society’s democratic clothes being worn out and does not cry it out, is not a patriot, but a traitor.”
--Mark Twain
"The legal right of an individual to decrease or ALTOGETHER AVOID his/her
taxes by means which the law permits cannot be doubted".
--Gregory v. Helvering, 293 U.S. 465
"It does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless
minority keen to set brush fires in people's minds."
-- Samuel Adams
"I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties
than standing armies... if the American people ever allow private banks to
control the issue of currency...the banks and corporations that will grow up
around them will deprive the people of all property until their children
will wake up homeless on the continent that their fathers conquered." -
--Thomas Jefferson
"The individual is handicapped by coming face to face with a conspiracy so
monstrous he cannot believe it exists."
-- J. Edgar Hoover
-- Michael Rivero "War is the public agenda for the hidden desires of a private elite"
--Bodazey
"If the New World Order agenda is not realized by the terrorist attacks on America and if American's don't agree to give up their weapons and relinquish their sovereignty to the New World Order, the next attack will be the use of chemical, biological and/or atomic warfare against the American people.
The architects of the New World Order will not hesitate to use as a last resort an atomic or hydrogen bomb in a major American city."
--Reference Op Ed page of the New York Times 9/24/01
"No matter what political reasons are given for war, the underlying reason is ALWAYS economic."
-- A.J.P.Taylor, British Historian
“You see, when a nation threatens another nation the people of the
latter forget their factionalism, their local antagonisms, their
political differences, their suspicions of each other, their religious
hostilities, and band together as one unit. Leaders know that, and that
is why so many of them whip up wars during periods of national crisis,
or when the people become discontented and angry. The leaders
stigmatize the enemy with every vice they can think of, every evil and
human depravity. They stimulate their people’s natural fear of all
other men by channeling it into a defined fear of just certain men, or
nations. Attacking another nation, then, acts as a sort of catharsis,
temporarily, on men’s fear of their immediate neighbors. This is the
explanation of all wars, all racial and religious hatreds, all
massacres, and all attempts at genocide.”
--Taylor Caldwell, "The Devil’s Advocate" (1952) - pg. 299
“Freedom, once so embedded in the hearts of all Americans, was
surrendered by Americans who believed the sinister men who were
determined to enslave them. It was to be for a limited time only, we
were assured. But tyrants never relinquish the powers they have gained;
they incorporate them into perpetual law. It was done so quietly, so
skillfully. A nation will fight when its full liberty is threatened,
and the full plot exposed. But if liberties are subdued, little by
little, no provocation for a nationwide revolt is given. Like thieves
in the night, who move stealthily and without sound, so did the evil men
move in your former free government, robbing away the heart and the body
of your liberty, denuding your homes of its treasures, slowly stifling
your tongues, imperceptibly silencing your press. They invaded the
schoolrooms of your children, poisoning and debasing their minds,
twisting them to their purposes so that future generations would know
nothing of honor or pride and the might of free men. But you were not
guiltless.
“Do not believe that this was just a plot in America. It started far
back in history, in 1917, with the Bolshevik revolution. Like the black
plague of the soul, it seeped into Germany, into Scandinavia, into
Britain, into France, into South America and Asia and Africa. It was a
nightmare and deathly disease with many names. It was called Fascism
and Communism, People’s Democracies and Socialism, the Welfare State and
totalitarianism and authoritarianism. In America, it was called
Progressive Democracy. (NOTE: The most recent book I’ve read i.e.,
1990 - calls it Democratic Socialism.) But it was the same foul disease
that blinded and sickened a whole world, and made the whole world
slave. It was the same abominable illness of the spirit, the same
madness, that plunged an entire planet into endless wars and degradation
and despair. It had for its object the unlimited power of a few men,
working together in every nation even while they were ostensibly
enemies, and even while their respective nations were engaged in combat
against each other.
“There was no quarrel among these arch-devils of death and ruin; there
was only complete understanding. They knew that man cannot be enslaved
in a peaceful society, prosperous and full of ambition and hope. So
they plotted wars with each other; they blew away the natural resources
of the earth, for their wars, which were not against each other, but
against their own people. They outlawed God, for a people staunch in
their faith will not renounce their liberties and they will not engage
in wars. But you, the people of America, were not guiltless of all
this.
“We, in America, were not guiltless. For decades, we saw the disease
spreading in Europe and Asia, and many of us knew when the infection had
reached our own country. But too many of us were greedy; we saw
opportunities for individual gain and profit if we supported the
emerging tyrants in Washington. Tyrants are so full of pleasant
promises; they are so skillful in false suspicions, false hatreds, false
envies, and natural human greed. When we Americans should have stood
together, defying with our votes and our voices and our anger each
tyrant as he appeared, we turned our innate and instinctive jealousies
and dislikes upon our neighbors. We betrayed each other. The disease
entered our souls, and we sold our honor for a handful of silver,
whether we were workingmen or capitalists, farmers or bankers,
bureaucrats or clerks, industrialists or shopkeepers.
“...In the first years of this century (now the last century) Americans
were free and prideful and independent. We were an ambitious people,
and any social injustices were being slowly but steadily eliminated. We
were a kind and generous people, guardful of our liberties. But, after
1917, the black plague spread over Europe, and we were infected long
before 1939, when a new and deliberately plotted war broke out. We were
infected in the very halls of Congress, in the very inmost chambers of
Washington. The disease was already in our flesh, and its foul breath
was already in the mouths of our children, and its cries were ringing in
every schoolroom, every college, decades before we were plunged into
this series of wars which have lasted over twenty years. We were a
diseased nation long before we were slaves. We were impotent before we
knew we were impotent.
“God has had mercy upon us, though we have committed monstrous sins
against each other as well as against the world. God has brought us to
this day, (in the story, America has just re-won its freedom after a
long dictatorship) though we are not worthy of it. For many years, He
has stimulated the hearts and the souls of a few free and just men, who
have worked among you, unknown to you. He gave them a lash with which
to arouse you. He gave them words to awaken you. He gave them courage
to deliver up their lives for you, though you were not worthy of it.
You betrayed them to your oppressors and your tyrants, but still they
loved you. You called them ‘traitors’ and ‘subversives,’ when they
cried out to you that the walls of your nation were tumbling into the
seas of tyranny and death. When they warned you on the day religion was
turned against religion, and race against race, in America, you laughed
at them and denounced them as ‘dividers of the country.’ When they
cried to you that States Rights were being abrogated, you shouted
‘Unity!’ at them, and beat them down, and silenced them. When they
exposed the causes of wars to you, and the plot against you in those
wars, you jeered at them with such epithets as ‘isolationists’ or
‘pacifists.’ While you still had a measure of liberty and could vote
vile tyrants and corrupt men out of office, you listened, instead, to
the promises of those men, and you voted honorable and decent men out of
office.
“But still, God had mercy on you, and did not abandon you. He gave you
the Minute Men of the United States of America. They were your
neighbors, and you did not know it. They spoke to you furtively, and
you did not know who they were. You lifted yourselves in your chains,
and heard the words of life and liberty and saw the glimmer of the sun
again. You did not know who called to you in your despair and your
agony. And you would not have listened had you not been reduced to
hopeless slaves...
“...I would not have you deceive yourselves. The battle is not
entirely won. At least half of the Armed Forces are with us, and a
portion of the Picked Guards. But the others will resist you.
‘Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered.’ Your courage and your
faith must sustain you for many months. Attempts will be made to delude
you, to lead you again into slavery, to confuse and divide you. Your
enemies are still alive, and still full of hate for you. They have been
momentarily silenced, at your command. They will speak again.
“We are a free nation, tonight, and in the name of our freedom we
cannot silence our enemies. The very opportunity we are giving them
will damn them in your own ears. They will betray themselves to you
with their own voices. Or, if they choose not to speak in this hour of
peril for themselves, they will withdraw to plot against you again. But
you are armed. You know who your enemies are.
“Working together, we can restore this nation, and restore the peace
and the liberties of all other nations. A whole world listens to us
tonight. With patience and with justice, with mercy and with knowledge,
we must work slowly and with enlightenment, for there is so much to be
done.
“...Tonight there will be issued by me a directive to the commanders of
our Armed Forces on all battlefields to call an immediate truce, and to
negotiate an armistice. Within a few hours all fighting will stop, and
the guns will be silenced, and the war planes will retire. Your sons
shall be returned to you as speedily as possible, and there shall be no
more war.
“As of tonight, all work on war orders shall cease. Plans will be made
to convert all war plants to the making of civilian goods. All
conscripted labor laws are abrogated at once. During the period of
reconversion from war to peace your former employers will pay you full
wages. When work is resumed, hours of labor shall not exceed forty
hours a week, under any circumstances, unless by consent of the
employed. All rationing ceases as of midnight...
“All confiscated private property shall be restored to the former
owners, and those who confiscated that property, with or without the
consent of the State, shall pay back rentals for the periods the
property has been at their disposal.
“All labor camps shall be disbanded tomorrow, the inmates furnished
with food and with transportation to their former homes. All children
shall be returned to their parents. All political prisoners everywhere
shall be freed.
“Orders are being prepared at this moment to wrest power from the
Military and return it to civilian authority. The Military, at
midnight, shall be recalled from private homes where they have been
quartered and payments shall be later adjudicated to those who gave the
Military involuntary hospitality.
“As of tonight, the Military has no authority whatsoever, no powers, no
directives...Any officer or soldier attempting violence against the
people of America shall be judged insubordinate, and shall be
punished...I, the Commander-in-Chief of all the Armed Forces, now call
upon all officers and all soldiers and all military men of any
designation to retire to their barracks and lay down their arms...
“We have so much work to do, my dear friends, my dear
fellow-countrymen. The ruin of decades cannot be cleared away in a day,
a month, a year, or years. It will be a long and slow and sometimes
bitter progress and sometimes disheartening. But, we can do it. We can
rebuild our cities and restore our streets and prepare good homes for
all of us. This will take much time, and we shall need all the patience
and faith we can summon up...
“...You, the people of the United States of America are in command of
your nation. Take that command. Restore your cities and your
churches. Speak of God again, freely, and teach your children, and your
children’s children, of His mercy. Never let them forget this day of
their deliverance, and never let them forget the men who died and worked
that they might be free, that peace might live with them again, and the
promise of the centuries might be fulfilled in them.
“Teach your children to be brave. This century of ours has been marked
most conspicuously by cowardice of the people everywhere. It was by our
cowardice that we were betrayed into the hands of corrupt men who
promised to make life ‘safe’ for us and devoid of hazard, and robbed the
adventurousness by which the spirits of men are strengthened. It was by
our poltroonery that we lost our liberties. It was by our fears that we
almost died. A brave people never become slaves.
“If we, the people of the United States of America, again lose our
freedom it will be by our own lack of courage and faith and manhood.
“Tonight States’ Rights are restored. Guard those rights as you would
guard your lives. They were intended for just that purpose. A
centralized government is a centralized evil.
“On the day when you again allow abominable men to confiscate your
freedom, your money, your lives, your private property, your manhood and
your sacred honor, in the name of ‘security’ or ‘national emergency’ you
will die, and never again shall you be free. If plotters again destroy
your Republic, they will do it by your greedy and ignorant assent, by
your disregard of your neighbors’ rights, by your apathy and your
stupidity. We were brought to the brink of universal death and darkness
because we had become that most contemptible of people - an angerless
one. Keep alive and vivid all your righteous anger against traitors,
against those who would abrogate your Constitution, against those who
would lead you to wars with false slogans and cunning appeals to your
patriotism.
“For, remember, if you die in prison, you will have built that prison.
If your sons are again conscripted, you will have penned the writ. If a
company of malignant men again assumes control of your lives, you will
have given them that control...
“Always, the people are responsible for wicked lawmakers, oppressors,
exploiters, criminals in government, tyrants in power, thieves, liars,
malefactors and murderers in the capitals of the world. You, the man in
the street, the man in the factory and in the shop, the man on the farm,
the man in the office, you, the man everywhere, are guilty of the
creatures whose crimes against you have been so monstrous, and will be
again, by your own consent - if you give it...
“...A wise man distrusts his neighbor. A wiser man distrust both his
neighbor and himself. The wisest man of all distrusts his government.
Therefore, be watchful and sleepless; be brave, be strong; be without
fear. This is not the end. Villains will try, again and again and
again, to enslave you, until the end of time. It is in your hands to
defeat them and to destroy them, whenever or however they appear.
“If you do not, then may God have mercy on your souls!”
--Taylor Caldwell, "The Devil’s Advocate" (1952) - pgs. 332 - 338
"It's really not a number I'm terribly interested in."
--General Colin Powell [When asked about the number of Iraqi people who were slaughtered by Americans in the 1991 "Desert Storm" terror campaign (200,000 people!)]
"I will never apologize for the United States of America - I don't care what the facts are."
--President George Bush 1988 [Bush was demonstrating his patriotism by excusing an act of cold-blooded mass-murder by the U.S. Navy. On July 3, 1988 the U.S. Navy warship Vincennes shot down an Iranian commercial airliner. All 290 civilian people in the aircraft were killed. The plane was on a routine flight in a commercial corridor in Iranian airspace. The targeting of it by the U.S. Navy was blatantly illegal. That it was grossly immoral is also obvious. Except to a patriot.]
"To maintain this position of disparity (U.S. economic-military supremacy)... we will have to dispense with all sentimentality and day-dreaming.... We should cease to talk about vague and... unreal objectives such as human rights, the raising of the living standard and democratization. The day is not far off when we are going to have to deal in straight power concepts.... The less we are then hampered by idealistic slogans, the better."
--George Kennan [Director of Policy Planning U.S. State Department 1948]
"If they turn on the radars we're going to blow up their goddamn SAMs (surface-to-air missiles). They know we own their country. We own their airspace... We dictate the way they live and talk. And that's what's great about America right now. It's a good thing, especially when there's a lot of oil out there we need."
--U.S. Brig. General William Looney (Interview Washington Post, August 30, 1999) [Referring, in reality, to the brutal mass-murder of hundreds of civilian Iraqi men, women and children during 10,000 sorties by American/British war criminals in the first eight months of 1999]
"The greatest crime since World War II has been U.S. foreign policy."
--Ramsey Clark [Former U.S. Attorney General under President Lyndon Johnson]
"I believe that if we had and would keep our dirty, bloody, dollar soaked fingers out of the business of these [Third World] nations so full of depressed, exploited people, they will arrive at a solution of their own. And if unfortunately their revolution must be of the violent type because the "haves" refuse to share with the "have-nots" by any peaceful method, at least what they get will be their own, and not the American style, which they don't want and above all don't want crammed down their throats by Americans."
--General David Sharp [Former United States Marine Commandant 1966]
"We have no honorable intentions in Vietnam. Our minimal expectation is to occupy it as an American colony and maintain social stability for our investments. This tells why American helicopters are being used against guerrillas in Colombia and Peru. Increasingly the role our nation has taken is the role of those who refuse to give up the privileges and pleasures that come from the immense profits of overseas investment."
--Martin Luther King, Jr. ["A Time to Break the Silence" speech given at Riverside Church New York City April 4, 1967]
"Death squads have been created and used by the CIA around the world - particularly the Third World - since the late 1940s, a fact ignored by the elite-owned media."
--Ralph McGehee [Former CIA analyst & Author] CIABASE; The Crisis of Democracy Deadly Deceits: My 25 years in the CIA
"The U.S.A. has supplied arms, security equipment and training to governments and armed groups that have committed torture, political killings and other human rights abuses in countries around the world."
--Amnesty International ["United States of America - Rights for All" October 1998]
"We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated Governments in the world - no longer a Government of free opinion, no longer a Government by conviction and vote of the majority, but a Government by the opinion and duress of small groups of dominant men."
--Woodrow Wilson [U.S. President during World War I]
"We must become the owners, or at any rate the controllers at the source, of at least a proportion of the oil which we require."
-- British Royal Commission, agreeing with Winston Churchill's policy towards Iraq, 1913
"What we want to have in existence, what we ought to have been creating in this time is some administration with Arab institutions which we can safely leave while pulling the strings ourselves; something that won't cost very much, which the Labour government can swallow consistent with its' principles, but under which our economic and political interests will be secure. [.....] If the French remain in Syria we shall have to avoid giving them the excuse of setting up a protectorate. If they go, or if we appear to be reactionary in Mesopotamia, there is always the risk that [King] Faisal will encourage the Americans to take over both, and it should be borne in mind that the Standard Oil company is very anxious to take over Iraq."
-- Sir Arthur Hirtzel, Head of the British government's 'India Office Political Department.' 1919
"Every time we do something you tell me America will do this and will do that . . . I want to tell you something very clear: Don't worry about American pressure on Israel. We, the Jewish people, control America, and the Americans know it."
- Israeli Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, October 3, 2001.
"Israel controls the United States Senate."
- Sen. William Fulbright
"If war aims are stated which seem to be solely concerned with Anglo-American imperialism, they will offer little to people in the rest of the world. The interests of other peoples should be stressed. This would have a better propaganda effect."
-- Private memo from The Council of Foreign Relations to the US State Department, 1941
"Our strategic and security interests throughout the world will be best safeguarded by the establishment in suitable spots of 'Police Stations', fully equipped to deal with emergencies within a large radius. Kuwait is one such spot from which Iraq, South Persia, Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf could be controlled. It will be worthwhile to go to considerable trouble and expense to establish and man a 'Police Station' there."
-- British Foreign Office, policy memo, 1947
'We have about 60% of the world's wealth but only 6.3% of its' population. In this situation we cannot fail to be the object of envy and resentment. Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity. We need not deceive ourselves that we can afford today the luxury of altruism and world benefaction. We should cease to talk about such vague and unreal objectives as human rights, the raising of living standards and
democratization. The day is not far off when we are going to have to deal in straight power concepts. The less we are then hampered by idealistic slogans, the better."
-- George Kennan, former Head of the US State Department Policy Planning Staff, Document PPS23, 24th February 1948
"I came to America because of the great, great freedom which I heard existed in this country. I made a mistake in selecting America as a land of freedom, a mistake I cannot repair in the balance of my lifetime."
--Albert Einstein, 1947
"The target suffered a terminal illness before a firing squad in Baghdad."
-- CIA officer testifying to US Senate hearing, after bloody CIA aided Ba'th Party coup overthrew Iraqi Prime Minister Abdel Kassem, 1963
"Strikes at population targets (per se) are likely not only to create a counterproductive wave of revulsion abroad and at home, but greatly to increase the risk of enlarging the war with China and the Soviet Union. Destruction of locks and dams, however - if handled right - might offer promise. It should be studied. Such destruction does not kill or drown people. By shallow-flooding the rice, it leads after time to widespread starvation (more than a million) unless food is provided - which we could offer to do 'at the conference table'."
-- John McNaughton, US State Department Vietnam policy, as quoted in 'The Mentality of the Backroom Boys.' Article by Noam Chomsky, 1973
"The US must carry out some act somewhere in the world which shows its' determination to continue to be a world power."
-- Henry Kissinger, post-Vietnam blues, as quoted in The Washington Post, April 1975
"It would not have been possible for a political party to be more committed to a national home for the Jews in Palestine than was Labour."
-- Harold Wilson, former British Labour Party Prime Minister, 1981
"One hundred nations in the UN have not agreed with us on just about everything that's come before them, where we're involved, and it didn't upset my breakfast at all."
-- Ronald Reagan, former US President, basking in the triumph that was the US invasion of Grenada, 1983
Q. "Mr. President, have you approved of covert activity to
destabilize the present government of Nicaragua?"
-- Ronald Reagan, former US President, Washington press conference, February 13th, 1983, as quoted by John Pilger in 'Heroes'
"After seeing 'RAMBO' last night, I know what to do the next time this happens."
-- Ronald Reagan, former US President, as reported by Daily Express, July 2nd, 1985
"Aerosol DU (Depleted Uranium) exposures to soldiers on the battlefield could be significant with potential radiological and toxicological effects. [...] Under combat conditions, the most exposed individuals are probably ground troops that re-enter a battlefield following the exchange of armour-piercing munitions. [...] We are simply highlighting the potential for levels of DU exposure to military personnel during combat that would be unacceptable during peacetime operations. [...DU is..]... a low level alpha radiation emitter which is linked to cancer when exposures are internal, [and] chemical toxicity causing kidney damage. [...] Short term effects of high doses can result in death, while long term effects of low doses have been linked to cancer. [...] Our conclusion regarding the health and environmental acceptability of DU penetrators assume both controlled use and the presence of excellent health physics management practices. Combat conditions will lead to the
uncontrolled release of DU. [...] The conditions of the battlefield, and the long term health risks to natives and combat veterans may become issues in the acceptability of the continued use of DU kinetic penetrators for military applications."
-- Excerpts from the July 1990 Science and Applications International Corporation report: ' Kinetic Energy Penetrator Environment and Health Considerations', as included in Appenix D - US Army Armaments, Munitions and Chemical Command report: 'Kinetic Energy Penetrator Long Term Strategy Study, July 1990'
These documents state clearly and equivocally that the US army was well aware of the radioactive and toxic dangers of Depleted Uranium ammunition long before the first shots of the war were fired.
"We do not have any defence treaties with Kuwait, and there are no special defence or security commitments to Kuwait."
-- Margaret Tutweiller, US State Department spokeswoman, 24th July 1990, nine days before Iraq's invasion of Kuwait
"The more individuals capable of watching the world theater calmly and critically,
the less danger of monumental mass stupidities - first of all, wars."
Hermann Hesse: Author (1877-1962)
"Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn't mean politics won't take
an interest in you."
-- Pericles, 430 BC
"If one posits a group or a nation willing to commit atrocities for politicasl gain, then one must
also posit the existance of a group or nation willing to commit atrocities to blame
on the first nation, for political gain."
-- Michael Rivero
"War doesn't fall out of the clear sky. Like every other human undertaking, it requires
preparation; to make it a possibility and then a reality, the care and cooperation of many
are needed. It is desired, prepared for, and proposed by those men and powers who stand to
gain by it. Either it brings them direct cash profit, as in the case of armaments industry
(and as soon as war breaks out, how many previously harmless industries become war industries,
and how automatically money flows their way!), or it brings them advantage in the form of
prestige, respect, and power, as in the case of unemployed generals and colonels."
Hermann Hesse: Author (1877-1962)
"Once a government resorts to terror against its own population to get what it wants, it must
keep using terror against its own population to get what it wants. A government that terrorizes its
own people can never stop. If such a government ever lets the fear subside and
rational thought return to the populace, that government is finished."
--Michael Rivero
"My instinct as an individualist and artist has always warned me most urgently against
this capacity of men for becoming drunk on collective suffering, collective pride,
collective hatred, and collective honor. When this morbid exaltation becomes
perceptible in a room, a hall, a village, a city, or a country, I grow cold and
distrustful; a shudder comes over me, for already, while most of my fellow men are
still weeping with rapture and enthusiasm, still cheering and venting protestations
of brotherhood, I see blood flowing and cities going up in flames."
Hermann Hesse: Author (1877-1962)
"There is a systematic plan to use the concepts of war to rearrange the chess pieces on the world playing board. It has to do with the New World Order, Globlism and the attack on national sovereignty we are seeing. Occasionally, the globalists who want One World Government have to turn to war to accelerate things."
-- Joel Skousen
``The per capita income gap between the developed and the
developing countries is increasing, in large part the result of
higher birth rates in the poorer countries.... Famine in India,
unwanted babies in the United States, poverty that seemed to form
an unbreakable chain for millions of people--how should we tackle
these problems?.... It is quite clear that one of the major
challenges of the 1970s ... will be to curb the world's
fertility.'' HISTORY is just new people making old mistakes... Just as every dead soldier marks the eternal repetition of an error, so truth must eternally be repeated in a thousand forms.
-- Hermann Hesse - Author (1877-1962)
-- Michael Rivero "Weapons often turn upon the wielder, We may have to resort to arms in the future, as we have in the
past. We may have to use them to prevent atomic war from being
launched against us. But let us have the wisdom to realize that the
use of force is a sign of weakness on a higher plane, and that a
policy based primarily on recourse to arms will sooner or later
fail." -- Charles Lindbergh, Of Flight and Life, 1948 -- Michael Rivero "Today Americans would be outraged if U.N. troops entered Los
Angeles to restore order; tomorrow they will be grateful. This is
especially true if they were told there was an outside threat from
beyond, whether real or promulgated, that threatened our very
existence. It is then that all peoples of the world will plead with
world leaders to deliver them from this evil. The one thing every
man fears is the unknown. When presented with this scenario,
individual rights will be willingly relinquished for the guarantee
of their well being granted to them by their world
government." -- Henry Kissinger speaking at Evian, France, May 21, 1992 Bilderburgers meeting. Unbeknownst to Kissinger, his speech was taped by a Swiss delegate to the meeting. "We tell the people what they need to know, what they want to
know." -- Frank Sesno, CNN "News" "We need a common enemy to unite us." -- Condoleeza Rice, March 2000 "Our government has kept us in a perpetual state of fear-kept
us in a continuous stampede of patriotic fervor-with the cry of
grave national emergency. Always there has been some terrible evil
at home or some monstrous foreign power that was going to gobble us
up if we did not blindly rally behind it ..." -- General Douglas MacArthur, 1957 "History is a joke played by the victors on the vanquished in
front of an audience that dares not laugh." -- Michael Rivero "I am strongly in favor of using poisoned gas against
uncivilized tribes. The moral effect should be good...and it would
spread a lively terror.... " -- Winston Churchill commenting on the British use of poison gas against the Iraqis after World War I "... somehow we find it hard to sell our values, namely that the
rich should plunder the poor." -- former Secretary of State John Foster Dulles "The crimes of the U.S. throughout the world have been
systematic, constant, clinical, remorseless, and fully documented
but nobody talks about them. " -- Harold Pinter "If there has to be a blood-bath [of our own youth], let's
get it over with." -- Ronald Reagan, Governor of California during the Vietnam War "History is the history of war -- of leaders of countries
finding reasons and rationales to send the young people off to
fight." -- John Stockwell, former CIA official and author "Former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. William J.
Crowe Jr. was part of the crew that sold Saddam Hussein the deadly
means to wage war with anthrax germs. That's when the United States
wanted the 'Butcher of Baghdad' to use anthrax on Iran." "There exists a shadowy Government with its own Air Force, its
own Navy, its own fundraising mechanism, and the ability to pursue
its own ideas of national interest, free from all checks and
balances, and free from the law itself." I like to think of myself as a patriot, but even more so as a man. Where the two disagree, I say the man is right.
-- Hermann Hesse - Author (1877-1962)
Confused? Having difficulty telling the good guys from the bad
guys? Use this handy guide to differences between Terrorists and
the U.S. Government: TERRORISTS: Supposed leader is the spoiled son of a powerful
politician, from extremely wealthy oil family TERRORISTS: Leader has declared a holy war ('Jihad') against his
'enemies'; believes any nation not with him is against him;
believes god is on his side, and that any means are justified. TERRORISTS: Supported by extreme fundamentalist religious
leaders who preach hatred, intolerance, subjugation of women, and
persecution of non-believers TERRORISTS: Leadership was not elected by a majority of the
people in a free and fair democratic election TERRORISTS: Kills thousands of innocent civilians, some of them
children, in cold blooded bombings TERRORISTS: Operates through clandestine organization (al Qaeda)
with agents in many countries; uses bombing, assassination, other
terrorist tactics TERRORISTS: Supposed leader has extensive financial ties to
Supposed leader of US GOVERNMENT TERRORISTS: Supposed leader invested heavily in US bio-chemical
companies TERRORISTS: Using war as pretext to clamp down on dissent and
undermine civil liberties -- arrived in an email "Americans don't need to lie to themselves. That's what the
government is for!" "We [the U.S.] has over 200 incidents in which we have put our
troops into other countries to force them to our will." -- John Stockwell, former CIA official and author "Why of course the people don't want war. Why should some
poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best he
can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece?
Naturally, the common people don't want war: neither in Russia, nor
in England, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But
after all it is the leaders of the country who determine the
policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along,
whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a
parliament, or a communist dictatorship ... Voice or no voice, the
people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is
easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked,
and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the
country to danger." -- Leading Nazi leader, Hermann Goering, at the Nuremberg Trials before he was sentenced to death "Just who are these goddamn reds, anyway? A goddamn red is
anyone who wants 30 cents when I am paying 25." -- John Steinbeck, "The Grapes of Wrath" "The American oligarchy increasingly has less in common with the
American people than it does with the equivalent oligarchies in
Germany or Mexico or Japan." -- Lewis Lapham, editor of Harpers "I can make careful use of the intelligence at Israel's disposal
to identify, locate and kill...with minimal loss of innocent life,
by such means as booby-trapping their telephones, rocketing their
cars and offices, etc. In a word, assassinate them. Sounds good to
me. "...hold a trial with the help of witnesses similarly abducted
from the Palestinian territories. If necessary it (Israel) should
apply physical pressure to these witnesses..." -- Israeli columnist Hillel Halkin, writing in the Wall Street Journal, August 28, 2001, p. A14. The term "physical pressure" means use of torture. "If the world operates as one big market, every employee will
compete with every person anywhere in the world who is capable of
doing the same job. There are lots of them and many of them are
hungry." -- Andrew Grove, president of Intel Corp., in his book "High Output Management" "[Nationalism is] a set of beliefs taught to each generation in
which the Motherland or the Fatherland is an object of veneration
and becomes a burning cause for which one becomes willing to kill
the children of other Motherlands or Fatherlands." -- Howard Zinn, historian "The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities
committed by his own side, but he has a remarkable capacity for not
even hearing about them." -- George Orwell, writer "Terrorists are just Freedom Fighters pointed back at us." "The agony and moral anguish that ought to accompany an act of
mass killing -- yes, even in a war [the Gulf War against Iraq in
1991]-- seemed wholly absent from American culture." -- Ruth Rosen, history professor "Indonesia plays a key role in maintaining regional stability. It
is a leader in ASEAN and is a fundamental force for peace and
prosperity ... We did not have a discussion about East Timor." -- Secretary of Defense William Cohen at a press conference,
January 1998, after meeting with Indonesian President Suharto who
is responsible for the deaths of 500,00 - 1,000,000 following his
US-sanctioned coup against Indonesian President Sukarno in 1965,
and the deaths of 200,000 during Indonesia's US-sanctioned invasion
and occupation of East Timor in 1975 " Scare the hell out of the American people." -- Senator Arthur Vandenburg, telling President Truman what
the he needed to do in order to tax the American people to pay
for the weapons and covert activities of the US National Security
State that was being planned, to destroy the Russian Communist
State "The men who possess real power in this country have no
intention of ending the cold war." -- Albert Einstein "The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace
alarmed and hence, clamorous to be led to safety - by menacing it
with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary" " Everyone likes to say Hitler did this" and "Hitler did that". But the truth is Hitler did very little. He
was a world class asshole, but the evil actually done, from the death camps
to WW2 was all done by citizens who were afraid to question if what they were told by their government was
the truth or not, and who because they did not want to admit to themselves that they were afraid to question
the government, refused to see the truth behind the Reichstag
Fire, refused to see the invasion by Poland was a staged fake, and followed Hitler into national disaster.
" It's easy to look back and realize what a jerk Hitler was. But at the time, Hitler looked pretty good to
the world, with the help of the media. He was TIME Magazine's Man Of The Year in 1938. Stalin was
TIME Man Of The Year for 1939 and 1942. The lesson is that it isn't easy to spot a genocidal tyrant when
you live with one, especially one whom the press supports and promotes. Tyrants become obvious only when
looking back, after what they have done becomes known.
" It is the very nature of power that it attracts the very sort of people who should not have it. The
United States, as the world's last superpower, is a prize that attracts men and women willing to do
anything to win that power, and hence are willing to do anything with it once they have it. It is racist
to assume that tyrants appear only in other nations and that somehow America is immune simply because we're
Americans. America has escaped the clutches of a dictatorship only through the efforts of those citizens
who, unlike the Germans and Russians of the 1930s, have the moral courage to stand up and point out where the
government is lying to the people."
-- Michael Rivero
-- Michael Rivero "No triumph of peace can equal the armed triumph of war." "In
strict confidence ...I should welcome almost any war, for I think
this country needs one." -- Theodore Roosevelt "There is no regime to reactionary for us provided it stands in
Russia's expansionist path. There is no country too remote to serve
as the scene of a contest which may widen until it becomes a world
war." -- Henry Wallace, Vice-President under Franklin Roosevelt
1941-1945 "The only way to abolish war is to make peace heroic." -- John Dewey "War is a quarrel between two thieves too cowardly to fight
their own battle; therefore they take boys from one village and
another village, stick them into uniforms, equip them with guns,
and let them loose like wild beasts against each other." -- Thomas Carlyle " Any dictator would admire the uniformity and obedience of the
(U.S.) media." -- Noam Chomsky "The U.S. will not permit constructive programs in its own
domains, so it must ensure that they are destroyed elsewhere to
terminate " the threat of a good example". -- Noam Chomsky "Patriotism is the last resort of scoundrels." -- Samuel Johnson "Patriotism is the principle that will justify the training of
wholesale murderers." -- Leo Tolstoy " We Americans claim to be a peace-loving people. We hate
bloodshed; we are opposed to violence. Yet we go into spasms of joy
over the possibility of projecting dynamite bombs from flying
machines upon helpless citizens." " Conceit, arrogance, and egotism are the essentials of
patriotism." " When a child has reached manhood, he is thoroughly
saturated with the belief that he is chosen by the Lord himself to
defend his country against the attack or invasion of any foreigner.
It is for that purpose that we are clamoring for a greater army and
navy, more battleships and ammunition." " The people are urged to be patriotic ... by sacrificing their
own children. Patriotism requires allegiance to the flag, which
means obedience and readiness to kill father, mother, brother,
sister." " The experience of every-day life fully proves that the armed
individual is invariably anxious to try his strength. The same is
historically true of governments. Really peaceful countries do not
waste life and energy in war preparations, with the result that
peace is maintained." " The powers know that the people at large are like children
whose despair, sorrow, and tears can be turned into joy with a
little toy. ... An army and navy represents the people's toys." -- Emma Goldman " ... the operative principles dictating U.S. support and
hostility in the Third World have been business criteria first,
military convenience second, and any humanistic considerations
third and thus effectively irrelevant. In fact, they are less than
irrelevant -- they are in conflict with the first two criteria, and
therefore ... humanizing forces [become] "threats". " "The immiseration of the majority is an integral part of the
Free World package for the Third World, the unsavory aspects of the
package -- the terror, the direct spoilation of people and
resources, and western complicity -- must be rationalized and, as
far as possible, kept under the rug." " ... there is a system of terroristic states -- the real terror
network -- that has spread throughout Latin America and elsewhere
over the past several decades, and which is deeply rooted in the
corporate interest and sustaining political-military-financial
propaganda mechanisms of the United States and its allies in the
Free World." -- Edward Herman " What history truly records is the inherent irresponsibility of
all despotisms and the almost inevitable corruption of all forms of
government that are not subject to the control of the people
..." -- Brazilian church statement " The economy is doing fine, but the people aren't." -- General Emelio Medici, head-of-state of Brazil, 1971 " We enjoy the economic stability that the Armed Forces
guarantee us. This [economic] plan can be fulfilled despite its
lack of popular support. It has sufficient political support ..
that provided buy the Armed Forces." -- Martinez de Hoz, financial minister of the Argentina military
government, 1976 Latin America -- quotes from survivors "For four months I was heavily tortured by the Army in Rio de
Janeiro, and then in the Naval Information Center.... Near death, I
was taken to the hospital for the sixth time. The beatings had been
so severe that my body was one big bruise. The blood clotted under
my skin and all the hair on my body fell out. They pulled out all
my fingernails. They poked needles through my sexual organs and
used a rope to drag me across the floor by my testicles. Right
afterwards they hung me upside down. They hung me handcuffed from a
grating, removed my artificial leg, and tied my penis so l could
not urinate. They forced me to stand on my one leg for three days
without food or drink. They gave me so many drugs that my eardrums
burst and I am impotent. They nailed my penis to a table for 24
hours. They tied me up like a pig and threw me into a pool so that
I nearly drowned. They put me in a completely dark cell where I
remained for 30 days urinating and defecating in the same place
where I had to sleep. They fed me only bread soaked in water. They
put me in a rubber box and turned on a siren. For three days I
neither ate nor slept and I nearly went mad...." -- Manuel de Conceicao, peasant leader in Brazil He was arrested
in 1972 and brought before Brazilian security police who had been
schooled at US army bases in the latest methods of
counterinsurgency and interrogation. He was tortured by Brazilian
army units -- trained and equipped by US military-aid programs. A young Salvadoran deserted the Salvadoran army and fled to
Mexico. His story was published in The Other Side magazine, 1982
Part of his training by eight American Green Berets consisted of
"teaching how to torture." He witnessed a boy of about fifteen,
suspected of supporting the guerrillas, being subjected to a
demonstration torture by the Green Berets They tore out the youth's
fingernails, broke his elbows, gouged out his eyes, and then burned
him alive. The author reports that the torture sessions continued
into the next day and included a thirteen year-old girl. Another
victim had various parts of his body burned and was then taken up
in a helicopter while still alive and thrown out at 14,000 feet.
The defector noted that "often the army goes and throws people out
over the sea." (The editors of The Other Side withheld the
Salvadoran informant's name "for obvious reasons" but claimed that
"the basic outline of his story has been corroborated by
independent sources which we believe to be reliable.") "They tell how the Chilean military -- trained and financed by
the United States -- tortured people with electric shock,
particularly on the genitals; forced victims to witness the torture
of friends and relatives (including children); raped women in the
presence of other family members; burned sex organs with acid or
scalding water; placed rats in women's vaginas and into the mouths
of other prisoners; mutilated, punctured, and cut off various parts
of the body, including genitalia, eyes, and tongue; injected air
into women's breasts and into veins (causing slow, painful death);
shoved bayonets and clubs into the vagina or anus, causing rupture
and death." --Victims and survivors of the fascist coup in Chile in 1973 'My name is Rigoberta Menchu Tum. l am a representative of the
"Vincente Menchu" [her father] Revolutionary Christians ... On 9
December 1979, my 16-year-old brother Patrocino was captured and
tortured for several days and then taken with twenty other young
men to the square in Chajul ... An officer of [President] Lucas
Garcia's army of murderers ordered the prisoners to be paraded in a
line. Then he started to insult and threaten the inhabitants of the
village who were forced to come out of their houses to witness the
event. I was with my mother, and we saw Patrocino; he had had his
tongue cut out and his toes cut off. The officer jackal made a
speech. Every time he paused the soldiers beat the Indian
prisoners. When he finished his ranting, the bodies of my brother
and the other prisoners were swollen bloody, unrecognizable. It
was monstrous, but they were still alive. They were thrown on the
ground and drenched with gasoline. The soldiers set fire to the
wretched bodies with torches and the captain laughed like a hyena
and forced the inhabitants of Chajul to watch. This was his
objective-that they should be terrified and witness the punishment
given to the "guerrillas". -- Rigoberta Menchu Tum, awarded the 1992 Nobel Peace Prize "Four men came in, bearing a cot with a sheet-covered figure.
"Sit down," one ordered. "You're going to see a performance by a
bad actor, an actor who has forgotten his part. Help him remember
it." They uncovered a body entirely purple, missing a foot. "Come
closer," another ordered. "Look at him. You'll know him." And she
did. It was 27-year-old "El Gordo" Toledo, with whom she had been
20 days before. He could hardly speak, or scream, any more. When
Elba maintained that she did not know him, they said, "Let's
see"-they pulled out his nails, cut off his remaining ear, cut out
his tongue, gouged out his eyes, and killed him slowly as she
watched, thinking, "He could be my son." Then they brought another
"actor," 26-year-old Eduard Munoz. It took them five hours to kill
him, under her eyes. It was worse than any pain they could have
inflicted on her, she said. Later she was forced to watch while her
cellmates-aged 16, 17, and 40, nude and drugged, were directed to
perform an erotic dance before they were raped. Another girl, back
from a dreaded torture center, and pregnant, was so crazy that each
time she awoke she screamed that her only desire was for her child
to be born so she could kill it." -- Elba Vergara, secretary to President Allende (himself
murdered by the Chilean generals), "Rosa had her breasts cut off. Then they cut into her chest and
took out her heart. The men had their arms broken, their testicles
cut off, and their eyes poked out They were killed by slitting
their throats and pulling the tongue out through the slit." -- A survivor of a raid by US-backed Contras in Nicaragua in the
1980s The actor Richard Burton once wrote an article for the New York
Times about his experience playing the role of Winston Churchill in
a television drama: "In the course of preparing myself...I realized
afresh that I hate Churchill and all of his kind. I hate them
virulently. They have stalked down the corridors of endless power
all through history.... What man of sanity would say on hearing of
the atrocities committed by the Japanese against British and Anzac
prisoners of war, 'We shall wipe them out, everyone of them, men,
women, and children. There shall not be a Japanese left on the face
of the earth? Such simple-minded cravings for revenge leave me with
a horrified but reluctant awe for such single-minded and merciless
ferocity." "May the Holy Name visit retribution on the Arab heads, and
cause their seed to be lost, and annihilate them. "It is forbidden to have pity on them. We must give them
missiles with relish, annihilate them. Evil ones, damnable
ones." Israeli Rabbi Ovadia Yosef , quoted in Ha'aretz April 12,
2001 " ... in pursuit of political objectives in the Nigerian
Civil War, a number of great and small nations, including Britain
and the United States, worked to prevent supplies of food and
medicine from reaching the starving children of rebel Biafra.
" -- A United Nations official All around me, bitter tears are being shed over the fate of
Holland, Belgium, France and England. I must confess to being a
little dry around the eyes. I hear people shaking with shudders at
the thought of Germany collecting taxes in Holland. I have not
heard a word against Holland collecting one twelfth of poor
people's wages in Asia. Hitler's crime is that he is actually doing
a thing like that to his own kind... As I see it, the doctrines of democracy deal with the
aspirations of men's souls, but the application deals with things.
One hand in somebody else's pocket and one on your gun, and you are
highly civilized.... Desire enough for your own use only, and you
are a heathen. Civilized people have things to show to their
neighbors."" -- Black writer Zora Neale Hurston at the start of World War
II. "I am amazed at the complacency of Negro press and public.
Truman is a monster. l can think of him as nothing else but the
Butcher of Asia. Of his grin of triumph on giving the order to drop
the Atom bombs on Japan. Of his maintaining troops in China who are
shooting the starving Chinese for stealing a handful of food." -- Black writer Zora Neale Hurston, 1946 "Whether the mask is labeled Fascism, Democracy, or Dictatorship
or the Proletariat, our great adversary remains the Apparatus-the
bureaucracy, the police, the military.... No matter what the
circumstances, the worst betrayal will always be to subordinate
ourselves to this Apparatus, and to trample underfoot, in its
service, all human values in ourselves and in others." -- The French worker philosopher Simone Weil,1945 "It was a useless war, as every war is.... How gaddamn
foolish it is, the war. They's no war in the world that's worth
fighting for, I don't care where it is. They can't tell me any
different. Money, money is the thing that causes it all. I wouldn't
be a bit surprised that the people that start wars and promote 'em
are the men that make the money, make the ammunition, make the
clothing and so forth. Just think of the poor kids that are
starvin' to death in Asia and so forth that could be fed with how
much you make one big shell out of." -- Former GI Tommy Bridges "I had been in thirteen battle engagements, had sunk a
submarine, and was the first man ashore in the landing at Roi. In
that four years, I thought, What a hell of a waste of a man's life.
I lost a lot of friends. I had the task of telling my roommate's
parents about our last days together. You lose limbs, sight, part
of your life-for what? Old men send young men to war. Flag,
banners, and patriotic sayings... We've institutionalized militarism. This came out of World
War Two... It gave us the National Security Council. It gave us the
CIA, that is able to spy on you and me this very moment. For the
first time in the history of man, a country has divided up the
world into military districts.... You could argue World War Two had
to be fought. Hitler had to be stopped. Unfortunately, we translate
it unchanged to the situation today... I hate it when they say, "He gave his life for his country."
Nobody gives their life for anything. We steal the lives of these
kids. We take it away from them. They don't die for the honor and
glory of their country. We kill them." -- Admiral Gene LaRocque "Ten military advisers are attached to the Sonsonate armed
forces... The episode contains all the unchanging elements of the
Salvadoran tragedy- uncontrolled military violence against
civilians, the apparent ability of the wealthy to procure official
violence...and the presence of United States military advisers,
working with the Salvadoran military responsible for these
monstrous practices... after 30,000 unpunished murders by security
and military forces and over 10,000 "disappearances" of civilians
in custody, the root causes of the killings remain in place, and
the killing goes on." -- Two Americans who visited El Salvador in 1983 for the New
York City Bar Association described for the New York Times a
massacre of eighteen peasants by local troops in Sonsonate
province "Strike against war, for without you no battles can be fought!
Strike against manufacturing shrapnel and gas bombs and all other
tools of murder! Strike against preparedness that means death and
misery to millions of human beings! Be not dumb, obedient slaves in
an army of destruction! Be heroes in an army of construction." -- Helen Keller, 1940 "Problems cannot be solved at the same level of awareness that
created them." -- Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955) "The loud little handful will shout for war. The pulpit will
warily and cautiously protest at first.... The great mass of the
nation will rub its sleepy eyes, and will try to make out why there
should be a war, and they will say earnestly and indignantly: "It
is unjust and dishonorable and there is no need for war." Then the few will shout even louder.... Before long you will see
a curious thing: anti-war speakers will be stoned from the
platform, and free speech will be strangled by hordes of furious
men who still agree with the speakers but dare not admit it... Next, the statesmen will invent cheap lies...and each man will
be glad of these lies and will study them because they soothe his
conscience; and thus he will bye and bye convince himself that the
war is just and he will thank God for a better sleep he enjoys by
his self-deception." -- Mark Twain The U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey, which interviewed 700
Japanese military and political officials after the war came to
this conclusion: "Based on a detailed investigation of all the
facts and supported by the testimony of the surviving Japanese
leaders involved, it is the Survey's opinion that certainly prior
to 31 December 1945, and in all probability prior to I November
1945, Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not
been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war, and even if
no invasion had been planned or contemplated." "We have regularly played.a determining role in making and in
unmaking governments, and we have defined what we have considered
to be the acceptable behavior of governments." ... Right-wing
governments will have to be given steady outside support, even, if
necessary, by sending in American forces." -- Robert W. Tucker, political scientist, 1980 " The great object of American foreign policy ought to be the
restoration of a more normal political world, a world in which
those states possessing the elements of great power once again play
the role their power entitles them to play." -- Robert W. Tucker, political scientist, 1980 "There is nothing more wicked, more disastrous, more widely
destructive, more deeply tenacious, more loathsome." He said this
was repugnant to nature: "Whoever heard of a hundred thousand
animals rushing together to butcher each other, as men do
everywhere? . . . once war has been declared, then all the affairs
of the State are at the mercy of the appetites of a few." -- Erasmus " Many more people in the world are concerned about sports than
human rights." -- Samuel P. Huntington " [Middle East oil is] a stupendous source of strategic power,
and one of the greatest material prizes in world history." -- U.S. State Department, 1945 " The enormous gap between what US leaders do in the world and
what Americans think their leaders are doing is one of the great
propaganda accomplishments of the dominant political mythology.
" -- Michael Parenti, political scientist and author Patriotism subordinates the individual to something bigger.
But it is not really prized as a virtue until the shooting starts.
-- Hermann Hesse - Author (1877-1962)
"Power lies in the growth of awareness." -- Herbert de Souza, Brazilian human rights activist "As long as people are marginalized and distracted [they] have
no way to organize or articulate their sentiments, or even know
that others have these sentiments. People assume that they are the
only people with a crazy idea in their heads. They never hear it
from anywhere else. Nobody's supposed to think that. ... Since
there's no way to get together with other people who share or
reinforce that view and help you articulate it, you feel like an
oddity, an oddball. So you just stay on the side and you don't pay
any attention to what's going on. You look at something else, like
the Superbowl." -- Noam Chomsky, American linguist and US media and foreign
policy critic " The people can have anything they want. The trouble is, they
do not want anything. At least they vote that way on election
day." -- Eugene Debs, American socialist leader, 1855-1926 "A people that wants to be free must arm itself with a free
press." -- George Seldes, journalist "We declare openly that the Arabs have no right to settle on
even one centimeter of Eretz Israel...Force is all they do or ever
will understand. We shall use the ultimate force until the
Palestinians come crawling to us on all fours." --Rafael Eitan, chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces,
quoted in Yediot Ahronot, April 13, 1983, and The New York Times,
April 14, 1983. " Many Americans want to nurture an image of innocence and
decency and yet most Americans want most of all to stay on top and
continue to applaud clear victories in the Third World however
achieved. " -- Richard Falk, professor " If an American is concerned only about his nation, he will not
be concerned about the peoples of Asia, Africa, or South America.
Is this not why nations engage in the madness of war without the
slightest sense of penitence? Is this not why the murder of a
citizen of your own nation is a crime, but the murder of citizens
of another nation in war is an act of heroic virtue? " -- Martin Luther King, Jr. "When you give food to the poor, they call you a saint. When you
ask why the poor have no food, they call you a communist." -- Archbishop Helder Camara, Brazilian liberation theologist "If those in charge of our society - politicians, corporate
executives, and owners of press and television - can dominate our
ideas, they will be secure in their power. They will not need
soldiers patrolling the streets. We will control ourselves." -- Howard Zinn, historian and author "Humans are complex creatures. We have a demonstrated capacity
for hatred, violence, competition, and greed. We have as well a
demonstrated capacity for love, tenderness, cooperation, and
compassion. Healthy societies nurture the latter and in so doing
create an abundance of those things that are most important to the
quality of our living. Dysfunctional societies nurture the former
and in so doing create scarcity and deprivation. A healthy society
makes it easy to live in balance with the environment, whereas a
dysfunctional society makes it nearly impossible. Whether we
organize our societies for social and environmental health or for
dysfunction is a choice that is ours to make." -- David Korten, economist and internationalist "Today the United States has, by far, the most unequal
distribution of wealth and income in the industrialized world.
" -- Vermont Congressman Bernie Sanders "Nothing appears more surprising to those who consider human
affairs with a philosophical eye than the easiness with which the
many are governed by the few, and the implicit submission with
which men resign their own sentiments and passions to those of
their rulers. When we inquire by what means this wonder is
effected, we shall find that, as force is always on the side of the
governed, the governors have nothing to support them but opinion.
It is, therefore, on opinion only that government is founded, and
this maxim extends to the most despotic and most military
governments as well as to the most free and most popular." -- David Hume, Scottish philosopher and historian, "Of the First
Principles of Government" 1758 " The only way to abolish war is to make peace heroic." -- John Dewey, American philosopher and educator, 1859-1952 " ... the NSS [National Security State] is an instrument of
class warfare, organized and designed to permit an elite, local and
multinational, to operate without any constraint from democratic
processes. This allows the bulk of the population to be treated as
a mere cost of production." -- Edward Herman, economist and media analyst " [The Third World War] is a war that has been fought by the
United States against the Third World. It might also be called the
Forty-Year War, like the Thirty-Year and Hundred-Year Wars in
Europe, for this one began when the CIA was founded in 1947 and
continues today. As wars go, it has been the second or third most
destructive of human life in all of history, after World War I and
World War II. " -- John Stockwell, former CIA official and author "We need not deceive ourselves that we can afford today the
luxury of altruism and world-benefaction.... We should cease to
talk about vague and unreal objectives such as human rights, the
raising of the living standards, and democratization. The day is
not far off when we are going to have to deal in straight power
concepts. The less we are then hampered by idealistic slogans, the
better." -- George Kennan head of U.S. State Department Policy Planning
Staff, 1948 " Where is the outrage? ... If we are moved merely by greed, and
there's no longer any respect for decent or honest government, then
we will suffer the results. " -- Barbara Tuchman, historian and author " The most effective way to restrict democracy is to transfer
decision-making from the public arena to unaccountable
institutions: kings and princes, priestly castes, military juntas,
party dictatorships, or modern corporations." -- Noam Chomsky, American linguist and US media and foreign
policy critic "It's a hard decision, but we think the price ... is worth
it." -- Secretary of State Madelaine Albright talking about Iraqi
children starving and dying as a result of the US embargo of food
and medicine "... the only way to fully comprehend U.S. policies toward the
third world is to posit ... "the threat of a good example."
Insurgencies in the third world do not challenge U.S. military
security or even, ultimately, investments by U.S. corporations....
What they represent is the possibility that emerging nations may
demonstrate by example that the United States may not be the last
word in democracy, freedom, and opportunity. That threat is much
greater if weighed from the perspective of those who see it in
their interest to preserve unchanged the present U.S. economic and
political order." -- Frances Moore Lappe', Rachel Shuman, and Kevin Danaher,
authors " It is no longer a question of controlling a
military-industrial complex, but rather, of keeping the United
States from becoming a totally military culture. " -- Jerome Weisner, president emeritus of the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology " I am a firm believer in the people. If given the truth, they
can be depended upon to meet any national crisis. The great point
is to bring them the real facts. " -- Abraham Lincoln, American president, 1861-1865 " We must use our vast resources of wealth to aid the
undeveloped countries of the world. We have spent far too much of
our national budget in establishing military bases around the world
and far too little in establishing bases of genuine concern and
understanding. " -- Martin Luther King, Jr. " Many more people in the world are concerned about sports than
human rights." -- Samuel P. Huntington, Harvard professor and political
scientist "Whoever heard of a hundred thousand animals rushing together to
butcher each other, as men do everywhere [during war]?" -- Desiderius Erasmus, Dutch humanist, 1466-1536 " ... experience requires that we free ourselves from the
narrowness of being related only to those familiar to us, either by
the fact that they are blood relations or, in a larger sense, that
we eat the same food, speak the same language, and have the same
'common sense.' Knowing men in the sense of compassionate and
empathetic knowledge requires that we get rid of the narrowing ties
of a given society, race, or culture and penetrate to the depth of
that human reality in which we are all nothing but human." -- Erich From, 1900-1980, American psychoanalyst and author "When you think of the long and gloomy history of man, you will
find more hideous crimes have been committed in the name of
obedience than have ever been committed in the name of
rebellion." -- C.P. Snow, English author, physicist, and statesman,
1905-1980 " In the Middle Ages, the sewage wasn't properly disposed of,
but people didn't pay attention to it until the waters of the
rivers and the filth rose over the doorsteps. Then they had to.
That's what is beginning to happen [in American politics]. It is
beginning to rise over the doorsteps. " -- Barbara Tuchman, historian and author "As nightfall does not come at once, neither does oppression....
There is a twilight when everything remains seemingly unchanged.
And it is in such a twilight that we must be most aware of change
in the air -- however slight -- lest we become unwitting victims of
the darkness." -- William O. Douglas, US Supreme Court Justice from
1939-1975 " Scare the hell out of the American people." -- Senator Arthur Vandenburg, telling President Truman what the
he needed to do in order to to tax the American people to pay for
the weapons and covert activities of the US National Security
State " Resistance to tyranny is man's highest ideal. " -- Emma Goldman, American anarchist and feminist, 1869-1940 " We in the West must bear in mind that the poor countries are
poor primarily because we have exploited them through political or
economic colonialism. " -- Martin Luther King, Jr. "I don't see why we need to stand by and watch a country go
communist due to the irresponsibility of its people. The issues are
much too important for the Chilean voters to be left to decide for
themselves." -- Henry Kissinger, Secretary of State under Richard Nixon,
about Chile prior to the CIA overthrow of the democratically
elected government of socialist President Salvadore Allende in
1973 "Charity is no substitute for justice withheld." -- Saint Augustine, bishop of Hippo and one of the founders of
Christianity, 354-430 " We have come to accomodate ourselves to a model of society
that has to be unjust, with inherent inequalities, where a great
percentage of the population has to be in misery, has to die of
hunger, has to live with their basic needs unsatisfied. This is the
neo-liberal mentality and every day it seems more normal." -- Father Javier Giraldo, Colombia "Americans have been taught that their nation is civilized and
humane. But, too often, U.S. actions have been uncivilized and
inhumane." -- Howard Zinn, historian and author " In the councils of government, we must guard against
unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the
military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise
of misplaced power exists and will persist." -- President Dwight D. Eisenhower in his Farewell Address,
1961 " Law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice .
. . when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously
structured dams that block the flow of social progress. " -- Martin Luther King, Jr. " In a world of increasing inequality, the legitimacy of
institutions that give precedence to the property rights of "the
Haves" over the human rights of "the Have Nots" is inevitably
called into serious question. " -- David Korten, economist and internationalist " Don't Treat Us Like Americans! " -- Posters carried by German auto workers protesting reductions
in sick pay and the failure of German auto manufacturers to consult
with the unions, Summer 1996 " It isn't only Gestapo maniacs who do inhuman things to people.
We [the CIA] are responsible for doing inhuman things on a massive
scale to people all over the world." -- John Stockwell, former CIA official "[U.S.] political considerations take precedence over any regard
for the plight of the people [in Third World countries]." -- Michael Parenti, political scientist and author " The two-war strategy is just a marketing device to justify a
high [military] budget. " -- Retired Air Force Chief of Staff Merrill McPeak --Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, speech to the Knesset,
quoted in Amnon Kapeliouk, "Begin and the 'Beasts,"' New Statesman,
June 25,1982. "Patriotism is the principle that will justify the training of
wholesale murderers." -- Leo Tolstoy, Russian novelist and philosopher, 1828-1910 "For the last fifty years we've been supporting right-wing
governments, and that is a puzzlement to me...I don't understand
what there is in the American character... that almost
automatically, even when we have a liberal President, we support
fascist dictatorships or are tolerant towards them." -- William Shirer, writer " In the post-Cold War era, the United States needs to promote
the development of democracy and human rights, not militaries that
view their own citizens as the enemy. " -- U.S. Senator Richard Durbin " Some of the problems of governance in the United States stem
from an excess of democracy ... " -- Samuel Huntington, Harvard professor and political
scientist "Democracy was being saved from Communism by getting rid of
democracy." -- Newsweek magazine about the Dominican Republic prior to the
overthrow of elected President Juan Bosch in 1963 in a US-supported
coup " Most high officials leave office with the perceptions and
insights with which they entered ..." -- Henry Kissinger "I believe there are more instances of the abridgment of the
freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those
in power than by violent and sudden usurpations." -- James Madison, American president from 1809-1817, helped
draft the Constitution " ... buy the top academic reputations of the country to add
credibility to corporate studies and give business a stronger voice
on the campus. " -- Lewis Powell, prior to becoming a Supreme Court Justice, on
how corporations can gain influence in academic circles "I suspect that a great power needs an elite, a class of
self-confident and more or less disinterested people who are
accustomed to running things.'' -- Stewart Alsop, syndicated newspaper columnist " Foreign aid is when the poor people of a rich country give
money to the rich people of a poor country." -- author unknown "... the United States, for generations, has sustained two
parallel but opposed states of mind about military atrocities and
human rights: one of U.S. benevolence, generally held by the
public, and the other of ends-justify-the-means brutality sponsored
by counterinsurgency specialists. Normally the specialists carry
out their actions in remote locations with little notice in the
national press. That allows the public to sustain its faith in a
just America, while hard-nosed security and economic interests are
still protected in secret." -- Peter Dale Scott, author " By the later years of the Reagan regime, a preferred
nomenclature suited to U.S. interests became standardized for the
Third World. In the case of nations to be rolled back (e.g.,
Nicaragua), governments were called terrorist and the insurgents
were labeled democratic. In the case of countries to be supported
against "communist" insurgencies (e.g., El Salvador and the
Philippines), the governments were called democratic and the
insurgents were labeled terrorists. " -- from the book Rollback by Thomas Bodenheimer and Robert
Gould " Enemies are necessary for the wheels of the U.S. military
machine to turn. " -- John Stockwell, former CIA official and author "... the United States has given frequent and enthusiastic
support to the overthrow of democracy in favor of "investor
friendly" regimes. The World Bank, IMF, and private banks have
consistently lavished huge sums on terror regimes, following their
displacement of democratic governments, and a number of
quantitative studies have shown a systematic positive relationship
between U.S. and IMF / World Bank aid to countries and their
violations of human rights." -- Edward S. Herman, economist and media analyst " One may well ask: How can you advocate breaking some laws and
obeying others? The answer lies in the fact that there are two
types of laws: just and unjust. I would be the first to advocate
obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral
responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral
responsibility to disobey unjust laws. " -- Martin Luther King, Jr. --David Ben-Gurion, in his diary, July 18, 1948, quoted in
Michael Bar Zohar's "Ben-Gurion: the Armed Prophet," Prentice-Hall,
1967, p. 157. " I ask you, what is the difference between 30 million people
dead and 130 million people dead? ... With 30 million dead, the
United States can survive ..." -- Edward Teller, nuclear physicist and 'father' of the H-Bomb,
describing how the "Star Wars" space-based weapons system might
allow the United States to fight and "survive" a nuclear war "Sometimes to be Silent is to Lie." -- Spanish philosopher Miguel Unamuno " Democracy, as Americans understand it, is not necessarily the
future of all mankind, nor is it the duty of the U.S. government to
assure that it becomes that. " -- George Kennan, head of U.S. State Department Policy Planning
Staff, 1948 "One million Arabs are not worth a Jewish fingernail." -- Rabbi Yaacov Perrin, Feb. 27, 1994 [Source: N.Y. Times, Feb.
28, 1994, p. 1] "I want to scare the hell out of the rest of the
world." -- US General Colin Powell talking about US military power
prior to the Gulf War in 1991 " It is a sad fact that because of comfort, complacency, a
morbid fear of communism, and our proneness to adjust to injustice,
the Western nations that initiated so much of the revolutionary
spirit of the modern world have now become the
arch-anti-revolutionaries. " -- Martin Luther King, Jr. "The 1964 military takeover [in Brazil] was "totally democratic"
and "the single most decisive victory for freedom in the
mid-twentieth century." -- Lincoln Gordon, Ambassador to Brazil under John Kennedy
describing the overthrow of Brazil's parliamentary democracy by
generals backed by the United States "If justice requires the consent of the governed, then our
[U.S.] whole past record of expansion is a crime." -- Henry Cabot Lodge,1850-1924, US senator "Fifty years of lies, fifty years of injustice, fifty years of
frustration. This is a history of people starving to death, living
in misery. For fifty years the same people had all the power, all
the money, all the jobs, all the education, all the
opportunities." -- El Salvadoran President Jose Nepolean Duarte about the
injustice in El Salvador that led to a guerrilla insurgency against
the government in the 1970s and 1980s "To the extent that the United States was governed by anyone
during the decades after World War Il, it was governed by the
President acting with the support and cooperation of key
individuals and groups in the executive office, the federal
bureaucracy, Congress, and the more important businesses, banks,
law firms, foundations, and media, which constitute the private
sector's 'Establishment'." -- Samuel Huntington, Harvard profeesor and political
scientist " Every great advance in natural knowledge has involved the
absolute rejection of authority." -- Thomas Huxley, English biologist and educator, 1825-1895 " The whole fabric of society will go to wrack if we really lay
hands of reform on our rotten institutions. From top to bottom the
whole system is a fraud, all of us know it, laborers and
capitalists alike, and all of us are consenting parties to it." -- Henry Adams, American historian, 1838-1918 " ...sectors of the business community attempted to solve the
economic crisis [of the 1970s and 1980s] through increased military
power abroad to allow multinational businesses to penetrate more
vigorously into the Third World and increased military spending at
home to stimulate the economy. ... In the 1970s and 1980s, when
business was less booming, global rollback became a more attractive
foreign policy goal. " -- from the book Rollback by Thomas Bodenheimer and Robert
Gould " The most effective way to restrict democracy is to transfer
decision-making from the public arena to unaccountable
institutions: kings and princes, priestly castes, military juntas,
party dictatorships, or modern corporations." -- Noam Chomsky, American linguist and US media and foreign
policy critic " America's inability to come to terms with revolutionary change
in the The Third World...has created our biggest international
problems in the postwar era. But the root of the problem is not, as
many Americans persist in believing, the relentless spread of
communism. Rather, it is our own difficulty in understanding that
Third World revolutions are primarily nationalist, not communist.
Nationalism, not capitalism or communism, is the dominant political
force in the modern world. You might think that revolutionary
nationalism and the desire for self-determination would be
relatively easy for Americans - the first successful
revolutionaries to win their independence - to understand. But
instead we have been dumbfounded when other peoples have tried to
pursue the goals of our own revolution two centuries ago.... " -- Former U.S. Senator Frank Church, on the shortsightedness of
'rollback' as our foreign policy doctrine " [The] American thirst for victory, his scorn for defeat, gives
the militarist line great leverage over political debate, although
its degree of dominance ebbs and flows with the nature of the issue
and the public mood, the latter itself significantly shaped by a
media that defers to the state on national security policy in most
matters. " -- Richard Falk, professor "If we love this country, we'd better change it." -- Ramsey Clark, former United States Attorney General and human
rights activist "The big lie about capitalism is that everyone can be rich. That's impossible. Capitalism works only if the vast majority of the population are kept poor enough to never quit working, are kept poor enough to accept distasteful jobs society cannot function without. If everyone were a millionaire, who would empty the trash or repair the sewers? It follows that the poorer the general population is made, the greater the worth of the money held by the wealthy, in terms of the lives which may be bought and sold with it.
"Capitalism requires an impoverishment mechanism that must absorb increases in productivity to keep the working classes with as little surplus capital as possible. Taxes (followed by wasteful spending) are the major impoverishment mechanism and this is why taxes increase to absorb the extra revenues flowing from increased productivity. Government does not want to pay off the national debt because that interest makes a great cash sink.
"There are two reasons for the decline in living standards, both tied to the push for a one world government. Before national barriers may be brought down between two economies the economies have to be made equal, and since it is easier to pull the top down than the bottom up, the prosperity and standard of living our parents and grandparents worked hard to create must be destroyed.
"Finally, history has shown that all opposition to entrenched oligarchy arises from the middle classes, who have the surplus of funds needed to challenge the ruling classes. Communism survived for as long as it did because their system designed the middle class out of existence at the very start. The New World Order will have to, indeed already is, following the same model. If the general population only has enough to pay for the next day's rent and food, they will do as they are told."
-- Michael Rivero
" [Nearly 70% of the military budget] is to provide men and
weapons to fight in foreign countries in support of our allies and
friends and for offensive operations in Third World countries ..
Another big chunk of the defense budget is the 20% allocated for
our offensive nuclear force of bombers, missles, and submarines
whose job it is to carry nuclear weapons to the Soviet Union...
Actual defense of the United States costs about 10% of the military
budget and is the least expensive function performed by the
Pentagon... " -- Rear Admiral Gene LaRoque, U.S. Navy retired " It is not possible to be in favor of justice for some people
and not be in favor of justice for all people. " -- Martin Luther King, Jr. "The agony and moral anguish that ought to accompany an act of
mass killing -- yes, even in a war [the Gulf War against Iraq in
1991] -- seemed wholly absent from American culture." -- Ruth Rosen, history professor " Since the modern world recognizes only wage earners as
"productive" members of society -- housewives, traditional farmers
and the elderly suddenly become identified as "unproductive."" -- Helena Norberg-Hodge, anthropologist, speaking about the
changes in traditional societies as they modernize "Conceit, arrogance and egotism are the essentials of
patriotism.... Patriotism assumes that our globe is divided into
little spots, each one surrounded by an iron gate. Those who had
the fortune of being born on some particular spot, consider
themselves better, nobler, grander, more intelligent than the
living beings inhabiting any other spot. It is, therefore, the duty
of everyone living on that chosen spot to fight, kill, and die in
the attempt to impose his superiority upon all others." -- Emma Goldman, American anarchist and feminist, 1869-1940 " I can teach you about torture, but sooner or later you'll
have to get involved. You'll have to lay on your hands and try it
yourselves ... The precise pain, in the precise place, in the
precise amount, for the desired effect.'' -- Head of the US Office of Public Safety (OPS) mission in
Uruguay in 1981, teaching classes in the art of torture "I was nineteen years old, and I'd always been told to do
what the grown-ups told me to do.... But now I tell my sons, if the
government calls, ... to use their own judgment, ... to forget
about authority ... to use their own conscience. I wish somebody
had told me that before I went to Vietnam." -- a U.S. soldier who had participated in the My Lai
massacre, in which a company of American soldiers shot to death
women and children by the hundreds in a tiny Vietnamese
village "Why should we be worried about the death squads? They're
bumping off the commies, our enemies ...There's no question we
can't wait until Reagan gets in ... We all feel that he is our
savior.' -- CIA pilot in Guatemala, 1980 "All that is necessary for the forces of evil to win in the
world is for enough good men to do nothing." -- Edmund Burke, British political writer, 1729-1797 " From 1928 to 1932, the German National Socialist (Nazi)
Party's share of the vote skyrocketed from 2.6 percent to 37.3
percent. While many commentators have attributed the Nazis' success
to its appeal to the lower middle class ... the facts unequivocally
reveal that it was the upper middle class that most strongly voted
for Hitler... The Nazis were seen as patriotic, anti-communist, and
religious. The people who voted Nazi were not so much people who
had fallen economically, but people who feared falling and wanted
to stay on top. " -- from the book Rollback by Thomas Bodenheimer and Robert
Gould " He who recognizes no humanity in others, loses it in
himself." -- author unknown " Short, successful military adventures are as effective as the
Super Bowl in diverting people's attention from unpleasant
truths." -- John Stockwell, former CIA official " I have the greatest admiration for your propaganda.
Propaganda in the West is carried out by experts who have had the
best training in the world -- in the field of advertizing -- and
have mastered the techniques with exceptional proficiency ... Yours
are subtle and persuasive; ours are crude and obvious ... I think
that the fundamental difference between our worlds, with respect to
propaganda, is quite simple. You tend to believe yours ... and we
tend to disbelieve ours. " -- a Soviet correspondent based five years in the
U.S. " Any dictator would admire the uniformity and obedience of the
[U.S.] media." -- Noam Chomsky, American linguist and US media and foreign
policy critic "Newspapers are unable, seemingly, to discriminate between a
bicycle accident and the collapse of civilization." -- George Bernard Shaw, Irish playwight and critic,
1856-1950 "The opinion of 10,000 men is of no value if none of them know
anything about the subject." -- Marcus Aurelius, Roman Emperor from 121-180 A.D. and Stoic
philosopher " ... the media in the United States effectively represents
the interests of corporate America, and ... the media elite are the
watchdogs of what constitutes acceptable ideological messages, the
parameters of news and information content, and the general use of
media resources. -- Peter Phillips, Project Censored, 1998 " The most dangerous criminal may be the man gifted with reason,
but with no morals." -- Martin Luther King, Jr. No one is guilty. The world is bombed and burned and devastated and those who do it are perfectly innocent.
They are "exponents" or "factors" or something equally clever, not men, not moral, responsible beings under God.
I wouldn't give a red cent for such talk.
-- Hermann Hesse - Author (1877-1962)
" Martin Luther King is the most notorious liar in the
country." -- J. Edgar Hoover, Director of the FBI 1924-1972 "Basic civil liberties including the right to life, liberty
and the freedom of personal and political expression, suffered a
drastic setback in 1981. In more than a dozen regional nations,
even the most fundamental rights -- life and the inviolability of
the person -- were transgressed by the government-condoned practice
of harassing, torturing and murdering political opponents of those
in power ... These reverses can be linked to policies adopted by
the Reagan administration ... [which] has allied the U.S. with the
most violent regimes in the hemispere. He [Reagan] has sanctioned
atrocities and human rights abuses by providing those governments
with essentially unconditioned U.S. support." -- Council on Hemispheric Affairs, 1982 "We have never interfered in the internal government of a
country and have no intention of doing so, never have had any
thought of that kind." -- Ronald Reagan, 1982 " Governments lie." -- I.F. Stone, journalist and author " The notion that journalism can regularly produce a product
that violates the fundamental interests of media owners and
advertisers ... is absurd." -- Robert McChesney, journalist and author " [The Laos operation] is something of which we can be proud as
Americans. It has involved virtually no American casualties. What
we are getting for our money there ... is, I think, to use the old
phrase, very cost effective." -- U. Alexis Johnson, US Under Secretary of State in 1971 about
American carpet-bombing of Laos which killed hundreds-of-thousands
of civilians " The corporate grip on opinion in the United States is one of
the wonders of the Western world. No First World country has ever
managed to eliminate so entirely from its media all objectivity -
much less dissent. " -- Gore Vidal, novelist and critic "The 'corporatization of America' during the past century [has
been] an attack on democracy." -- Noam Chomsky, American linguist and US media and foreign
policy critic " Good journalism is being criminalized or otherwise rendered
perilous to its best practitioners. Attack a government agency like
the CIA, or a Fortune 500 member ..., or the conduct of the
military in Southeast Asia and you find yourself in deep trouble,
naked and often alone. " -- Daniel Schorr, journalist " There's a whole journalistic-industrial complex dedicated to
keeping newsprint, TV screens and radio waves clean of
destabilizing scoops damaging to corporations or the state." -- Alexander Cockburn, journalist " The owners of the Washington Post long ago acknowledged that
the Post is the government's voice to the people. In 1981,
Katherine Graham, who owns the Post and Newsweek announced that her
editors would "cooperate with the national security interests."
National security in this context means "CIA."" -- John Stockwell, former CIA official and author "We must use terror, assassination, intimidation, land
confiscation, and the cutting of all social services to rid the
Galilee of its Arab population." --Israel Koenig, "The Koenig Memorandum." " The news and truth are not the same thing. " -- Walter Lippmann, American journalist, 1889-1974 "If those in charge of our society - politicians, corporate
executives, and owners of press and television - can dominate our
ideas, they will be secure in their power. They will not need
soldiers patrolling the streets. We will control ourselves." -- Howard Zinn, historian and author "History is an account mostly false, of events mostly
unimportant, which are brought about by rulers, mostly knaves, and
soldiers, mostly fools." -- Ambrose Bierce, American writer, 1842-1914 " Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have
guided missiles and misguided men. " -- Martin Luther King, Jr. "It is the function of the CIA to keep the world unstable,
and to propagandize and teach the American people to hate, so we
will let the Establishment spend any amount of money on
arms." -- John Stockwell, former CIA official and author "Just between you and me, shouldn't the World Bank be
encouraging more migration of the dirty industries to the LDCs
(lesser developed countries)? I think the economic logic behind
dumping a load of toxic waste in the lowest wage country is
impeccable and we should face up to that.... I've always thought
that underpopulated countries in Africa are vastly under polluted;
their air quality is vastly inefficiently low compared to Los
Angeles or Mexico City." -- Lawrence Summers World Bank economist and Deputy Secretary of
Treasury, in a 1991 internal memorandum "We love your adherence to democratic principle." -- Vice President George Bush to Philippine dictator Ferdinand
Marcos "Communism is an enormously serviceable tool for achieving
morally dubious goals under a morally acceptable cover. It is not
acceptable to destabilize a country, overthrow its democratically
elected government, and institute a reign of terror in order to
lower taxes and wages for one's own multinational firms. It is
necessary to put forward a higher moral imperative." -- Edward Herman, economist and media analyst " As the mainstream media has become increasingly dependent on
advertising revenues for support, it has become an anti-democratic
force in society." -- Robert McChesney, journalist and author " ... the United States, for generations, has sustained two
parallel but opposed states of mind about military atrocities and
human rights: one of U.S. benevolence, generally held by the
public, and the other of ends-justify-the-means brutality sponsored
by counterinsurgency specialists. Normally the specialists carry
out their actions in remote locations with little notice in the
national press. That allows the public to sustain its faith in a
just America, while hard-nosed security and economic interests are
still protected in secret. " -- Robert Parry, investigative reporter and author "History is written by those who win and those who
dominate." -- Edward Said, literary critic "Our men . . . have killed to exterminate men, women, children,
prisoners and captives, active insurgents and suspected people from
lads of 10 up.... Our soldiers have pumped salt water into men to
"make them talk," and have taken prisoners people who held up their
hands and peacefully surrendered, and an hour later. . . stood them
on a bridge and shot them down one by one, to drop into the water
below and float down, as examples to those who found their
bullet-loaded corpses." -- Philadelphia Ledger newspaper in 1901, carrying a dispatch
from its Manila [Philippines] correspondent during the US war with
Spain for the control of the Philippines "The corporation is a true Frankenstein's monster - an
artificial person run amok, responsible only to its own soulless
self. " -- William Dugger, management analyst "[Nationalism is] a set of beliefs taught to each generation in
which the Motherland or the Fatherland is an object of veneration
and becomes a burning cause for which one becomes willing to kill
the children of other Motherlands or Fatherlands." -- Howard Zinn, historian and author " In the post-Cold War era, the United States needs to promote
the development of democracy and human rights, not militaries that
view their own citizens as the enemy." -- U.S. Senator Richard Durbin "All over the world, people need change. The change? Getting
control over the power and resources they need to solve their
problems." -- Jeremy Brecher, historian and author "Our government has kept us in a perpetual state of fear-kept us
in a continuous stampede of patriotic fervor-with the cry of grave
national emergency. Always there has been some terrible evil at
home or some monstrous foreign power that was going to gobble us up
if we did not blindly rally behind it ..." -- US General Douglas MacArthur, 1957 " A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on
military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching
spiritual doom. " -- Martin Luther King, Jr. " The more you can increase fear of drugs and crime, welfare
mothers, immigrants and aliens, the more you control all the
people. " -- Noam Chomsky, American linguist and US media and foreign
policy critic " Rollback as a foreign policy ... causes untold devastation and
misery for millions overseas, and hinders any potential positive
U.S. influence in world affairs... To the extent the U.S. public
backs rollback, this support is rooted in a misguided sense of
patriotism. Patriotism itself - love of one's country and one's
people - is a natural and reasonable human feeling. But patriotism
which measures one's country by military superiority over all
rivals regardless of consequence is irrational... There is surely a
more rational form of patriotism that searches for excellence in
social, economic and moral spheres rather than in weapon systems.
" -- from the book Rollback by Thomas Bodenheimer and Robert
Gould " If we have to use force, it is because we are America. We are
the indispensable nation. We stand tall. We see further into the
future. " -- Secretary of State Madelaine Albright describing her vision
of America's role in the world " ... the United States [is] cast in the role of Praetorian
Guard, protecting the interests of the global financial order
against fractious elements in the Third World. " -- John Stockwell, former CIA official and author " America must prevent other states "from challenging our
leadership or seeking to overturn the established political and
economic order....We must maintain the mechanisms for deterring
potential competitors from even aspiring to a larger regional or
global role. " -- Pentagon's Defense Planning Guide for 1994-1999 " Why should we flagellate ourselves for what the Cambodians did
to each other?" -- Henry Kissinger - who (with Richard Nixon) was responsible
for the massive bombing of Cambodia in 1973, which killed
three-quarters of a million peasants and disrupted Cambodian
society, setting the stage for Pol Pot to come to power and
ultimately kill another one-and-a-half million people "Was there ever any domination that did not appear natural to
those who possessed it?" -- John Stuart Mill, British philosopher and economist,
1806-1873 "The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities
committed by his own side, but he has a remarkable capacity for not
even hearing about them." -- George Orwell, English writer, 1903-1950 "Those who own the country ought to govern it." -- John Jay, American statesman and first Chief Justice of US
Supreme Court, 1745-1829 " ... there is a system of terroristic states -- the real terror
network -- that has spread throughout Latin America and elsewhere
over the past several decades, and which is deeply rooted in the
corporate interest and sustaining political-military-financial
propaganda mechanisms of the United States and its allies in the
Free World." -- Edward Herman, economist and media analyst "That men should not be equal, is the primitive belief of
primitive people." -- author unknown "We shall reduce the Arab population to a community of
woodcutters and waiters." --Uri Lubrani, Israeli Prime Minister Ben-Gurion's special
adviser on Arab Affairs. Source: "The Arabs in Israel" by Sabri
Jiryas. " Coming to grips with ... U.S./CIA activities in broad numbers
and figuring out how many people have been killed in the jungles of
Laos or the hills of Nicaragua is very difficult. But, adding them
up as best we can, we come up with a figure of six million people
killed-and this is a minimum figure. Included are: one million
killed in the Korean War, two million killed in the Vietnam War,
800,000 killed in Indonesia, one million in Cambodia, 20,000 killed
in Angola ... and 22,000 killed in Nicaragua. These people would
not have died if U.S. tax dollars had not been spent by the CIA to
inflame tensions, finance covert political and military activities
and destabilize societies. " -- John Stockwell, former CIA official and author "We routinely had Latin American students at the School of
the Americas (SOA) who were known human rights abusers, and it
didn't make any difference to us." -- Instructor at the School of the Americas in
Georgia " The foreign policies of nation-states, particularly economic
and monetary policies, have always been a highly elitist matter.
Policy options are proposed, reviewed, and executed within the
context of a broad bipartisan consensus that is painstakingly
managed by very small circles of public and private elites....
Where necessary, a consensus is engineered on issues which must get
congressional / parliamentary approval, but wherever possible
executive agreements between governments are used to avoid the
democratic process altogether. " -- Peter Thomson " The first casualty when war comes is the truth." -- U.S. Senator Hiram Johnson, 1917 " ... the CIA had been running thousands of operations over the
years... there have been about 3,000 major covert operations and
over 10,000 minor operations... all designed to disrupt,
destabilize, or modify the activities of other countries... But
they are all illegal and they all disrupt the normal functioning,
often the democratic functioning, of other societies. They raise
serious questions about the moral responsibility of the United
States in the international society of nations. " -- John Stockwell, former CIA official and author "What the United States has done to the country [Cambodia] is
greater evil than we have done to any country in the world..." -- California Congressman Pete McClosky following a visit to
Cambodia in the 1970s " ... neoconservative Jeane Kirkpatrick ... argued in 1979 that
Third World revolutions are illegitimate, the products of Soviet
expansion rather than of local historical forces opposed to
repressive dictatorships. ... Kirkpatrick had solved the moral
problem of the rollbackers: why it is fine to overthrow left-wing
governments and make friends with rightist dictators. The
Kirkpatrick Doctrine held that right-wing dictatorships can evolve
into democratic governments while left-wing nations cannot. Under
this Doctrine, Marcos, Pinochet, and P.W. Botha were leading their
countries down the path of democracy. " -- from the book Rollback by Thomas Bodenheimer and Robert
Gould "How dare Americans allow their government to cause such
misery [in the world]." -- Ramsey Clark, former United States Attorney General and
human rights activist "The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest
exercises in moral philosophy: that is, the search for a superior
moral justification for selfishness." -- John Kenneth Galbraith, economist and author " Democracy is based on the principle of one person, one vote.
The market functions on the principle of one dollar, one vote.
Consequently, under conditions of unequal economic power, a society
ruled by the market is a society ruled by those who have the most
money -- the antithesis of democracy. " -- David Korten, economist and internationalist " Americans cannot teach democracy to the world until they
restore their own." -- William Greider, journalist and author " People with advantages are loath to believe that they just
happen to be people with advantages. " -- C. Wright Mills - The Power Elite " You can say anything you want in a debate, and 80 million
people hear it. If reporters then document that a candidate spoke
untruthfully, so what ? Maybe 200 people read it, or 2000 or
20,000. " -- George Bush's press secretary to reporters following the 1980
vice-presidential debate " [The] social forces that have been near the center of power
ever since 1945 are so well entrenched in the national security
bureaucracy as to be constants in the political setting within
which foreign policy takes shape... [as a result] the formal
procedures of political democracy (political parties, elections)
give virtually no voice to principled criticism of interventionary
deplomacy in the Third World. " -- Richard Falk, professor " History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this
period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad
people, but the appalling silence of the good people. " -- Martin Luther King, Jr. "The modern liberal state ... often uses deception to gain its
ends -- not so much deception of the foreign enemy, but of its own
citizens,who have been taught to trust their leaders." -- Howard Zinn, historian and author " The women of the United States are nothing but brood sows,
having sons to be put into the army and made into fertilizer. " -- Kate Richards O"Hare, 1915, feminist " The U.S. taxpayer is now carrying a gigantic burden. Nearly
one-third of the nation's budget goes to the military. ... 53 cents
of every tax dollar goes to the military to pay for arms, salaries,
facilities, overhead, and debts from Vietnam and other wars. " -- John Stockwell, former CIA official and author "This focus on money and power may do wonders in the
marketplace, but it creates a tremendous crisis in our society.
People who have spent all day learning how to sell themselves and
to manipulate others are in no position to form lasting friendships
or intimate relationships... Many Americans hunger for a different
kind of society -- one based on principles of caring, ethical and
spiritual sensitivity, and communal solidarity. Their need for
meaning is just as intense as their need for economic
security." -- Michael Lerner, journalist " We are potentially the most dangerous agency in the country.
" -- FBI Director Louis Freeh, to the House Judiciary Subcommittee
on Crime, 1997 " We must rapidly begin the shift from a "thing"-oriented
society to a "person"-oriented society. When machines and
computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more
important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism
and militarism are incapable to being conquered. " -- Martin Luther King, Jr. " The United States is supposed to be in favor of human rights
and democracy, so that a show of concern by our leaders is required
to demonstrate our high moral character. This display of concern is
not necessary if there is little public interest in or knowledge
about the abusing country and its victims. Whether the public is
informed on these matters is, of course, affected by what
government, business, and the media choose to publicize, and these
conjointly tend to play down abuses by regimes that serve U. S.
business and strategic interests." -- Edward S. Herman, economist and media analyst "An economic system can remain viable only so long as societyO
has meahanisms to counter abuses of either state or market power
and the erosion of the natural, social, and moral capital that such
abuses commonly exacerbate." -- David Korten, economist and internationalist " Success, recognition, and conformity are the bywords of the
modern world where everyone seems to crave the anesthetizing
security of being identified with the majority. " -- Martin Luther King, Jr. " The most unpardonable sin in society is independence of
thought." -- Emma Goldman, American anarchist and feminist, 1869-1940 " The economy is doing fine, but the people aren't." -- General Emelio Medici, head-of-state of Brazil's
U.S.-supported military dictatorship, 1971 " We enjoy the economic stability that the Armed Forces
guarantee us. This [economic] plan can be fulfilled dispite its
lack of popular support. It has sufficient political support ...
that provided buy the Armed Forces." -- Martinez de Hoz, top financial minister of the U.S.-supported
Argentine military government, 1976, on the government's proposed
economic plan "...the need to sustain the character of the state which will
henceforth be Jewish...with a non-Jewish minority limited to 15
percent. I had already reached this fundamental position as early
as 1940 [and] it is entered in my diary." --Joseph Weitz, head of the Jewish Agency's Colonization
Department. From "Israel: an Apartheid State" by Uri Davis, p.
5. "History is fables agreed upon." -- Francois Voltaire, French philosopher and author,
1694-1778 " We are a nation that worships the frontier tradition, and our
heroes are those who champion justice through violent retaliation
against injustice. It is not simple to adopt a credo that moral
force has as much strength and virtue as the capacity to return a
physical blow; or that to refrain from hitting back requires more
will and bravery than the automatic reflexes of defense. " -- Martin Luther King, Jr. " Today in America [is]... the development of a permanent war
establishment by a privately incorporated economy inside a
political vacuum. " -- C. Wright Mills - The Power Elite "I believe that if we had and would keep our dirty, bloody,
dollar-soaked fingers out of the business of these [Third World]
nations so full of depressed, exploited people, they will arrive at
a solution of their own.... And if unfortunately their revolution
must be of the violent type because the "haves" refuse to share
with the "have-nots" by any peaceful method, at least what they get
will be their own, and not the American style, which they don't
want and above all don't want crammed down their throats by
Americans." -- General David Sharp, former US Marine
Commandant,1966 " If they do it it's terrorism, if we do it, it's fighting for
freedom. " -- a U.S. Ambassador in Central America in the 1980s, asked to
explain how such U.S. actions as the mining of Nicaragua's harbors
and bombing of airports differed from the acts of terrorism that
the U.S. condemned around the world " The major function of secrecy in Washington is to keep the
U.S. people ... from knowing what the nation's leaders are doing.
" -- John Stockwell, former CIA official and author " Never forget that everything Hitler did in Germany was
legal. " -- Martin Luther King, Jr. " There is no regime too reactionary for us provided it stands
in Russia's expansionist path. There is no country too remote to
serve as the scene of a contest which may widen until it becomes a
world war." -- Henry Wallace, Vice-President under Franklin Roosevelt
1941-1945 " It should never be forgotten that the people must have
priority. " -- Ho Chi Minh, Vietnamese nationalist leader, president of
North Vietnam-1954-1969 " The people of the world genuinely want peace. Some day the
leaders of the world are going to have to give in and give it to
them. " -- Dwight Eisenhower, U.S. president 1953-1961 "When great changes occur in history, when great principles are
involved, as a rule the majority are wrong." -- Eugene V. Debs, American socialist leader, 1855-1926 "The American oligarchy increasingly has less in common with the
American people than it does with the equivalent oligarchies in
Germany or Mexico or Japan." -- Lewis Lapham, journalist " The United States has to realize it does not own Central
America or any other part of the world, and that people have a
right to shape their own destiny, to choose the type of government
they want. We don't lose Cuba, we don't lose Nicaragua, because
they were never ours to lose." -- Sister Ita Ford, one of four U.S. churchwomen slain by
Salvadoran soldiers in 1980 " ...the CIA has overthrown functioning democracies in over
20 countries." -- John Stockwell, former CIA official and author " ... the operative principles dictating U.S. support and
hostility in the Third World have been business criteria first,
military convenience second, and any humanistic considerations
third and thus effectively irrelevant. In fact, they are less than
irrelevant -- they are in conflict with the first two criteria, and
therefore ... humanizing forces [become] 'threats'. " -- Edward Herman, economist and media analyst "The torturers from the start had said that the United States
supported them and that was what counted." -- Amnesty International report on Greece in the 1960s under
US-supported dictator George Papadoupolus "We, the people of the world, will mobilize the forces of
transnational civil society behind a widely shared agenda that
bonds our many social movements in pursuit of just, sustainable,
and participatory human societies. In so doing we are forging our
own instruments and processes for redefining the nature and meaning
of human progress and for transforming those institutions that no
longer respond to our needs." -- "The People's Earth Declaration, UNCED NGO Forum "History is the history of war -- of leaders of countries
finding reasons and rationals to send the young people off to
fight." -- John Stockwell, former CIA official and author "The dream of the corporate empire builders is being realized.
The global system is harmonizing standards across country after
country - down toward the lowest common denominator. Although a few
socially responsible businesses are standing against the tide with
some limited success, theirs is not an easy struggle. We must not
kid ourselves. Social responsibility is inefficient in a global
free market, and the market will not long abide those who do not
avail of the opportunities to shed the inefficient. And we must be
clear as to the meaning of efficiency. To the global economy,
people are not only increasingly unnecessary, but they and their
demands for a living wage are a major source of economic
inefficiency. Global corporations are acting to purge themselves of
this unwanted burden. We are creating a system that has fewer
places for people." -- David Korten, economist and internationalist "Just who are these goddamn reds, anyway? A goddamn red is
anyone who wants 30 cents when I am paying 25." -- John Steinbeck, American writer, 1902-1968, and author of
"The Grapes of Wrath" " The NSS [National Security State] represents and serves the
interests of a tiny elite. Its economic policies of "trickling-up",
enforced by the machine gun, are rationalized on the ground that
growth in the long run will trickle down to the lower orders. This
is a self-serving ideology designed mainly to allow the western
public to think well of themselves and their own country." -- Edward Herman, economist and media analyst "The greatest purveyor of violence on earth is my own
government." -- Martin Luther King, Jr. "... the establishment can't admit [that] it is human rights
violations that make ... countries attractive to business -- so
history has to be fudged, including denial of our support of
regimes of terror and the practices that provide favorable climates
of investment, and our destabilization of democracies that [don't]
meet [the] standard of service to the transnational
corporation..." -- Edward Herman, economist and media analyst " The Darwinian concept of the survival of the fittest has been
substituted by a philosophy of the survival of the slickest. " -- Martin Luther King, Jr. " The so-called "defense" corporations are multinational
conglomerates that have no great loyalty to the United States; they
are in fact no longer U.S. corporations but transnational entities
loyal only to themselves. " -- John Stockwell, former CIA official and author "A criminal is a person with predatory instincts who has not
sufficient capital to form a corporation." -- Howard Scott "True, the white man brought great change. But the varied fruits
of his civilization, though highly colored and inviting, are
sickening and deadening. And if it be the part of civilization to
maim, rob, and thwart, then what is progress?" -- Chief Luther Standing Bear, 1933 "The United States does not have an automatic call on our
resources. There is no mind-set that puts this country first." -- Cyrill Stewert, Chief Financial Officer of Colgate-Palmolive
Corporation "I spent thirty-three years in the Marines, most of my time
being a hlgh class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and
the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer for capitalism." -- General Smedley Butler, former US Marine Corps
Commandant,1935 " There is ...a huge tacit conspiracy between the U.S.
government, its agencies and its multinational corporations, on the
one hand, and local business and military cliques in the Third
World, on the other, to assume complete control of these countries
and "develop" them on a joint venture basis. The military leaders
of the Third World were carefully nurtured by the U.S. security
establishment to serve as the "enforcers" of this joint venture
partnership, and they have been duly supplied with machine guns and
the latest data on methods of interrogation of subversives." -- Edward Herman, economist and media analyst " As an economy measures performance in terms of the creation of
money, people become a major source of inefficiency. " -- David Korten, economist and internationalist "This use of the government of all for the enrichment and
aggrandizement of few is a revolution.... These sovereign powers
... have been given by you and me, all of us, to our government to
be used only for the common and equal benefit. Given by all to be
used by all, it is a revolution to have made them the perquisite of
a few." -- Henry Demarest Lloyd,1847 - 1903, US journalist "We are entering a new phase in human history -- one in which
fewer and fewer workers will be needed to produce the goods and
services for the global population." -- Jeremy Rifkin, economist "The achievements of past struggles and the aspirations of an
entire nation are [being] undone and erased.... No Agent Orange or
steel pellet bombs, no napalm, no toxic chemicals: a new phase of
economic and social (rather than' physical) destruction has
unfolded. The seemingly neutral and scientific tools of
macro-economic policy constitute a non-violent instrument of
recolonization and impoverishment." -- Michel Chossudovsky, economist "Corporations have been enthroned .... An era of corruption in
high places will follow and the money power will endeavor to
prolong its reign by working on the prejudices of the people...
until wealth is aggregated in a few hands ... and the Republic is
destroyed." -- Abraham Lincoln, American president, 1861-1865 "Everybody has to move, run and grab as many (Palestinian)
hilltops as they can to enlarge the (Jewish) settlements because
everything we take now will stay ours...Everything we don't grab
will go to them." --Ariel Sharon, Israeli Foreign Minister, addressing a meeting
of the Tsomet Party, Agence France Presse, Nov. 15, 1998. "We must find new lands from which we can easily obtain raw
materials and at the same time exploit the cheap slave labor that
is available from the natives of the colonies. The colonies would
also provide a dumping ground for the surplus goods produced in our
factories." -- Cecil Rhodes, "founder" of Rhodesia "The immiseration of the majority is an integral part of the
Free World package for the Third World, the unsavory aspects of the
package -- the terror, the direct spoilation of people and
resources, and western complicity -- must be rationalized and, as
far as possible, kept under the rug." -- Edward Herman, economist and media analyst "The recent quantum leap in the ability of transnational
corporations to relocate their facilities around the world in
effect makes all workers, communities and countries competitors for
these corporations' favor. The consequence is a "race to the
bottom" in which wages and social conditions tend to fall to the
level of the most desperate." -- Jeremy Brecher, historian and author "Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never has, and it
never will." -- Frederick Douglass, 1817-1895, escaped slave, abolitionist,
author, orator, statesman " It doesn't take a genius to pump up the GNP [of a developing
country] by burning down rainforests, using slave labor and social
repression to keep things in place. " -- Hazel Henderson, economist "We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great
wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have
both." -- Louis Brandeis, Supreme Court justice from 1916-1939 " Often the oppressor goes along unaware of the evil involved in
his oppression so long as the oppressed accepts it. " -- Martin Luther King, Jr. "President Rios Montt [is] a man of great personal integrity and
commitment who wants to improve the quality of life for all
Guatemalans, and [is] getting a "bum rap" on human rights." -- President Ronald Reagan praising Guatemala's military
dictator in 1982; during the 17 months of Rios Montt's "Christian"
campaign (1982-83), 400 villages were destroyed, 10,000-20,000
Indians were killed, and over 100,000 were forced to flee to
Mexico " Justice too long delayed is justice denied. " -- author unknown " Among Latin American elites, a peasant asking for a higher
wage or a priest helping organize a peasant cooperative is a
communist. And someone going so far as to suggest land reform or a
more equitable tax system is a communist fanatic. There is no word
or act suggesting the desirability of elite generosity toward the
poor, or the need for education, organization or material advance
for the majority, that has not been branded communistic in Latin
America in recent decades. ... Since communism is the enemy and
peasants trying to improve themselves, priests with the slightest
humanistic proclivity, and naturally anyone seriously challenging
the status quo, are communists, they are also, by definition,
enemies." -- Edward Herman, economist and media analyst " The human race has improved everything except the human
race." -- Adlai Stevenson, 1900-1965, governor of Illinois and
candidate for president " In the United States today, the Declaration of Independence
hangs on schoolroom walls, but foreign policy follows
Machiavelli." -- Howard Zinn, historian and author "The world knows nothing of its greatest men." -- Henry Taylor "One of the great attractions of patriotism -- it fulfills our
worst wishes. In the person of our nation we are able, vicariously,
to bully and cheat. Bully and cheat, what's more, with a feeling
that we are profoundly virtuous." -- Aldous Huxley, English author, 1894-1963 "The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on
certain occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive. It will
often be exercised when wrong, but better so than not to be
exercised at all." -- Thomas Jefferson, drafter of the Declaration of Independence
and president of US from 1801-1809 "The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by
entering its prisons." -- Feodor Dostoevski, Russian novelist, 1821-1881 "There is no reason to accept the doctrines crafted to sustain
power and privilege, or to believe that we are constrained by
mysterious and unknown social laws. These are simply decisions made
within institutions that are subject to human will and that must
face the test of legitimacy. And if they do not meet the test, they
can be replaced by other institutions that are more free and more
just, as has happened often in the past." -- Noam Chomsky, American linguist and US media and foreign
policy critic "The U.S. can destroy Iraq's highways, but not build its own;
create the conditions for epidemic in Iraq, but not offer health
care to millions of Americans. It can excoriate Iraqi treatment of
the Kurdish minority, but not deal with domestic race relations;
create homelessness abroad but not solve it here; keep a half
million troops drug free as part of a war, but refuse to fund the
treatment of millions of drug addicts at home.... We shall lose the
war after we have won it." -- Marilyn Young, historian, talking about US government
values and priorities "A small group of people acting in concert for justice and peace
throw into motion invisible questions held by a lot of people. They
challenge that notion that "we can't make a difference." -- Bernadine Dorn, Irish democracy activist " ... so long as the media are in corporate hands, the task of
social change will be vastly more difficult, if not impossible ...
" -- Robert McChesney, journalist and author " I have come to the conclusion that the actual state of
violence, composed of the malnutrition, ignorance, sickness, and
hunger of the vast majority of the Guatemalan population, is the
direct result of a capitalist system that makes the defenseless
Indian compete against the powerful and well-armed landowner ." -- Father Thomas Melville, Guatemala 1968 "We who have a voice should speak for the voiceless" -- Archbishop Oscar Romero of El Salvador " You do things again and again, and nothing happens. You have
to do things, do things, do things,. You have to light that match,
light that match, light that match, not knowing how often it's
going to sputter and go out and at what point it's going to take
hold. Things take a long time. It requires patience, but not a
passive patience -- the patience of activism." -- Howard Zinn, historian and author " Every man of humane convictions must decide on the protest
that best suits his convictions, but we must all protest. " -- Martin Luther King, Jr. "... U. S. business wants a "favorable climate of investment"
abroad, and ... military regimes that will crush labor unions and
otherwise serve foreign business meet that demand." -- Edward Herman, economist and media analyst "They are going to arrest us all and execute us for Shell." -- Ken Saro-Wiwa, Nigerian democracy activist, after reading a
secret Nigerian military memo in May 1994. He was executed by the
Nigerian military dictatorship in 1995. " It is the job of thinking people, not to be on the side of the
executioners." -- Albert Camus, French writer and thinker, 1913-1960 "First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out
because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade
unionists, and I did not speak out because I was not a trade
unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out
because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me, and there was no
one left to speak out for me." -- Martin Niemoller, German anti-Nazi pastor during World War
II "Social and economic well-being will become a reality only
through the zeal, courage, the non-compromising determination of
intelligent minorities, and not through the mass." -- Emma Goldman, American anarchist and feminist, 1869-1940 "Spirit the penniless population across the frontier by denying
it employment... Both the process of expropriation and the removal
of the poor must be carried out discreetly and circumspectly." --Theodore Herzl, founder of the World Zionist Organization,
speaking of the Arabs of Palestine, "Complete Diaries," June 12,
1895 entry. " Human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable ... Every
step toward the goal of justice requires sacrifice, suffering, and
struggle; the tireless exertions and passionate concern of
dedicated individuals. " -- Martin Luther King, Jr. " When small steps are taken by large numbers of people
momentous things can happen." -- Vandana Shiva, environmental activist " Today enormous effort goes into convincing the American public
that we're just consumers of media manipulation and sound-bites and
spin doctors. That we care only about ourselves, money, and
"stuff". That acting out of passion and conviction "doesn't make a
difference". But all history shows that it does." -- Bernadine Dorn, Irish democracy activist " If development was measured not by gross national product, but
a society's success in meeting the basic needs of its people,
Vietnam would have been a model. That was its real "threat." From
the defeat of the French at Dien Bien Phu in 1954 to 1972, primary
and secondary school enrollment in the North increased sevenfold,
from 700,000 to almost five million. In 1980, UNESCO estimated a
literacy rate of 90 percent and school enrollment among the highest
in Asia and throughout the Third World. " -- John Pilger, author "The time is past when good men can remain silent, when
obedience can segregate men from public risk, when the poor can die
without defense." -- Catholic priest and human rights activist Daniel Berrigan " We may not be strong enough to stop wars when the powers that
be want them, but at least we are wise and humane enough to take
political and moral stands as publicly as possible. This is, after
all, the foundation we must build from." -- Leslie Cagan, anti-war activist "Never doubt that a small group of committed citizens can change
the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has." -- Margaret Mead. anthropologist "The tragedy of life is what dies inside a man while he
lives." -- Albert Schweitzer "Our loyalties must transend our race, our tribe, our class, and
our nation; and this means we must develop a world
perspective." -- Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. " Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and
narrow-mindedness." -- Mark Twain In my opinion we owe the present state of mankind to two mental disorders:
the megalomania of technology and the megalomania of nationalism. It is they that
have given the present-day world its face and its view of itself; they have given us
two world wars and their aftermaths and before their frenzy is spent they will have other,
similar consequences.
Resistance to these two world diseases is today the most important task and justification
of the human spirit. In this resistance my own life has played a part, a ripple in the stream.
-- Hermann Hesse - Author (1877-1962)
"It is not power that corrupts but fear. The fear of losing
power corrupts those who wield it, and fear of the scourge of power
corrupts those who are subject to it." -- Aung San Suu Kyi "Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the
present controls the past." -- George Orwell "Indifference will not wreck a man's life at any one turn, but
it will destroy him with a kind of dry-rot in the long run." -- Bliss Carman "History is fables agreed upon." -- Voltaire "The human race has improved everything except the human
race." -- Adlai Stevenson "The forces in a capitalist society, if left unchecked, tend to
make the rich richer and the poor poorer." -- Jawaharlal Nehru "If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is
because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music
which he hears, however measured or far away." -- Henry David Thoreau "The world knows nothing of its greatest men." -- Henry Taylor 'Everyone is a prisoner of his own experiences. No one can
eliminate prejudices -- just recognize them." -- Edward R. Murrow "Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the
limits of the world." -- Arthur Schopenhauer "An economic system can remain viable only so long as society
has mechanisms to counter abuses of either state or market power
and the erosion of the natural, social, and moral capital that such
abuses commonly exacerbate." -- David Korten "Freedom of the Press belongs to the man who owns one" -- A.J. Liebling 'In any society the dominant groups are the ones with the most
to hide about the way society works." -- Barrington Moore, 20th century philosopher "True, the white man brought great change. But the varied fruits
of his civilization, though highly colored and inviting, are
sickening and deadening. And if it be the part of civilization to
maim, rob, and thwart, then what is progress? I am going to venture
that the man who sat on the ground in his tipi meditating on life
and its meaning, accepting the kinship of all creatures, and
acknowledging unity with the universe of things, was infusing into
his being the true essence of civilization.... " -- Chief Luther Standing Bear, in his 1933 autobiography "When the people clamor to be shielded from reality, when they
praise their government for keeping things from them, when they
choose to conduct their lives within the limits of whatever fantasy
the government supplies, then they are no longer consenting to be
governed, they are begging to be ruled." -- Michael Ventura "The nation, like the church, has its visible symbols and
insignia, its parchments engrossed with the revealed word, its
dogmas, hymns, liturgy, holy day celebrations, its early Fathers,
prophets and martyrs, its priesthood and its lay sodality, its
myths of sacred genesis and apocalyptic crises, its world-saving
mission and its missionaries." -- Michael Parenti, writer "Nowhere is it easier to become rich and privileged, but the
price of failure is steeper than elsewhere. Nowhere is there more
equality of opportunity or less equality of outcome. Nowhere is the
medicine or the higher education better, but the nation that
preened itself on evading the sickening rigidities of the European
class system has pioneered the new social stratification of the
underclass." -- Martin Walker, Washington correspondent for The Guardian of
London, writing about the United States "I find it incomprehensible why a country as rich as the U.S.
can allow a whole generation of young people in the inner city to
slide into despair in such a degree that they go out in the streets
and burn down and loot their own neighborhoods." -- Helmut Voss, German correspondent, commenting on the Los
Angeles race riots in 1965 and 1992 "This focus on money and power may do wonders in the
marketplace, but it creates a tremendous crisis in our society.
People who have spent all day learning how to sell themselves and
to manipulate others are in no position to form lasting friendships
or intimate relationships... Many Americans hunger for a different
kind of society -- one based on principles of caring, ethical and
spiritual sensitivity, and communal solidarity. Their need for
meaning is just as intense as their need for economic
security." -- Michael Lerner, editor of Tikkun magazine "The American political system is essentially a contract between
the Republican and Democratic parties, enforced by federal and
state two-party laws, all designed to guarantee the survival of
both no matter how many people despise or ignore them." -- Richard Reeves " We have a single system, and in that system the only question
is the price at which the proletariat is to be bought and sold, the
bread and circuses." " The whole fabric of society will go to wrack
if we really lay hands of reform on our rotten institutions. From
top to bottom the whole system is a fraud, all of us know it,
laborers and capitalists alike, and all of us are consenting
parties to it." -- Henry Adams "I believe there are more instances of the abridgment of the
freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those
in power than by violent and sudden usurpations." -- James Madison "Freedom is about authority. Freedom is about the willingness of
every single human being to cede to lawful authority a great deal
of discretion about what you do." -- NYC Mayor Rudolph Giuliani "When we got organized as a country and we wrote a fairly
radical constitution with a radical bill of rights, giving a
radical amount of individual freedom to Americans, it was assumed
that the Americans who had that freedom would use it
responsibly.... What's happened in America today is too many people
live in areas where there's no family structure, no community
structure and no work structure. And so there's a lot of
irresponsibility. And so a lot of people say there's too much
personal freedom. When personal freedom's being abused, you have to
move to limit it...." -- President Bill Clinton "This use of the government of all for the enrichment and
aggrandizement of few is a revolution.... These sovereign powers
... have been given by you and me, all of us, to our government to
be used only for the common and equal benefit. Given by all to be
used by all, it is a revolution to have made them the perquisite of
a few." -- Henry Demarest Lloyd. 1890s 'Public school - where the human mind is drilled and manupulated
into submission to various social and moral spooks, and thus fitted
to continue our system of exploitation and oppression." -- Emma Goldman "The blood of the Jewish people is loved by the Lord; it is
therefore redder and their life is preferable." -- Rabbi Yitzhak Ginsburg, head of the Kever Yossev Yeshiva
(school of Talmud talmudtruth.html) in Nablus "Those who own the country ought to govern it." -- John Jay "The unexamined - life is not worth living." -- Socrates "I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience
tells him is unjust, and willingly accepts the penalty by staying
in jail to arouse the conscience of the community over its
injustices is in reality expressing the very highest respect for
law." -- (The "law" that King respected ... was not man-made law. He
meant respect for the higher law, the law of morality, of justice.)
Martin Luther King, Jr.In his "Letter from Birmingham City Jail,"
written in the spring of 1963: "Liberties are not given; they are taken." -- Aldous Huxley " Still and all, why bother? Here's my answer. Many people need
desperately to receive this message: " I feel and think much as you
do, care about many of the things you care about, although most
people do not care about them. You are not alone." -- Kurt Vonnegut "The corporation has evolved to serve the interests of whoever
controls it, at the expense of whomever does not." -- William Dugger " The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities
committed by his own side, but he has a remarkable capacity for not
even hearing about them." -- George Orwell, English writer, 1903-1950 " The most unpardonable sin in society is independence of
thought." -- Emma Goldman, American anarchist and feminist, 1869-1940 " Where, after all, do universal human rights begin? In small
places, close to home - so close and so small that they cannot be
seen on any maps of the world. Yet they are the world of the
individual person; the neighborhood he lives in; the school or
college he attends; the factory, farm, or office where he works.
Such are the places where every man, woman, and child seeks equal
justice, equal opportunity, equal dignity without discrimination.
Unless these rights have meaning there, they have little meaning
anywhere. Without concerted citizen action to uphold them close to
home, we shall look in vain for progress in the larger world. " -- Eleanor Roosevelt " Question authority " -- author unkown " What would have happened if millions of American and
British people, struggling with coupons and lines at the gas
stations, had learned that in 1942 Standard Oil of New Jersey [part
of the Rockefeller empire] managers shipped the enemy's fuel
through neutral Switzerland and that the enemy was shipping Allied
fuel? Suppose the public had discovered that the Chase Bank in
Nazi-occupied Paris after Pearl Harbor was doing millions of
dollars' worth of business with the enemy with the full knowledge
of the head office in Manhattan [the Rockefeller family among
others?] Or that Ford trucks were being built for the German
occupation troops in France with authorization from Dearborn,
Michigan? Or that Colonel Sosthenes Behn, the head of the
international American telephone conglomerate ITT, flew from New
York to Madrid to Berne during the war to help improve Hitler's
communications systems and improve the robot bombs that devastated
London? Or that ITT built the FockeWulfs that dropped bombs on
British and American troops? Or that crucial ball bearings were
shipped to Nazi-associated customers in Latin America with the
collusion of the vice-chairman of the U.S. War Production Board in
partnership with Goering's cousin in Philadelphia when American
forces were desperately short of them? Or that such arrangements
were known about in Washington and either sanctioned or
deliberately ignored?" -- Charles Higham, researcher, about U.S.-Nazi
collaboration during WWII " We may not be strong enough to stop wars when the powers that
be want them, but at least we are wise and humane enough to take
political and moral stands as publicly as possible. This is, after
all, the foundation we must build from." -- Leslie Cagan, anti-war activist "... the establishment can't admit [that] it is human rights
violations that make ... countries attractive to business -- so
history has to be fudged, including denial of our support of
regimes of terror and the practices that provide favorable climates
of investment, and our destabilization of democracies that [don't]
meet [the] standard of service to the transnational
corporation..." -- Edward S. Herman, economist, author, and US media and foreign
policy critic " The corporate grip on opinion in the United States is one of
the wonders of the Western world. No First World country has ever
managed to eliminate so entirely from its media all objectivity -
much less dissent. " -- Gore Vidal, novelist and critic " [Nearly 70% of the military budget] is to provide men and
weapons to fight in foreign countries in support of our allies and
friends and for offensive operations in Third World countries ..
Another big chunk of the defense budget is the 20% allocated for
our offensive nuclear force of bombers, missles, and submarines
whose job it is to carry nuclear weapons to the Soviet Union...
Actual defense of the United States costs about 10% of the military
budget and is the least expensive function performed by the
Pentagon... " -- Rear Admiral Gene LaRoque, U.S. Navy retired " History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this
period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad
people, but the appalling silence of the good people. " -- Martin Luther King, Jr. " The dream of capitalism is to co-opt people with higher living
standards without redistributing any wealth. Without co-optation,
widespread repression is the only guarantor of gross
inequality." -- Holly Sklar, from her book Trilateralism "There is no reason to accept the doctrines crafted to sustain
power and privilege, or to believe that we are constrained by
mysterious and unknown social laws. These are simply decisions made
within institutions that are subject to human will and that must
face the test of legitimacy. And if they do not meet the test, they
can be replaced by other institutions that are more free and more
just, as has happened often in the past." Noam Chomsky, American
linguist and US media and foreign policy critic " Rollback as a
foreign policy ... causes untold devastation and misery for
millions overseas, and hinders any potential positive U.S.
influence in world affairs... To the extent the U.S. public backs
rollback, this support is rooted in a misguided sense of
patriotism. Patriotism itself - love of one's country and one's
people - is a natural and reasonable human feeling. But patriotism
which measures one's country by military superiority over all
rivals regardless of consequence is irrational... There is surely a
more rational form of patriotism that searches for excellence in
social, economic and moral spheres rather than in weapon systems.
" -- from the book Rollback by Thomas Bodenheimer and Robert
Gould " If the business community and political elite want to go to
war they find it easy to mobilize domestic consent." -- Edward S. Herman, economist, author, and US media and foreign
policy critic, Z magazine June, 1999 " With unfailing consistancy, U.S. intervention has been on the
side of the rich and powerful of various nations at the expense of
the poor and needy. Rather than strengthening democracies, U.S.
leaders have overthrown numerous democratically elected governments
or other populist regimes in dozens of countries ... whenever these
nations give evidence of putting the interests of their people
ahead of the interests of multinational corporate interests. " -- Michael Parenti, political scientist and author "This focus on money and power may do wonders in the
marketplace, but it creates a tremendous crisis in our society.
People who have spent all day learning how to sell themselves and
to manipulate others are in no position to form lasting friendships
or intimate relationships... Many Americans hunger for a different
kind of society -- one based on principles of caring, ethical and
spiritual sensitivity, and communal solidarity. Their need for
meaning is just as intense as their need for economic
security." -- Michael Lerner, journalist " We must teach our children ... to resolve their conflicts with
words, not weapons. " -- President Clinton (after the Colorado school shootings)
urging young people not to resort to violence, while he continued
NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, killing thousands of innocent
civilians, including children. " The greatest crime since World War II has been U.S. foreign
policy. " -- Ramsey Clark, former U.S. Attorney General " One may well ask: How can you advocate breaking some laws and
obeying others? The answer lies in the fact that there are two
types of laws: just and unjust. I would be the first to advocate
obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral
responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral
responsibility to disobey unjust laws." -- Martin Luther King, Jr. "Bringing democratic control to the conduct of foreign policy
requires a struggle merely to force the issue onto the public
agenda." -- Eric Alterman, author " It doesn't take a genius to pump up the GNP [of a developing
country] by burning down rainforests, using slave labor and social
repression to keep things in place. " -- Hazel Henderson, economist "Increases in prison spending [in the U.S.] average twice as
high as increases in education spending." -- National Criminal Justice Commission, February, 1996 "From 1984 to 1994, Califomia built 21 prisons, and only one
state university...the prison system realized a 209% increase in
funding, compared to a 15% increase in state university
funding." -- The Justice Policy Institute (1996) "In many cities, about half of young African-American men are
under the control of the criminal justice system." -- National Criminal Justice Commission, February 1996 "More than I00 countries have now abolished the death penalty in
law or practice. . .Against the global trend towards abolition,
however, the U.S.A. has relentlessly increased its rate of
executions and the number of crimes punishable by death." -- Amnesty International "United States of America- Rights for
All," October 1998 "It is a paradox that the nation that did so much to articulate
and codify human rights in its foundation documents has so
consistently resisted the effective functioning of an international
framework to protect these principles and values." -- Amnesty International - "United States of America-Rights for
All", October 1998 "No other democratic country in the world denies as many people
- in absolute or proportional terms - the right to vote because of
felony convictions." -- Human Rights Watch - "World Report 1999, United States" " How fortunate for governments that the people they administer
don't think." -- Adolph Hitler "You know the one thing that is wrong in this country? Everyone
gets a chance to have their fair say." -- President Bill Clinton "The U.S.A. has been quick to voice its condemnation of human
rights violations in some other countries and to stress, by
contrast, the wealth of civil and political rights which it
guarantees within its borders ... however, it has failed to deliver
these rights to many of its people and there are signs that, unless
urgent steps are taken, these rights will be further eroded." -- Amnesty International "We stand for the maintenance of private property... We shall
protect free enterprise as the most expedient, or rather the sole
possible economic order." -- Adolph Hitler "The corporations of America today effectively oversee the
Congress, and the regulatory agencies and indeed the presidency
itself." -- E.L. Doctorow, The Nation magazine, August 7/14, 2000,
p13 "War is the biggest business in America." -- Jim Garrison, New Orleans District Attorney, prosecutor in
the 1967 JFK assassination conspiracy trial - from his jury
summation in the Oliver Stone movie JFK " When do these corporations begin to lose their credibility?
They fought Social Security, Medicare, auto safety. They fought
every social justice movement in this country." -- Ralph Nader, The Nation magazine, July 17, 2000, p14 "His forces executed or "disappeared" 3,197 people. Tens of
thousands were tortured, hundreds of thousands were forced into
exile. Pinochet destroyed the constitution, the parliament, the
political parties, the trade unions, and the free universities.
" -- Saul Landau, author, about US-backed Augusto Pinochet's
impact on Chile, The Progressive, May 2000, p24 " The state is the executive committee of the ruling class." -- Karl Marx " If there are men in this country big enough to own the
government of the United States, they are going to own it." -- Woodrow Wilson, presidential candidate,1912 -The Nation
magazine, July 3, 2000, p5 " The U.S. President has been largely refashioned as a
high-level trade representative for the transnationals." -- The Nation magazine, July 17, 2000, p26 "War is caused by elites acting in what they take to be their
own interests, institutional violence promulgated by ruling groups
for personal gain." -- The Nation magazine, May 15, 2000, p20 "Around the world, the messaage received is that, whoever wins
[the U.S. election], expect only more of the same - national
narcissism disguised as altruism, corporate appeasement, and the
arbitrary use of U.S. military and economic might." -- Greg Guma, Toward Freedom magazine, June / July 2000, p2 "Each party [Democratic and Republican] has assumed the mantle
of fiscal responsibility while accusing the other of reckless
spending. Yet both parties have proposed irresponsibly high levels
of military spending at the expense of programs that meet the needs
of society's most vulnerable members." -- Friends Committee on National Legislation newsletter,
December 1999. p1 "Pinochet is the most despised figure in Chile with polls
showing that upwards of 70% want to see him stand trial." -- Z magazine, May 2000, p3 "War is caused by elites acting in what they take to be their
own interests, institutional violence promulgated by ruling groups
for personal gain." -- The Nation magazine, May 15, 2000, p20 " We lack a Nuremberg to judge the economic order imposed upon
us, where every three years more men, women and children die of
hunger and preventable diseases than died in the Second World War.
" -- Fidel Castro, at a summit of Third World countries in Havana,
April 12, 2000 "In the absence of a coherent alternative, the transnational
corporations carry on inexorably. Increasingly flagless and
stateless, they weave global webs of production, commerce, culture
and finance virtually unopposed. They expand, invest and grow,
concentrating ever more wealth in a limited number of hands. They
work in coalition to influence local, national and international
institutions and laws. And together with the governments of their
home countries in Europe, North America and Japan, as well as
international institutions such as the World Trade Organization,
the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and increasingly,
the United Nations, they are molding an international system in
which they can trade and invest even more freely--a world where
they are less and less accountable to the cultures, communities and
nation-states in which they operate. Underpinning this effort is
not the historical inevitability of an evolving, enlightened
civilization, but rather the unavoidable reality of the overriding
corporate purpose: the maximization of profits." -- The Corporate Planet, Ecology and Politics in the Age of
Globalization (Sierra Club Books, 1997) " The problem in defense is how far you can go [in military
spending] without destroying from within what you are trying to
defend from without. " -- President Dwight Eisenhower, January 18, 1953 " Corporations have taken over the government and turned it
against its own people." -- Ralph Nader, The Progressive magazine, April 2000, p39 "In many respects, we now live in a society that is only
formally democratic, as the great mass of citizens have minimal say
on the major public issues of the day, and such issues are scarcely
debated at all in any meaningful sense in the electoral arena. In
our society, corporations and the wealthy enjoy a power every bit
as immense as that assumed to have been enjoyed by the lords and
royalty of feudal times." -- Robert W. McChesney, author - Rich Media, Poor Democracy "Hitherto acceptable norms of human conduct do not apply. If the
United States is to survive, long-standing American concepts of
'fair play' must be reconsidered. We must develop effective
espionage and counterespionage services and must learn to subvert,
sabotage and destroy our enemies by more clever, more
sophisticated, and more effective methods than those used against
us. It may become necessary that the American people be made
acquainted with, understand and support this fundamentally
repugnant philosophy." -- World War II Gen. James Doolittle explaining in a secret 1954
report to President Eisenhower why CIA covert operations were
needed and what they entailed. From Katherine S. Olmstead's book -
Challenging the Secret Government, 1996 " Government exists for one purpose: to make things better for
all people." -- Eleanor Roosevelt (from her 1992 biography by Blance Wiesen
Cook) " On November 1, the General Assembly of the United Nations
voted to reaffirm the Outer Space Treaty-the fundamental
international law that establishes that space should be reserved
for peaceful uses... Only two nations declined to support this
bill-the United States and Israel. " -- The Progressive magazine, January 2000, p27 " Society exists to serve the social needs of people, not the
productivity needs of capital. Those two needs are in basic
conflict - a conflict of class interest." -- David Bacon, Z magazine January 2000. p36 " Fewer and fewer members of Congress today have any real
interest in national security issues..." -- Senator John McCain October 1999, National Journal (from The
Defense Monitor - Center for Defense Information newsletter 1999,
p6) "Since it was created in 1995, the WTO has ruled that every
environmental, health, or safety policy it has reviewed is an
illegal trade barrier." -- Public Citizen report, titled 'Whose Trade Organization?
Corporate Globalization and the Erosion of Democracy." (from The
Progressive magazine, January 2000, p 8 "The rules of the world economy serve the interests of the
multinational companies; they do not serve the interests of the
vast majority of the people on this planet." -- The Progressive magazine, January 2000, p10 "True there were no flashing guns, no bombs, no killings.
Revolution . . . doesn't need violence. The general strike, as
practiced in Seattle, is of itself the weapon of revolution, all
the more dangerous because quiet. To succeed, it must suspend
everything, stop the entire life stream of a community....That is
to say, it puts the government out of operation. And that is all
there is to revolt-no matter how achieved." -- Mayor of Seattle, Washington, during the city's general
strike in 1919 (from an article by Howard Zinn in The Progressive
magazine, January 2000, p20) "... the most formidable military machine depends ultimately on
the obedience of its soldiers, ... the most powerful corporation
becomes helpless when its workers stop working, when its customers
refuse to buy its products. The strike, the boycott, the refusal to
serve, the ability to paralyze the functioning of a complex social
structure-these remain potent weapons against the most fearsome
state or corporate power." -- Howard Zinn in The Progressive magazine, January 2000,
p20 "There are buried truths in our history which continue to insist
themselves back into the light, perhaps, because they hold within
them the nearly dead embers of what we were once intended to be as
a nation." -- from a fund-raising letter by Rev. James M. Lawson and actor
Mike Farrell seeking support for a fuller investigation of the
assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., from American Dispatches
magazine, Feb 2000, p17 " There is a great deal of money to be made by wrecking the
Canadian system of Medicare (universal health care). All the excess
costs of an American-style payment system represent higher incomes
for both the insurance industry and providers of care. " -- Public Citizen's Health Research Group newsletter, December
1999, p8 "To provide its happy people with perpetual fun is now the
deepest purpose of Western civilization." -- Jeremy Seabrook, Third World Network Features, Penang,
Malaysia, May 1999 " Everyone's values are defined by what they will tolerate when
it is done to others. " -- William Greider, One World Ready or Not, p336 " A society unwilling to confront its social reality in a timely
manner is doomed to experience the consequences in later
generations and possibly forever." -- William Greider, One World Ready or Not, p383 " The nation-state is not going to disappear anytime soon for
the good reason that citizens need some way to assert control over
multinational corporations and capital. " -- William Greider, One World Ready or Not, p471 "One result of U.S. political and economic leadership at the end
of the millennium is a society of superfluous consumption that is
reaching levels that seem not only immoral but absurd as well." -- Lorenzo Meyer, journalist, Reforma (Mexico City), Aug 5,
1999 "In a dictatorship, censorship in used; in a democracy,
manipulation." -- Ryszard Kapuscinski, journalist, Le Monde diplomatique
(Paris), August 1999 " The power of money in elections, the increased concentration
and conservative bias of the media, the resurgent strength and
aggressiveness of capital and finance in a globalizing economy, and
the weakening of labor, provide the structural background .. for
the abandonment of the rudiments of social deocracy [in
America]." -- Edward S. Herman, Z magazine, Nov 1999, p44 " The range of debate between the dominant U.S. [political]
parties tends to closely resemble the range of debate within the
business class. " -- Robert McChesney, author and media critic, from the book
Corporate Media and the Threat to Democracy, published by Seven
Stories Press First Addition and Open Media " ... no democratically achieved environmental, health or food
safety law challenged at tht WTO has ever been upheld. All have
been declared barriers to trade. " -- Lori Wallach / Michelle Sforza, Public Citizen - In These
Times, Nov. 1999, p22 ... stopping the WTO is at best, a first step toward creating
rules for the gobal economy that tame corporate power and protect
popular aims and democratic processes. " -- David Moberg - In These Times magazine, November 1999,
p22 " One of every three black men in America today is in prison, in
jail, on probation or on parole. " -- In These Times magazine, November 1999, p9 " In 1995 ... African-Americans made up 13 percent of the [U.S.]
population and 15 percent of all drug users, yet they comprised 33
percent of people arrested, 53 percent of those convicted and 74
percent of those sentenced to prison for drug possession. " -- Marc Mauer - book Race to Incarcerate, In These Times,
November 1999, p9 "Colombia is now the third largest recipient of U.S. military
aid after Israel and Egypt. Direct U.S. military intervention looms
on the horizon for this region (Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador,
Peru), which exports more oil to the U.S. than the entire Middle
East. " -- CovertAction Quarterly magazine, Fall/Winter 1999, p16 "In the media, the world is turned upside down. The contras and
the KLA are "democratizers"; the lethal sanctions against Iraq
exist to deliver its people from their dictator; the destruction of
Yugoslavia through aerial bombardment of civilians and their
infrastructure is a "humanitarian intervention." -- CovertAction Quarterly magazine, Fall/Winter 1999, p65 " Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel. " -- Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) English author, literary scholar
and social critic " Sports plays a societal role in engendering jingoist and
chauvinist attitudes. They're designed to organize a community to
be committed to their gladiators." -- Noam Chomsky (The Progressive magazine, September 1999,
p34) " If you liked El Salvador, you're going to love Colombia. It's
the same death squads, the same military aid, and the same
whitewash from Washington. " -- Carlos Salinas, Amnesty International's advocacy director for
Latin America and the Caribbean (The Progressive magazine,
September 1999, p8) "The major media are large corporations, owned by and
interlinked with even larger conglomerates. Like other
corporations, they sell a product to a market. The market is
advertisers - that is, other businesses. The product is audiences,
[and] for the elite media, [they're] relatively privileged
audiences. So we have major corporations selling fairly wealthy and
privileged audiences to other businesses. Not surprisingly, the
picture of the world presented reflects the narrow and biased
interests and values of the sellers, the buyers and the
product." -- Noam Chomsky (from Take the Rich Off Welfare - Odonian Press,
p133) " Suharto was given a green light by the United States to do
what we did [in East Timor]. We sent the Indonesian generals
everything they needed to fight a major war against somebody who
doesn't have any guns ... " -- Philip Liechty, CIA desk officer in Jakarta, Indonesia in
1975 - told to Australian journalist John Pilger - Covert Action
Quarterly, Fall / Winter 1999 " The propaganda system allows the U.S. Ieadership to commit
crimes without limit and with no suggestion of misbehavior or
criminality; in fact, major war criminals like Henry Kissinger
appear regularly on TV to comment on the crimes of the derivative
butchers. " Edward Herman, Z magazine Dec 1999 p38 " Because of its power and global interests U.S. leaders have
committed crimes as a matter of course and structural necessity. A
strict application of international law would ... have given every
U.S. president of the past 50 years Nuremberg treatment. " -- Edward Herman, Z magazine Dec 1999 p38 " When the IMF and the World Bank force a country to cut wages,
lay off workers, produce for export instead of their own people,
and sell off public property to cronies for less than its value,
that's called "economic reform." -- Robert Naiman, Toward Freedom magazine, November 1999, p2 " U.S. Ieaders commit war crimes as a matter of institutional
necessity, as their imperial role calls for keeping subordinate
peoples in their proper place and assuring a "favorable climate of
investment" everywhere. They do this by using their economic power,
but also (by means of "bombs bursting in the air" and) by
supporting Diem, Mobutu, Pinochet, Suharto, Savimbi, Marcos,
Fujimori, Salinas, and scores of similar leaders. War crimes also
come easily because U.S. Ieaders consider themselves to be the
vehicles of a higher morality and truth and can operate in
violation of law without cost. It is also immensely helpful that
their mainstream media agree that their country is above the law
and will support and rationalize each and every venture and the
commission of war crimes. " -- Edward Herman, Z magazine Dec 1999 p41 "Imperialism today is taking place in the context of...the
'universalization' of capitalism. It is not now primarily a matter
of territorial conquest or direct military or colonial control. It
is not now a matter of capitalist powers invading non-capitalist
powers in order to bleed them dry directly and by brute force. Now
it is more a matter of ensuring that the forces of the capitalist
market prevail in every corner of the world (even if this means
marginalizing and impoverishing parts of it), and of manipulating
those market forces to the advantage of the most powerful
capitalist economies and the United States in particular." ...
"Military force is still central to the imperialist project, in
some ways more than ever." -- Political scientist Ellen Meiksins-Wood, Z magazine Nov 1999,
p26 " The Clinton administration is revamping NATO and redefining
its mission in order to make it an instrument of American world
engagement as peacekeeper, peacemaker, and policeman... " -- William Pfaff, columnist, Z magazine, Nov 1999, p 29 " The U.S. public is depoliticized, poorly informed on foreign
affairs ... and strongly patriotic in the face of a struggle with
"another Hitler". Even though the public is normally averse to war,
even with modest propaganda efforts ... the public can be quickly
transformed into enthusiastic supporters of war." -- Edward S. Herman, economist, author, and US media and foreign
policy critic, Z magazine June, 1999 " I am astonished each time I come to the U.S. by the ignorance
of a high percentage of the population, which knows almost nothing
about Latin America or about the world. It's quite blind and deaf
to anything that may happen outside the frontiers of the U.S." -- Eduardo Galeano, Latin American writer and historian - The
Progressive, July 1999 " [T]here seems to be nothing to prevent the transnational
corporations taking possession of the planet and subjecting
humanity to the dictatorship of capital.... In order to crush any
thought of organized resistance to the supporters of the new world
order, tremendous police and military forces are being used to
establish a doctrine of repression...." -- Christian la Brie, Le Monde Diplomatique (Paris) May 1999,
(Transatlantic Wheeling and Dealing) " It is only when a society shares caring values that its people
can feel secure. " -- Michael Lerner, from the book The Politics of Meaning, 1997,
p90 " The cost of being presented as a " responsible and serious
candidate" by the media [is] usually to show fundamental agreement
with the existing distribution of wealth and power. " -- Michael Lerner, from the book The Politics of Meaning, 1997,
p99 " Corporations care very much about maintaining the myth that
government is necessarily ineffective, except when it is spending
money on the military-industrial complex, building prisons, or
providing infrastructural support for the business sector." -- Michael Lerner, from the book The Politics of Meaning, 1997,
p315 Every human being is a unique individual. Any attempt to replace the personal conscience by a collective
conscience does violence to the individual and is the first step toward totalitarianism.
-- Hermann Hesse - Author (1877-1962)
" The purpose of MAI-type agreements is to remove virtually all
barriers to investment by corporations. Foreign investors would be
required to be treated the same as domestic investors... So while
the MAI-and now its clones-would threaten nearly every public
sector of national economies such as health care, education, and
culture, government spending for the military weapons development
and production, and direct support for weapons corporations are
excluded from the liberalizing demands of such an agreement. NAFTA
mechanisms, as well as the WTO, IMF, and World Bank are totally /
undemocratic, with no access by the people. They are run by the
nations with the greatest wealth, the U.S. in the first place-with
the corporations and banks pulling the strings... So it is clear
that the new world order of the free market promises further
erosion of the U.N., more wars, destruction of sovereignty,
elimination of social programs for the people, increasing poverty
and joblessness, and the demise of democracy. " -- Karen Talbot, CovertAction Quarterly, Fall / Winter, 1999,
p37 " When people feel themselves powerless to change fundamental
aspects of their world, they begin to make accommadations with
"reallities" that they actually detest." -- Michael Lerner, from the book The Politics of Meaning, 1997,
p311 " Society's dominant discourse shapes not only its politics but
the way people think about their personal lives and choices. Just
as John F. Kennedy helped legitimize a discourse of idealism that
gave impetus to the social movements of the 1960s, so Ronald Reagan
managed to legitimize a discourse of selfishness and insensitivity
that has had profound social consequences ... Shifting society's
discourse - from one of selfishness and cynicism to one of idealism
and caring - is the first and most important political goal ... in
the next several decades. " -- Michael Lerner, from the book The Politics of Meaning, 1997,
p66 " Few trends could so thoroughly undermine the very foundations
of our free society as the acceptance by corporate officials of a
social responsibility other than to make as much money for their
stockholders as possible. " -- Neo-liberal economist Milton Friedman in his 1962 book
Capitalism and Freedom (Public Citizen's Health Research
newsletter, December 1999, p12) " There is a great deal of money to be made by wrecking the
Canadian system of Medicare (universal health care). All the excess
costs of an American-style payment system represent higher incomes
for both the insurance industry and providers of care. " -- Public Citizen's Health Research Group newsletter, December
1999, p8 " We're going to fight in space, we're going to fight from space
and we're going to fight into space... We'll expand into these two
missions - space control and space force application - because they
will become increasingly important. We will engage terrestrial
targets someday - ships, airplanes, land targets - from space. We
will engage targets in space from space. " -- General Joseph Ashy, US Space Command's commander-in-chief,
1996 (The Nation magazine, Dec 27, 1999, p8) " The purpose of commercial [media] is to induce mass sales. For
mass sales there must be a mass norm ... By suppressing the
individual, the unique, the industry ... assures itself a standard
product for mass consumption." -- John Whiting, KPFA/Pacifica Folio (North Bay), December
1999 " Like blackbirds in flight, packs of reporters darken the sky,
moving in swarms at the same speed and in predictable trajectory.
When one lands, they all land. When one leaves, they all leave. The
programmers and channel controllers from all the stations are part
of the same well-paid elite, steeped in the same values, committed
to the mission of maximizing audience share and profits. They are
chosen for their ability to play the game and not challenge the
audience with too many controversial ideas or critical
perspectives. It's no surprise that they circulate easily within
the commanding heights of media power, moving from company to
company and job to job. A kind of group think corporate consensus,
steeped in market logic and deeply inbred by an un-brave news
culture, breeds conscience-free conformity and self-censorship.
This makes frightening sense in a globalized economy where
consumerism is more desired than active citizenship, where power is
increasingly concentrated and the public is increasingly unwelcome
in a public discourse defined by the powerful. If your goal is to
numb people and drive them away from active participation, then TV
as "weapon of mass distraction" and wall to wall entertainment
makes sense. Shut up and shop is the now the message, one that
makes sense to advertiser dominated media outlets... " -- Danny Schechter, Dung on all their Houses, Toward Freedom
magazine, December / January 2000 "There isn't a trick in the racketeering bag that the
military gang is blind to. It has its 'finger men" (to point out
enemies), its "muscle men" (to destroy enemies), its "brain guys"
(to plan war preparations), and a "Big Boss" (supernationalistic
capitalism). "It may seem odd for me, a military man to adopt such a
comparison. Truthfulness compels me to do so. I spent 33 years and
four months in active military service as a memeber of our
country's most agile military force -- the Marine Corps. I served
in all commissioned ranks from second lieutenant to Major General.
And during that period I spent more of my time being a high-class
muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the bankers.
In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for captialism. "I suspected I was just a part of a racket at the time. Now I
am sure of it. Like all members of the military profession I never
had an original thought until I left the service. My mental
faculties remained in suspended animation while I obeyed the orders
of the higher-ups. This is typical with everyone in the military
service. Thus I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for
American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and CUba a
decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues
in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American
republics for the benefit of Wall Street. The record of
racketeering is long. I helped purify Nicaragua for the
international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-12. I brought
light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in
1916. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that the Standard Oil
went its way unmolested. "During those years, I had, as the boys in the back room
would say, a swell racket. I was rewarded with honors, medals and
promotion. Looking back on it, I feel I might have given Al Capone
a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in
three city districts. I operated on three continents." -- General Smedley Butler, former US Marine Corps
Commandant,1935 "I believe that if we had and would keep our dirty, bloody,
dollar-soaked fingers out of the business of these nations so full
of depressed, exploited people, they will arrive at a solution of
their own.... And if unfortunately their revolution must be of the
violent type because the "haves" refuse to share with the
"have-nots" by any peaceful method, at least what they get will be
their own, and not the American style, which they don't want and
above all don't want crammed down their throats by Americans." -- General David Sharp, former US Marine Commandant,1966 "For the last fifty years we've been supporting right-wing
governments, and that is a puzzlement to me...I don't understand
what there is in the American character...that almost
automatically, even when we have a liberal President, we support
fascist dictatorships or are tolerant towards them." -- William Shirer, writer "I dream that someday the United States will be on the side of
the peasants in some civil war. I dream that we will be the ones
who will help the poor overthrow the rich, who will talk about land
reform and education and health facilities for everyone, and that
when the Red Cross or Amnesty International comes to count the
bodies and take the testimony of women raped, that our side won't
be the heavies." -- Richard Cohen, columnist "The killing by a Jew of a non-Jew, i.e. a Palestinian, is
considered essentially a good deed, and Jews should therefore have
no compunction about it. --Yitzhak Ginsburg, "Five General Religious Duties Which Lie
Behind the Act of the Saintly, Late Rabbi Baruch Goldstein, May his
Blood be Avenged" "We need not deceive ourselves that we can afford today
the luxury of altruism and world-benefaction.... We should cease to
talk about vague and unreal objectives such as human rights, the
raising of the living standards, and democratization. The day is
not far off when we are going to have to deal in straight power
concepts. The less we are then hampered by idealistic slogans, the
better." -- George Keenan, head of U.S. State Department Policy
Planning Staff, 1948 "One of the great attractions of patriotism -- it fulfills our
worst wishes. In the person of our nation we are able, vicariously,
to bully and cheat. Bully and cheat, what's more, with a feeling
that we are profoundly virtuous." -- Aldous Huxley, writer "As human rights conditions deteriorate, factors affecting the
"climate of investment," like the tax laws and labor repression,
improve from the viewpoint of the multinational corporation. This
suggests an important line of causation -- military dictatorships
tend to improve the investment climate.... The multinational
corporate community and the U.S. government are very sensitive to
this factor. Military dictators enter into a tacit joint venture
arrangement with Free World leaders: They will keep the masses
quiet, maintain an open door to multinational investment, and
provide bases and otherwise serve as loyal clients. In exchange,
they will be aided and protected against their own people, and
allowed to loot public property. -- Edward Herman, author "Our men . . . have killed to exterminate men, women, children,
prisoners and captives, active insurgents and suspected people from
lads of 10 up.... Our soldiers have pumped salt water into men to
"make them talk," and have taken prisoners people who held up their
hands and peacefully surrendered, and an hour later. . . stood them
on a bridge and shot them down one by one, to drop into the water
below and float down, as examples to those who found their
bullet-loaded corpses." -- Philadelphia Ledger newspaper, 1901 in a dispatch from its
Manila [Philippines] correspondent during the US war with Spain "You never hear of any disturbances in Northern Luzon
[Philippines]... because there isn't anybody there to rebel. That
country was marched over and cleared out.... The good lord in
Heaven only knows the number of Filipinos that were put under the
ground; our soldiers took no prisoners; they kept no records; they
simply swept the country and wherever or however they could get
hold of a Filipino they killed him." -- A Republican member of Congress in an eyewitness report on
the US invasion of the Philippines, 1899. "Many members of her family were killed. She personally saw
children around the age of eight being raped, and then [the
soldiers] would take their bayonets and make mincemeat out of them.
With their guns they would shoot at their faces...." The Army would
cut people up and put soap and coffee in their stomachs as a
mocking, [the woman said]. They would slit the stomach of a
pregnant woman and take the child out, as if they were taking eggs
out of an iguana. That is what I saw." -- Representative Barbara Mikulski (now a US Senator) relating
the story of a peasant woman, a victim of the Mazote massacre in El
Salvador in 1981, where a US trained elite battalion killed more
than 1,000 people. "He may be a son-of-a-bitch, but at least he's our
son-of-a-bitch." -- President Franklin Roosevelt -- justifying support for
Nicaragua's dictator Anastasio Somoza: "Was there ever any domination that did not appear natural to
those who possessed it?" -- John Stuart Mill, 19th century philosopher "History is written by those who win and those who
dominate." -- Edward Said, literary critic "Fifty years of lies, fifty years of injustice, fifty years of
frustration. This is a history of people starving to death, living
in misery. For fifty years the same people had all the power, all
the money, all the jobs all the education, all the
opportunities." -- Jose Napoleon Duarte, President of El Salvador 1980, on why
guerrillas were fighting the government "Tortures range from simple but brutal blows from a truncheon to
electric shocks. Often the torture is more refined: the end of a
reed is placed in the anus of a naked man hanging suspended
downwards on the pau de arara [parrot's perch] and a piece of
cotton soaked in petrol is lit at the other end of the reed.
Pregnant women have been forced to watch their husbands being
tortured. Other wives have been hung naked beside their husbands
and given electric shocks on the sexual parts of their body, while
subjected to the worst kind of obscenities. Children have been
tortured before their parents and vice versa. The length of
sessions depends upon the resistance capacity of the victims and
have sometimes continued for days at a time." -- Amnesty International, describing the torture suffered by
Brazilians at the hands of the military and the US-run Office of
Public Safety (OPS) in the 1960s "What the United States has done to the country [Cambodia] is
greater evil than we have done to any country in the world, and
wholly without reason, except for our own benefit to fight against
the Vietnamese." -- California Congressman Pete McClosky following a visit to
Cambodia in the 1970s " One in 10 chance perhaps, but save Chile! ... not concerned
with risks involved ... $10,000,000 available, more if necessary
... make the economy scream." -- CIA Director Richard Helms, discussing plan to destabilize
government of Chile under democractically-elected President
Salvador Allende "The level of pesticide spraying is the highest in the world,
and little concern is shown for the people who live near the cotton
fields ... 30 or 40 people a day are treated for pesticide
poisoning, death can come within hours, or a longer lasting liver
malfunction ... the amounts of DDT in mothers' milk in Guatemala
are the highest in the Western world. "It's very simple," explained
a cotton planter, "more insecticide means more cotton, fewer
insects mean higher profits." In an attack, guerrillas destroyed 22
crop-duster planes; the planes were quickly replaced thanks to the
genius of American industry ... and all the pesticide you could
ever want, from Monsanto Chemical Company of St. Louis." -- New York Times, 1977, describing pesticide use in Guatemala
under US-supported military dictatoship "Fuck your Parliament and your Constitution. We pay a lot of
good American dollars to the Greeks, Mr. Ambassador. If your Prime
Minister gives me talk about Democracy, Parliament and
Constitutions, he, his Parliament, and his Constitution may not
last very long." -- President Lyndon Johnson to Greek Ambassador, 1970s "People had been mercilessly tortured simply for being in
possession of a leaflet criticizing the regime. Brutality and
cruelty on one side, frustration and helplessness on the other.
They were being tortured and there was nothing to be done. It was
like listening to a friend who has cancer. What comfort, what wise
reflection can someone who is comfortable give. Torture might last
a short time, but the person will never be the same." -- James Becket, American attorney, in Greece for Amnesty
International, describing the torture suffered by Greeks under
US-supported dictator Papdopoulos in the 1960s "You make yourself ridiculous by thinking you can do
anything. The world is divided in two. There are the communists on
that side and on this side the free world. The Russians and the
Americans, no one else. What are we. Americans. Behind me there is
the government, behind the government is NATO, behind NATO is the
U.S. You can't fight us, we are Americans." -- Athens [Greece] inspector Basil Lambrou, 1960s, speaking to
prisoners before torturing them, during the US-supported
Papadopoulos dictatorship "We love your adherence to democratic principle." -- V.P. George Bush to Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos "If justice requires the consent of the governed, then our
[U.S.] whole past record of expansion is a crime." -- Henry Cabot Lodge "Why should we be worried about the death squads? They're
bumping off the commies, our enemies. I'd give them more power.
Hell, l'd get some cartridges if I could, and everyone else would
too ... Why should we criticize them? The death squad-I'm for it
... Shit! There's no question we can't wait until Reagan gets in.
We hope Carter falls in the ocean real quick ... We all feel that
he [Reagan] is our savior. " -- Testimony of Fred Sherwood (CIA pilot during the overthrow of
the Arbenz government in 1954 who settled in Guatemala and became
president of the American Chamber of Commerce), speaking in
Guatemala, September 1980 "The Guatemalan revolution is entering its third decade. Ever
since the government of Jacobo Arbenz was overthrown in 1954, the
majority of the Guatemalan people have been seeking a way to move
the country towards solving the same problems which were present
then and have only worsened over time. The counterrevolution, put
in motion by the U.S. Government and those domestic sectors
committed to retaining every single one of their privileges,
dispersed and disorganized the popular and democratic forces.
However, it did not resolve any of the problems which had first
given rise to demands for economic, social and political change.
These demands have been raised again and again in the last quarter
century, by any means that seemed appropriate at the time, and have
received each time the same repressive response as in 1954." -- Statement by the Guatemalan Army of the Poor, 1981 "The actual state of violence composed of the
malnutrition, ignorance, sickness and hunger of the vast majority
of the Guatemalan population, is the direct result of a capitalist
system that makes the defenseless Indian compete against the
powerful and well-armed landowner." -- Statement by Father Thomas Melville, in Guateamala, 1968 "A world in which others controlled the course of their own
development ... would be a world in which the American system would
be seriously endangered." -- Benjamin Cohen "The national interest is not to protect individual
American firms but to preserve a system of business ... The
American empire expresses its presence and exercises its influence
through the capitalist mode of operation for which it keeps as much
of the world "open" a possible." -- Henry Pachter "Americans cannot teach democracy to the world until they
restore their own." -- William Greider "Democracy was being saved from Communism by getting rid
of democracy." -- Newsweek magazine about the Dominican Republic prior to
overthrow of elected President Juan Bosch in1963 "It's a hard decision, but we think the price ... is worth
it." -- Secretary of State Madelaine Albright talking about Iraqi
children starving and dying as a result of the US embargo of food
and medicine "They are going to arrest us all and execute us for
Shell." **** Major Paul Okuntimo, Rivers State Internal Security
Task Force, Nigeria* "Shell's operations are impossible unless
ruthless military operations are undertaken for smooth economic
activities to commence." -- Ken Saro-Wiwa, after reading a secret Nigerian military memo
- May 1994. He was executed in 1995. "No one cared, as long as they were Communists, that they were
being butchered. No one was getting very worked up about it." -- Howard Federspiel, the Indonesia expert at the State
Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research, describing the US
supported overthrow of Sukarno in 1965 and the associated genocide
of 500,000 - 1,000,000 Indonesians "It really was a big help to the army. They probably
killed a lot of people, and I probably have a lot of blood on my
hands, but that's not all bad." -- Robert Martens, former member of the US Embassy's
political section in Jakarta, in 1990, discussing the 1965
US-backed coup in Indonesia "Do you know what the head of the Iranian Army told one of our
people? He said the Army was in good shape, thanks to U.S. aid --
it was now capable of coping with the civilian population. That
Army isn't going to fight the Russians. It's planning to fight the
Iranian people." -- Senator Hubert Humphrey "We always obeyed the law. Isn't that what you do in
America? Even if you don't agree with a law personally, you still
obey it. Otherwise life would be chaos." -- Gertrude Scholtz-Klink, chief of the Women's Bureau under
Hitler explaining the Jewish policy of the Nazis "Whenever any form of government becomes destructive of
... [Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness], it is the right
of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new
government." -- Thomas Jefferson (and signed by one of my ancestors, Dr.
Josiah Bartlett). "Conceit, arrogance and egotism are the essentials of
patriotism.... Patriotism assumes that our globe is divided into
little spots, each one surrounded by an iron gate. Those who had
the fortune of being born on some particular spot, consider
themselves better, nobler, grander, more intelligent than the
living beings inhabiting any other spot. It is, therefore, the duty
of everyone living on that chosen spot to fight, kill, and die in
the attempt to impose his superiority upon all others." -- Socialist and feminist Emma Goldman lecturing on
patriotism "The time is past when good men can remain silent, when
obedience can segregate men from public risk, when the poor can die
without defense." -- Catholic priest-poet Daniel Berrigan "A common and natural result of an undue respect for law
is, that you may see a file of soldiers, colonels, captains,
corporals, privates, powder-monkeys, and all, marching in admirable
order over hill and dale to the wars, against their wills, ay,
against their common sense and consciences, which makes it very
steep marching indeed, and produces a palpitation of the
heart." -- Henry David Thoreau, in his famous essay "Civil
Disobedience" "The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on
certain occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive. It will
often be exercised when wrong, but better so than not to be
exercised at all." -- Thomas Jefferson "... what the Agency [CIA] does is ordered by the President and
the NSC [National Security Council]. The Agency neither makes
decisions on policy nor acts on its own account. It is an
instrument of the President." -- Philip Agee, CIA Diary, p37 "... Secret CIA operations constitute the usually unseen efforts
to shore up unjust, unpopular, minority governments, always with
the hope that overt military intervention ... will not be
necessary. The more successful CIA operations are, the more remote
overt intervention becomes, and the more remote become reforms.
Latin America in the 1960s is all the proof one needs." -- Philip Agee, CIA Diary, p561 "But what counter-insurgency really comes down to is the
protection of the capitalists back in America, their property and
their privileges. US national security, as preached by US leaders,
is the security of the capitalist class in the US, not the security
of the rest of the people." -- Philip Agee, CIA Diary, p562 "A considerable proportion of the developed world's prosperity
rests on paying the lowest possible prices for the poor countries'
primary products and on exporting high-cost capital and finished
goods to those countries. Continuation of this kind of prosperity
requires continuation of the relative gap between developed and
underdeveloped countries - it means keeping poor people poor.
Increasingly, the impoverished masses are understanding that the
prosperity of the developed countries and of the privileged
minorities in their own countries is founded on their poverty." -- Philip Agee, CIA Diary, p595 I do not believe that man will be "better" in the future; I do not believe that man is ever better or worse;
he is always the same. But at certain times the demonic erupts into mankind not only secretly, among criminals
and psychopaths, but openly and on a large scale; it takes on a political life and sweeps whole nations off their feet.
-- Hermann Hesse - Author (1877-1962)
"American capitalism, based as it is on exploitation of the
poor, with its fundamental motivation in personal greed, simply
cannot survive without force - without a secret police force. Now,
more than ever, each of us is forced to make a conscious choice
whether to support the system of minority comfort and privilege
with all its security apparatus and repression, or whether to
struggle for real equality of opportunity and fair distribution of
benefits for all of society, in the domestic as well as the
international order. It's harder now not to realize that there are
two sides, harder not to understand each, and harder not to
recognize that like it or not we contribute day in and day out
either to the one side or to the other." -- Philip Agee, CIA Diary, p597 "The immiseration of the majority is an integral part of the
Free World package for the Third World, the unsavory aspects of the
package -- the terror, the direct spoilation of people and
resources, and western complicity -- must be rationalized and, as
far as possible, kept under the rug." -- Edward S. Herman, economist, author, and US media and foreign
policy critic " Americans cannot teach democracy to the world until they
restore their own." -- William Greider, journalist and author "The achievements of past struggles and the aspirations of an
entire nation are [being] undone and erased.... No Agent Orange or
steel pellet bombs, no napalm, no toxic chemicals: a new phase of
economic and social (rather than physical) destruction has
unfolded. The seemingly neutral and scientific tools of
macro-economic policy constitute a non-violent instrument of
recolonization and impoverishment." Michel Chossudovsky, economist
"The crimes of the U.S. throughout the world have been systematic,
constant, clinical, remorseless, and fully documented but nobody
talks about them." -- Harold Pinter, English dramatist " America's inability to come to terms with revolutionary change
in the The Third World...has created our biggest international
problems in the postwar era. But the root of the problem is not, as
many Americans persist in believing, the relentless spread of
communism. Rather, it is our own difficulty in understanding that
Third World revolutions are primarily nationalist, not communist.
Nationalism, not capitalism or communism, is the dominant political
force in the modern world. You might think that revolutionary
nationalism and the desire for self-determination would be
relatively easy for Americans - the first successful
revolutionaries to win their independence - to understand. But
instead we have been dumbfounded when other peoples have tried to
pursue the goals of our own revolution two centuries ago.... " -- Former U.S. Senator Frank Church, on the shortsightedness of
'rollback' as our foreign policy doctrine " People with advantages are loath to believe that they just
happen to be people with advantages. " -- C. Wright Mills - The Power Elite (book) " In the United States today, the Declaration of Independence
hangs on schoolroom walls, but foreign policy follows
Machiavelli." -- Howard Zinn, historian and author "When you give food to the poor, they call you a saint. When you
ask why the poor have no food, they call you a communist." -- Archbishop Helder Camara, Brazilian liberation theologist " Enemies are necessary for the wheels of the U.S. military
machine to turn. " -- John Stockwell, former CIA official and author " Today, the United States and Somalia are the only two
countries in the world which haven't ratified the United Nations
Convention on the Rights of the Child. And since Somalia is a
country with no internationally recognized government, the United
States essentially stands alone as the last holdout to legally
guarantee children the same full range of human rights ... agreed
to by 191 other sovereign states. " -- Catherine Langevin-Falcon, executive director of UNICEF
(Humanist magazine, Nov/Dec1998, p11) "Our government has kept us in a perpetual state of fear-kept us
in a continuous stampede of patriotic fervor-with the cry of grave
national emergency. Always there has been some terrible evil at
home or some monstrous foreign power that was going to gobble us up
if we did not blindly rally behind it ..." -- US General Douglas MacArthur, 1957 " Never forget that everything Hitler did in Germany was legal.
" -- Martin Luther King, Jr. "We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great
wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have
both." -- Louis Brandeis, Supreme Court justice from 1916-1939 " We live amidst massive inequality. We don't really care that
most people have little power to alter the conditions of their
lives. We refuse to acknowledge that the earth is dying and that we
are killing it. ... Our unthinking celebration of individual
achievement and upward mobility works to damage the life-giving
ties of kinship and the bonds of community. ...We pretend not to
understand the linkages between our comfortable standard of living
and the dictatorships we impose and protect through an
international military presence. " -- Jerry Fresia, author of Toward an American Revolution " A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on
military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching
spiritual doom. " -- Martin Luther King, Jr. " The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized
habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in
democratic society. " -- Edward Bernays, "father" of modern public relations (PR), on
government propaganda " In a world of increasing inequality, the legitimacy of
institutions that give precedence to the property rights of "the
Haves" over the human rights of "the Have Nots" is inevitably
called into serious question. " -- David Korten, economist and internationalist " It is legal to purchase a fully assembled Uzi machine gun in
this country [United States] but it's not legal to purchase a fully
assembled low-watt radio transmitter. " -- Greg Ruggerio, editor and media activist " States are not moral agents, people are, and can impose moral
standards on powerful institutions." -- Noam Chomsky, American linguist and US media and foreign
policy critic "Conceit, arrogance and egotism are the essentials of
patriotism.... Patriotism assumes that our globe is divided into
little spots, each one surrounded by an iron gate. Those who had
the fortune of being born on some particular spot, consider
themselves better, nobler, grander, more intelligent than the
living beings inhabiting any other spot. It is, therefore, the duty
of everyone living on that chosen spot to fight, kill, and die in
the attempt to impose his superiority upon all others." -- Emma Goldman, American anarchist and feminist, 1869-1940 "If those in charge of our society - politicians, corporate
executives, and owners of press and television - can dominate our
ideas, they will be secure in their power. They will not need
soldiers patrolling the streets. We will control ourselves." -- Howard Zinn, historian and author " Human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable ... Every
step toward the goal of justice requires sacrifice, suffering, and
struggle; the tireless exertions and passionate concern of
dedicated individuals. " -- Martin Luther King, Jr. " There is ...a huge tacit conspiracy between the U.S.
government, its agencies and its multinational corporations, on the
one hand, and local business and military cliques in the Third
World, on the other, to assume complete control of these countries
and "develop" them on a joint venture basis. The military leaders
of the Third World were carefully nurtured by the U.S. security
establishment to serve as the "enforcers" of this joint venture
partnership, and they have been duly supplied with machine guns and
the latest data on methods of interrogation of subversives." -- Edward S. Herman, economist, author, and US media and foreign
policy critic " The government of the United States does not, in its policies,
express the decency of its people. " -- Jerry Fresia, author of Toward an American Revolution "... the United States has given frequent and enthusiastic
support to the overthrow of democracy in favor of "investor
friendly" regimes. The World Bank, IMF, and private banks have
consistently lavished huge sums on terror regimes, following their
displacement of democratic governments, and a number of
quantitative studies have shown a systematic positive relationship
between U.S. and IMF / World Bank aid to countries and their
violations of human rights." -- Edward S. Herman, economist, author, and US media and foreign
policy critic " Not a nut or bolt shall reach Chile under Allende. Once
Allende comes to power we shall do all within our power to condemn
Chile and all Chileans to utmost deprivation and poverty..." -- U.S. Ambassador to Chile, three years before the coup against
Chile's elected President Allende in 1973 "What a man believes upon grossly insufficient evidence is an
index into his desires - desires of which he himself is often
unconscious. If a man is offered a fact which goes against his
instincts, hewill scrutinize it closely, and unless the evidence is
overwhelming, he will refuse to believe it. If, on the other hand,
he is offered something which affords a reason for acting in
accordance to his instincts, he will accept it even on the
slightest evidence. The origin of myths is explained in this
way." -- Bertrand Russell, philosopher - "Roads to Freedom" " Few of us can easily surrender our belief that society must
somehow make sense. The thought that the state has lost its mind
and is punishing so many innocent people is intolerable. And so the
evidence has to be internally denied. " -- Arthur Miller playwrite " People with advantages are loath to believe that they just
happen to be people with advantages. " -- C. Wright Mills - from the book The Power Elite "Progress is measured in part by the courageous people who put
their careers and often their lives at risk by challenging the
parameters of what is acceptable in society, even though these
parameters may be damaging to the quality of life. Heroes are
created from ordinary people who are willing to take risks to their
personal security and safety for the benefit of the larger
community." -- author unknown " As the mainstream media has become increasingly dependent on
advertising revenues for support, it has become an anti-democratic
force in society." -- Robert McChesney, journalist and media critic " The enormous gap between what US leaders do in the world and
what Americans think their leaders are doing is one of the great
propaganda accomplishments of the dominant political mythology.
" -- Michael Parenti, political scientist and author " The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest
exercises in moral philosophy: that is the search for a superior
moral justification for selfishness." -- John Kenneth Galbraith, economist and author " History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this
period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad
people, but the appalling silence of the good people. " Martin
Luther King, Jr. " Anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy
finds himself silenced with surprising effectiveness. " -- George Orwell, author of the book "1984" " I know of no country in which there is so little independence
of mind and real freedom of discussion as in America. " -- Alexis de Tocqueville, 1805 - 1859, French political thinker
and author of Democracy in America " If an American is concerned only about his nation, he will not
be concerned about the peoples of Asia, Africa, or South America.
Is this not why nations engage in the madness of war without the
slightest sense of penitence? Is this not why the murder of a
citizen of your own nation is a crime, but the murder of citizens
of another nation in war is an act of heroic virtue? " -- Martin Luther King, Jr. "One of the intentions of corporate-controlled media is to
instill in people a sense of disempowerment, of immobilization and
paralysis. Its outcome is to turn you into good consumers. It is to
keep people isolated, to feel that there is no possibility for
social change." -- David Barsamian, journalist and publisher " The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to
strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very
lively debate within that spectrum - even encourage the more
critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that
there's free thinking going on, while all the time the
presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits
put on the range of the debate. " -- Noam Chomsky, American linguist and US media and foreign
policy critic " Many of us regard ourselves as mildly liberal or centrist
politically, voice fairly pleasant sentiments about our poor
children, contribute money to send poor kids to summer camp, feel
benevolent. We're not nazis; we're nice people. We read
sophisticated books. We go to church. We go to synagogue.
Meanwhile, we put other people's children into an economic and
environmental death zone. We make it hard for them to get out. We
strip the place bare of amenities. And we sit back and say to
ourselves, "Well, I hope that they don't kill each other off. But
if they do, it's not my fault." -- Jonathan Kozol, educator and author " The only way to abolish war is to make peace heroic." -- John Dewey, American philosopher and educator, 1859-1952 " [U.S. aid] has tended to flow disproportionately to Latin
American governments which torture their citizens..." -- Lars Schoultz, leading academic specialist on human rights in
Latin America "Americans have been taught that their nation is civilized and
humane. But, too often, U.S. actions have been uncivilized and
inhumane." -- Howard Zinn, historian and author " In the post-Cold War era, the United States needs to promote
the development of democracy and human rights, not militaries that
view their own citizens as the enemy." -- U.S. Senator Richard Durbin "The American oligarchy increasingly has less in common with the
American people than it does with the equivalent oligarchies in
Germany or Mexico or Japan." -- Lewis Lapham, journalist " When I visited Auschwitz I was horrified. And when I visited
Iraq, I thought to myself, 'What will we tell our children in fifty
years when they ask what we did when the people in Iraq were
dying.'" -- Mairead McGuire, Nobel Peace Prize Winner, Northern
Ireland " If we who have the time and money to take to the streets don't
do so, then the people are going to think that everything is
OK." -- Peruvian university student protesting Alberto Fujimori's
illegal election victory, April 2000 - World Press Review, August
2000, p11 " Can it be believed that the democracy which overthrew the
feudal system and vanquished kings will retreat before tradesmen
and capitalists." -- Alex de Tocqueville "If a baseball player slides into home plate and, right before
the umpire rules if he is safe or out, the player says to the
umpire-"Here is $1,000." What would we call that? We would call
that a bribe. If a lawyer was arguing a case before a judge and
said, "Your honor before you decide on the guilt or innocence of my
client, here is $1,000." What would we call that? We would call
that a bribe. But if an industry lobbyist walks into the office of
a key legislator and hands her or him a check for $1,000, we call
that a campaign contribution. We should call it a bribe." -- Janice Fine, Dollars and Sense magazine, July / August 2000,
p21 " We believe that the government and the police have embarked on
a strategy of repression to stop, crush or marginalize the
burgeoning progressive movement that gained world attention in the
protest against the WTO in Seattle last year." -- International Action Center attorneys announcing the filing
of a class-action lawsuit on behalf of protestors at the WTO
Ministerial meeting in Seattle, Washington, April 1999 " Throughout the world, on any given day, a man, woman or child
is likely to be displaced, tortured, killed or "disappeared", at
the hands of governments or armed political groups. More often than
not, the United States shares the blame." -- Amnesty International, in its annual report on U.S. military
aid and human rights Every politician in the world is all for revolution, reason, and disarmament--but only in enemy countries, not in his own.
-- Hermann Hesse - Author (1877-1962)
"How dare Americans allow their government to cause such misery
[in the world]." -- Ramsey Clark, former United States Attorney General and human
rights activist "One of the great attractions of patriotism -- it fulfills our
worst wishes. In the person of our nation we are able, vicariously,
to bully and cheat. Bully and cheat, what's more, with a feeling
that we are profoundly virtuous." -- Aldous Huxley, English author, 1894-1963 " Does it sound outrageous to you that military spending for
fiscal year 2000 will be almost $290 billion and all other domestic
discretionary spending, such as education, job training, housing,
Amtrak, medical research, environment, Head Start and many other
worthwhile programs will total $246 billion, the biggest disparity
in modern times ? " -- Dale Bumpers, former US Senator and present Director of the
Center for Defense Information " Every man of humane convictions must decide on the protest
that best suits his convictions, but we must all protest. " -- Martin Luther King, Jr. " To accept opinions is to gain the good solid feeling of being
correct without having to think. " C. Wright Mills - The Power
Elite (book) " It is no longer a question of controlling a
military-industrial complex, but rather, of keeping the United
States from becoming a totally military culture. " -- Jerome Weisner, president emeritus of the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology " The NSS [National Security State] represents and serves the
interests of a tiny elite. Its economic policies of "trickling-up",
enforced by the machine gun, are rationalized on the ground that
growth in the long run will trickle down to the lower orders. This
is a self-serving ideology designed mainly to allow the western
public to think well of themselves and their own country." -- Edward S. Herman, economist, author, and US media and foreign
policy critic " Patriotism, like religion, meets people's need for something
greater to which their individual lives can be anchored ...
America's state religion, [is] patriotism, a phenomenon which has
convinced many of the citizenry that "treason" is morally worse
than murder or rape " -- William Blum, author of Killing Hope "The recent quantum leap in the ability of transnational
corporations to relocate their facilities around the world in
effect makes all workers, communities and countries competitors for
these corporations' favor. The consequence is a "race to the
bottom" in which wages and social conditions tend to fall to the
level of the most desperate." -- Jeremy Brecher, historian and author " In the councils of government, we must guard against
unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the
military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise
of misplaced power exists and will persist." -- President Dwight D. Eisenhower in his Farewell Address,
1961 "For the last fifty years we've been supporting right-wing
governments, and that is a puzzlement to me...I don't understand
what there is in the American character... that almost
automatically, even when we have a liberal President, we support
fascist dictatorships or are tolerant towards them." -- William Shirer, author "First they ignore you. Then they laugh at you. Then they fight
you. Then you win." -- Gandhi "Propaganda is to a democracy what violence is to a
dictatorship." -- William Blum, Rogue State "America is today the leader of a world-wide anti-revolutionary
movement in the defense of vested interests. She now stands for
what Rome stood for. Rome consistently supported the rich against
the poor in all foreign communities that fell under her sway; and,
since the poor, so far, have always and everywhere been far more
numerous than the rich, Rome's policy made for inequality, for
injustice, and for the least happiness of the greatest number." -- Arnold Toynbee, historian, 1961 "A terrorist is someone who has a bomb but doesn't have an air
force." -- William Blum, Rogue State, p93 "The great masses of the people at the very bottom of their
hearts tend to be corrupted rather than consciously evil ... they
more easily fall a victim to a big lie than to a little one, since
they themselves lie in little things, but would be ashamed of lies
that were too big." -- Adolph Hitler, Mein Kampf, Houghton Mifflin, 1971; (original
version 1925) vol 1. chapter 10, p231 "There are too many things that embarrass Americans in that
report. ... they are asked to believe that their country has been
evil. And nobody wants to believe that." -- Congressman Otis Pike, 1975, on why a congressional report
about US covert actions around the world should not be revealed to
Americans - from the book Rogue State by William Blum, p9 "... our leaders are cruel because only those willing to be
inordinately cruel and remorseless can hold positions of leadership
in the foreign policy establishmen ... People capable of expressing
a full human measure of compassion and empathy toward faraway
powerless strangers ... do not become president of the United
States, or vice president, or secretary of state, or national
security adviser or secretary of the treasury. Nor do they want
to." -- William Blum, from the book Rogue State, p7 We spend over $4,000 per capita on personal health care, about
twice as much as Canada and the European countries (which cover all
their citizens), and the gap is growing. Why is our system such a
money sink? Not because our population is older or sicker. All the
Western countries have aging populations vulnerable to nearly the
same illnesses at roughly the same rates, and ours is actually
younger than most. Nor is the reason that we get better outcomes.
By all the usual measures of health-life expectancy, infant
mortality, childhood immunization rate- we do worse than most
Western countries. The only plausible explanation is how health
care is financed and delivered. The American health care system is
staggeringly wasteful and inflationary. The United States is unique
in treating health care as a market commodity distributed according
to the ability to pay instead of as a social good distributed
according to medical need." -- American Prospect magazine, Nov 6, 2000, p25 "First, do no harm." -- Hippocrites " Covert action should not be confused with missionary
work." -- Henry Kissinger, commenting on the US sellout of the Kurds in
Iraq in 1975 "They made a wasteland and called it peace." -- Tacitus, Roman historian. - 1st century AD "Much of our foreign policy is driven by insatiable corporate
pressures to sell military hardware to both the Defense Department
and directly to foreign dictators. This happens even if it goes
against the interests of our country, taxpayers and the principle
of prudently allocated public budgets" "Fifty years after World War
II, tens of thousands of our troops are still in Europe and East
Asia, defending prosperous nation allies who are fully capable of
defending themselves against non-existent enemies. Yet, useless
massive weapons systems remain on the drawing boards to further
mortgage our fiscal future and drain money and talent from long
overdue civilian projects." "President Bush declared the end of the
Cold War 10 years ago and we still have a Cold War budget. We still
have a budget that's going over $300 billion as if we still have
enemies called the Soviet Union. When are we going to demobilize?
What about the peace dividend?" -- Ralph Nader, Friends Committee on National Legislation
newsletter, September 2000 "The hidden hand of the market will never work without a hidden
fist. McDonald's cannot flourish without McDonnell Douglas." -- Thomas Friedman, NY Times columnist - RESIST newsletter,
September 2000, p4 "[Genocide] certainly is a valid word in my view, when you have
a situation where we see thousands of deaths per month, a possible
total of I million to 1.5 million over the last nine years. If that
is not genocide, then I don't know quite what is." -- Denis Halliday, former UN humanitarian coordinator - on
effect of US sanctions on Iraqi people "We are in the process of destroying an entire nation. It is as
simple and terrifying as that. It is illegal and immoral." -- Denis Halliday, former UN humanitarian coordinator - on
effect of US sanctions on Iraqi people Why is it that only those who hope to profit by it come out for the self-determination of nations?
-- Hermann Hesse - Author (1877-1962)
"We now live in a state of permanent war - a global arms
industry, apparently the largest single international business,
must have its products used up so more can be sold. There must be
profits for the capitalists and jobs for the proles... Are we not
still in Caligula's Rome? " -- David Watson, New Internationalist magazine, May 2000,
p35 "The Wall Street Journal is read by the people who run the
country. The New York Times is read by people who think they run
the country. The Washington Post is read by people who think they
ought to run the country. USA Today is read by people who think
they ought to run the country but don't understand the Washington
Post. The Los Angeles Times is read by people who wouldn't mind
running the country if they could spare the time. The Boston Globe
is read by people whose parents used to run the country." -- The Nation magazine No one was thinking of war; they were all arming just in case, because rich people like to see iron walls around their money.
-- Hermann Hesse - Author (1877-1962)
"Get some new lawyers" -- US Secretary of State Madeline Albright to British Foreign
Secretary Robin Cook when he told her he was informed that the NATO
bombing of Yugoslavia was illegal under international law "This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who
inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing
Goverment, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending
it or their revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow it." -- Abraham Lincoln, 1861 "We are not hated because we practice democracy, value freedom,
or uphold human rights. We are hated because our government denies
these things to people in Third World countries whose resources are
coveted by our multinational corporations. That hatred we have sown
has come back to haunt us in the form of terrorism and in the
future, nuclear terrorism." -- Robert Bowman, Vietnam Veteran, presently bishop of the
United Catholic Church in Melbourne Beach, FL., from The National
Catholic Reporter, Oct. 2, 1998 "Terrorism has become a sort of screen created since the end of
the Cold War by policymakers in Washington ... It is fabricated to
keep the population afraid and insecure, and to justify what the
United States wishes to do globally." -- Edward Said, Palestinian activist and author, International
Socialist Review, Aug/Sep 2001, p30 "Military intervention to maintain the global status quo will
become a constant feature of international relations, whether this
is justified in terms of fighting drugs, fighting terrorism,
containing "rogue states," opposing "Islamic fundamentalism," or
containing China" -- . Walden Bello, sociologist and author, International
Socialist Review, Aug/Sep 2001, p8 "Peace cannot exist without equality." -- Edward Said, author, The Nation magazine, Sept 17/24, 2001,
p28 'Bribes given to Third World officials most likely find their
resting place in the banks of First World countries, which makes us
accessories to the crimes." -- Toronto Star newspaper, July 18, 2001 "There is never any justification for acts of terror against
innocent civilians." -- Rabbi Michael Lerner, Tikkun magazine, "If we'd been born where they were born and taught what they
were taught, we would believe what they believe." -- A sign inside a church in Northern Ireland, explaining the
origin of intolerance and hate "The United States is not only number one in military power but
also in the effectiveness of its propaganda system." -- Edward S. Herman, Z magazine, September 2001, p42 "The corporation is not a person and it does not live. It is a
lifeless bundle of legally protected financial rights and
relationships brilliantly designed to serve money and its
imperatives. It is money that flows in its veins, not blood. The
corporation has neither soul nor conscience." -- David Korten, The Post-Corporate World, p75 " We are witnessing an unprecedented transfer of power from
people and their governments to global institutions whose
allegiance is to abstract free-market principle, and whose favored
citizens are soulless corporate entities that have the power to
shape and break nations." -- Joel Bleifuss, In These Times magazine, September 2001,
p1 " The revolutions of the 18th and l9th centuries ushered in an
era of constitutional democracies. Today's world citizens ... are
starting to realize that unaccountable global institutions threaten
their hard-won political freedoms. " -- Joel Bleifuss, In These Times magazine, September 2001,
p1 " In feudal times, kings and lords held power through divine
right. To challenge their authority was to oppose God, a heresy
worthy of death. Now enlightened, we view such notions as foolish.
Yet the divine right of yore has been replaced by a pantheon of
free market verities whose lock on popular thought is so strong
that heresy can be kept in check through ridicule." -- Joel Bleifuss, In These Times magazine, September 2001,
p1 " Justice is the great work of humans on earth. " -- Daniel Webster " In the 1980s capitalism triumphed over communism. In the l990s
it triumphed over democracy. " -- David Korten, The Post-Corporate World, p1 " Rogue states that are internally free - and the U.S. is at the
outer limits in this respect - must rely on the willingness of the
educated classes to produce accolades and tolerate or deny terrible
crimes." -- Noam Chomsky, Rogue States, p11 "Powerful people in the American ruling class fear
democracy." -- Tim Robbins, actor and progressive activist, The Nation,
August 6/13, 2001, p25 "Since 1945 this country ... has sought not the delicate balance
of power but a position of commanding superiority in weapons
technology, in the regulation of the international economy, and in
the manipulation of the internal politics of other countries." -- Richard Barnet, Intervention and Revolution, p25 "The United States supports right-wing dictatorships in Latin
America, Southeast Asia, and the Middle East ... because these are
the rulers who have tied their personal political destiny to the
fortunes of the American corporations in their countries...
Revolutionary or nationalist leaders have radically different
political constituencies and interests. For them creating "a good
investment climate" for the United States and developing their own
country are fundamentally conflicting goals. Therefore, the United
States has a strong economic interest in keeping such men from
coming to power or arranging for their removal if they do." -- Richard Barnet, Intervention and Revolution, p15 "America, like Britain before her, is now the great defender of
the Status Quo. She has committed herself against revolution and
radical change in the underdeveloped world because independent
governments would destroy the world economic and political system,
which assures the United States its disproportionate share of
economic and political power. ... America's preeminent wealth
depends upon keeping things in the underdeveloped world much as
they are, allowing change and modernization to proceed only in a
controlled, orderly, and nonthreatening way." -- Richard Barnet, Intervention and Revolution, p15 "The fundamental assumption that the United States retains the
right and obligation to intervene in the Third World in any way it
ultimately deems necessary, including military, remains an article
of faith among the people who guide both political parties." -- Gabriel Kolko, Confronting the Third World, p296 "We live constantly with the tensions and costs of the United
States' aggressive foreign policy, which not only affects
profoundly the likelihood of war or peace throughout the world but
also imposes monumental constraints on urgently needed social and
economic changes in the Third World today." -- Gabriel Kolko, Confronting the Third World, p298 "A brutally repressive regime was essential to America's
interests because there was no civilian political option for it to
turn to, and Washington had no hesitation in immediately endorsing
the new order and aiding it, revealing again its two-decades-long
preference for dictators and repressive regimes in the hemisphere.
Chile also proved once more that the United States could never
gracefully accept the verdict of democratic politics in any nation,
where anti-Yankee sentiment was overwhelming for fear of seeing not
only its local investments lost but also encouraging anti-United
States economic legislation elsewhere in the hemisphere." -- Gabriel Kolko, Confronting the Third World, p221 "If we continue these policies, to rob ourselves in order to
feed this national security monster, we are going to continue to
degrade American life." -- Roger Wilkins "As U.S. involvement in Colombia escalates, the situation looks
more and more like Vietnam ..." -- The Progressive magazine, July 2001, p8 "...a number of financial and industrial figures of World War II
and several members of the government served the cause of money
before the cause of patriotism. While aiding the United States' war
effort, they also aided Nazi Germany's. " -- Charles Higham, Trading with the Enemy, 1983, pxiii "... several of the greatest American corporate leaders were in
league with Nazi corporations before and after Pearl Harbor,
including I.G. Farben, the colossal Nazi industrial trust that
created Auschwitz." -- Charles Higham, Trading with the Enemy, 1983, pxiv "The tycoons were linked by an ideology: the ideology of
Business as Usual. Bound by identical reactionary ideas, the
members sought a common future in fascist domination regardless of
which world leader might further that ambition." -- Charles Higham, Trading with the Enemy, 1983, pxiv "If democracy is ever to be threatened, it will not be by
revolutionary groups burning government offices and occupying the
broadcasting and newspaper offices of the world. It will come from
disenchantment, cynicism and despair caused by the realization that
the New World Order, means we are all to be managed and not
represented." -- Tony Benn, British Labour Party member of Parliament -
CovertAction Quarterly, April / June 2001, p43 "All the emphasis on crime and drugs and pornography used to
justify the suppression of the internet is really aimed at
suppressing knowledge of the radical politic alternatives that are
now available." -- Tony Benn, British Labour Party member of Parliament -
CovertAction Quarterly, April / June 2001, p43 "The Seattle movement will have to turn its mind to political
action that makes use of the ballot box and the voting machine to
secure a change at the top." -- Tony Benn, British Labour Party member of Parliament -
CovertAction Quarterly, April / June 2001, p43 "The press ... traditionally sides with authority and the
establishment." -- Sam Donaldson, ABC correspondent " They just don't come in contact with people not in their
[income] bracket. They've lost touch with their community." -- Stan Opotowsky of ABC News, about the journalistic elite - On
Bended Knee, p81 "The whole thing was PR. This was a PR outfit that became
President and took over the country. And to the degree then to
which the Constitution forced them to do things like make a budget,
run foreign policy and all that, they sort of did. But their first,
last, and overarching activity was public relations." -- Leslie Janka, White House press secretary - book On Bended
Knee, page 6 "The search of the young today is more specific than the ancient
search for the Holy Grail. The search of the youth today is for
ways and means to make the machine-and the vast bureaucracy of the
corporation state and of government that runs that machine - the
servant of man. That is the revolution that is coming. It could be
a revolution in the nature of an explosive political regeneration.
It depends on how wise the Establishment is. If, with its stockpile
of arms, it resolves to suppress the dissenters, America will face,
I fear, an awful ordeal." -- William O. Douglas, Points of Rebellion, 1969, p96 "Our upside down welfare state is "socialism for the rich, free
enterprise for the poor." The great welfare scandal of the age
concerns the dole we give rich people." -- William O. Douglas, Points of Rebellion, 1969, p68 "Those in power are blind devotees to private enterprise. They
accept that degree of socialism implicit in the vast subsidies to
the military-industrial-complex, but not that type of socialism
which maintains public projects for the disemployed and the
unemployed alike." -- William O. Douglas, Points of Rebellion, 1969, p68 "The Pentagon has a fantastic budget that enables it to dream of
putting down the much-needed revolutions which will arise in Peru,
in the Philippines, and in other benighted countries." William O.
Douglas, Points of Rebellion, 1969, p41 "The interests of the
corporation state are to convert all the riches of the earth into
dollars." -- William O. Douglas, Points of Rebellion, 1969, p10 "Free trade is not leading to freedom. It is leading to slavery.
Diverse life forms are being enslaved through patents on life,
farmers are being enslaved into high-tech slavery, and countries
are being enslaved into debt and dependence and destruction of
their domestic economies." -- Vandana Shiva, The Progressive magazine, April 2001, p44 "The only thing worth globalizing is dissent." -- Arundhati Roy, author, The Progressive magazine, April 2001,
p38 "Once you have seen certain things, you can't un-see them, and
seeing nothing is as political an act as seeing something." -- Arundhati Roy, author, The Progressive magazine, April 2001,
p39 "We no longer have senators and congressmen who represent our
interests. The great project of America has been hijacked by big
corporations and the super rich." -- Doris "Granny D" Haddock The greatest threat to our world and its peace comes from those who want war, who prepare for it, and who, by
holding out vague promises of future peace or by instilling fear of foreign aggression, try to make us accomplices to
their plans.
-- Hermann Hesse - Author (1877-1962)
"The cold war provided the perfect excuse for Western
governments to plunder and exploit the Third World in the name of
freedom; to rig its elections, bribe its politicians, appoint its
tyrants and, by every sophisticated means of persuasion and
interference, stunt the emergence of young democracies in the name
of democracy." -- John le Carre', The Nation magazine, April 9, 2001, p11 "Multi-billion-dollar multinational corporations view the
exploitation of the world's sick and dying as a sacred duty to
their shareholders." -- John le Carre', The Nation magazine, April 9, 2001, p13 "It is money, money, money! Not ideas, not principles, but money
that reigns supreme in American politics." -- Senator Robert Byrd, West Virginia "The U.S. government officials lie when they talk about human
rights. They're a bunch of hypocrites and liars. You can't take it
seriously." -- Eqbal Ahmad, Confronting Empire- interviews, p51 "Although the privileged of this world can accept the existence
of poverty on a massive scale and not be overawed by it, problems
begin when the causes of this poverty are pointed out to them. Once
causes are determined, then there is talk of 'social injustice,'
and the privileged begin to resist. This is especially true when to
structural analysis there is added a concrete historical
perspective in which personal responsibilities come to light. But
it is the consientization and resultant organization of poor
sectors that rouse the greatest fears and the strongest
resistance." -- Gustavo Gutierrez, A Theology of Liberation "Why should we worry about the death squads? They're bumping off
the commies, our enemies. I'd give them more power. Hell, I'd give
them some cartridges if I could, and everyone else would too...Why
should we criticize them? The death squad - I'm for it." -- Fred Sherwood, the former president of the American Chamber
of Commerce in Guatemala, September 1980 "... the media serve the interests of state and corporate power,
which are closely interlinked, framing their reporting and analysis
in a manner supportive of established privilege and limiting debate
and discussion accordingly." -- Noam Chomsky "Our country ... when right, to be kept right. When wrong, to be
put right." -- Carl Shurz "As corruption becomes routine in Washington in both parties, it
trickles down as a corrupting influence in everyone's lives.
Democracy is the ultimate casualty ... As democracy ebbs, Americans
retreat into private cocoons, feeling helpless to make a
difference... In a democracy, civic participation and the belief in
one's ability to contribute to the common good is the most
important guarantor of public morality. When that belief fades, so
too does the vision of the common good itself. " -- Charles Derber, Corporation Nation, p316 "Quite simply, there can be no popular sovereignty without a
real belief in the value of government. If government does not
assume and carry out public responsibilities, less accountable
institutions such as the corporation will do the job in their own
self-interest." -- Charles Derber, Corporation Nation, p250 "There is no free lunch for the creature comforts delivered by
the corporation. The ravaging of nature, the erosion of economic
security, the destabilization of the family, the commercialization
of all human relationships, the corruption of democracy, and the
dissipation of spiritual meaning in the face of rampant materialism
- these are all part of the cost of the corporate system as we know
it. And they add up to a very high price to pay for the bounty of
the great American shopping mall." -- Charles Derber, Corporation Nation, p178 "Today, as in the Gilded Age, we live in a world where a
morality of personal responsibility rubs shoulders with a culture
of greed and of flagrant social irresponsibility. Now as then,
business has shed its collective responsibility for employees -
just as government has for its citizens." -- Charles Derber, Corporation Nation, p28 "Leaders symbolize what the country stands for. As corruption
becomes routine in Washington in both parties, it trickles down as
a corrupting influence in everyone's lives... Democracy is the
ultimate casualty, and the sapping of democratic life is the most
serious contribution of corporate ascendancy to our spiritual
decline. As democracy ebbs, Americans retreat into private cocoons,
feeling helpless to make a difference... In a democracy, civic
participation and the belief in one's ability to contribute to the
common good is the most important guarantor of public morality.
When that belief fades, so too does the vision of the common good
itself." -- Charles Derber, Corporation Nation, p317 "Societies characterized by enduring deep divisions of income
and wealth, such as most third-world societies, are wounded
societies with little sense of the common good... As America drifts
in this direction, ending poverty and redistributing income should
be at the top of the national agenda." -- Charles Derber, Corporation Nation, p203 ... "the United States is slipping into a category of countries
- among them Brazil, Britain, and Guatemala - where the gap
[between rich and poor] is the worst around the globe." -- United Nations Human Development Report, 1966 - Corporation
Nation, p12 "Whoever controls the media, controls the peoples' minds." -- author unknown "The stakes are too high for government to be a spectator
sport." -- Barbara Jordan, former U.S. Congresswoman "A visitor can make a big difference after arriving in [an
undemocratic Third World] country. People under threat cannot help
but be buoyed by contact with a sympathetic outside world." -- William F. Schulz is the executive director of Amnesty
International USA. "Over breakfast coffee we read of 40,000 American dead in
Vietnam. Instead of vomiting, we reach for the toast. Our morning
rush through crowded streets is not to cry murder but to hit that
trough before somebody else gobbles our share." -- Dalton Trumbo, author of 'Johnny Got His Gun', in the
introduction to the reissue of his book, 1970. "The two major parties have abdicated their responsibility to
lead, to advocate solutions, and to promote true democracy..." -- Ralph Nader, November 8, 2000 - The Progressive, Dec 2000,
p9 "... what the Agency [CIA] does is ordered by the President and
the NSC [National Security Council]. The Agency neither makes
decisions on policy nor acts on its own account. It is an
instrument of the President." -- Philip Agee, CIA Diary, p37 "We should tax things we don't like. We should tax pollution ...
And we should lighten the taxes on things we do like, like honest
lobor, like food." -- Ralph Nader, Dollars and Sense magazine, Nov/Dec 2000,
p12 "Th[e] modern susceptibility to conformity and obedience to
authority indicates that the truth endorsed by authority is likely
to be accepted as such by a majority of people, who are innately
obedient to authority. This obedience-truth will then become a
consensus truth accepted by many individuals unable to stand alone
against the majority. In this way, the truth promulgated by the
propaganda system-however irrational-stands a good chance of
becoming the consensus, and may come to seem self-evident common
sense. " -- Edwards, David Burning All Illusions, p203 "We will have a world government whether you like it or not. The only question is whether that government will be achieved by conquest or consent." (Jewish Banker Paul Warburg, February 17, 1950, as he testified before the U.S. Senate).
"The great ideal of Judaism is that the whole world shall be imbued with Jewish teachings, and that in a Universal Brotherhood of Nations a greater Judaism in fact all the separate races and religions shall disappear." (Jewish World, February 9, 1933)
"The League of Nations is a Jewish idea. We created it after a fight of 25 years. Jerusalem will one day become the Capital of World Peace." (Nahum Sokolow, During the Zionist Congress at Carlsbad in 1922)
"The Nations will exhort to tranquility. They will be ready to sacrifice everything for peace, but WE WILL NOT GIVE THEM PEACE until they openly acknowledge our International Super-Government, and with SUBMISSIVENESS." (Zionist Congress at Basle in 1897)
"One of the major reasons for my visit to the United States is to interest Americans in the beautification of Jerusalem, the Capital of the World, no less than the Capital of Israeli." (Mayor of Jerusalem, South African Jewish Times of
14th March, 1952)
"As for the final result of the Messianic revolution it will always be the same...the nations will be converted to Judaism and will obey the law, or else they will be destroyed, and the Jews will be the masters of the world." (G. Batault, Le probleme juif, p. 135; The Secret Powers Behind Revolution, by Vicomte Leon de Poncins, pp. 203204)
"The right place for the League of Nations is not Geneva or the Hague, Ascher Ginsberg has dreamed of a Temple on Mount Zion where the representatives of all nations should
dedicate a Temple of Eternal Peace. Only when all peoples of the earth shall go to THIS temple as pilgrims is eternal peace to become a fact." (Ascher Ginsberg, in The German Jewish paper Judisch Rundschu, No. 83, 1921) Ascher Ginsberg is stated to have rewritten the "Protocols of Zion," in "Waters Flowing Eastwards," page 38.
"We, the Jews, are a people - one people. When we sink, we become revolutionary proletariat, the subordinate officers of a revolutionary party; when we rise, there arises also our terrible power of the purse." (Theodor Herzl, 'The Jewish State', 1896)
"The image of the world in 1987 as traced in my imagination - the increasing influence of the farmers and workers, and the rising political influence of men of science, may transform the United States into a welfare state with a planned economy. Western and Eastern Europe will become a federation of autonomous states having a socialist and democratic regime. With the exception of the USSR as a federated Eurasian state, all other continents will become united in a world alliance, at whose disposal will be an international police force. All armies will be abolished, and there will be no more wars. In Jerusalem, the United Nations (a truly United Nations) will build a shrine of the Prophets to serve the federated union of all continents; this will be the seat of the Supreme Court of Mankind, to settle all controversies among the federated continents." (David Ben Gurion)
"The two Internationals of Finance and Revolution work with ardour, they are the two fronts of the Jewish Internationale. There is a Jewish conspiracy against all nations." (Rene Groos, 'Le Nouveau Mercure, Paris, May, 1927)
"Judea Declares War on Germany!" - Daily Express headline, March 24, 1933.
"Judea Declares War on Germany! Jews of all the World Unite! Boycott of German Goods! Mass Demonstrations!" - These were all headlines in the Daily Express on March 24, 1933.
"The Israeli people around the world declare economic and financial war against Germany. Fourteen million Jews stand together as one man, to declare war against Germany. The Jewish wholesaler will forsake his firm, the banker his stock exchange, the merchant his commerce and the pauper his pitiful shed in order to join together in a holy war against Hitler's people." - Daily Express, March 24, 1933.
"Each of you, Jew and Gentile alike, who has not already enlisted in this sacred war should do so now and here. It is not sufficient that you should buy no goods made in Germany. You must refuse to deal with any merchant or shopkeeper who sells any German-made goods or who patronises German ships or shipping.... we will undermine the Hitler regime and bring the German people to their senses by destroying their export trade on which their very existence depends." - Samuel Undermeyer, in a Radio Broadcast on WABC, New York, August 6, 1933. Reported in the New York Times, August 7, 1933.
"Joining with Samuel Untermeyer in calling for a war against Germany, Bernard Baruch, at the same time, was promoting preparations for war against Germany. 'I emphasised that the defeat of Germany and Japan and their elimination from world trade would give Britain a tremendous opportunity to swell her foreign commerce in both volume and profit.'" - "Baruch, The Public Years," by Bernard M. Baruch, p.347.
Samuel Untermeyer was a Jewish leader and close friend of presidents Wilson and Roosevelt.
Bernard Baruch was a presidential adviser to Wilson, Roosevelt and Truman.
"This declaration called the war against Germany, which was now determined on, a 'holy war'. This war was to be carried out against Germany to its conclusion, to her destruction" (Diese Erklärung nannte den Krieg gegen Deutschland, der nun beschlossen sei, einen heiligen Krieg. Dieser Krieg müsse gegen Deutschland bis zu dessen Ende, bis zu dessen Vernichtung, geführt werden). - Dr. Franz J. Scheidl, Geschichte der Verfemung Deutschlands.
"War in Europe in 1934 was inevitable." - H. Morgenthau, Secretary of the U.S. Treasury, Hearst Press, September, 1933 (also quoted in "The Palestine Plot" by B. Jenson, p. 11).
"For months now the struggle against Germany is waged by each Jewish community, at each conference, in all our syndicates, and by each Jew all over the world. There is reason to believe that our part in this struggle has general value. We will trigger a spiritual and material war of all the world against Germany's ambitions to become once again a great nation, to recover lost territories and colonies. But our Jewish interests demand the complete destruction of Germany. Collectively and individually, the German nation is a threat to us Jews." - Vladimir Jabotinsky (founder of the Jewish terrorist group, Irgun Zvai Leumi) in Mascha Rjetsch, January, 1934 (also quoted in "Histoire de l'Armée Allemande" by Jacques Benoist-Mechin, Vol. IV, p. 303).
"Hitler will have no war (does not want war), but we will force it on him, not this year, but soon." - Emil Ludwig Cohn in Les Annales, June, 1934 (also quoted in his book "The New Holy Alliance").
"We Jews are going to bring a war on Germany." - David A. Brown, National Chairman, United Jewish Campaign, 1934 (quoted in "I Testify Against The Jews" by Robert Edward Edmondson, page 188 and "The Jewish War of Survival" by Arnold Leese, page 52).
"We want to bring about a deep hatred for the Germans, for German soldiers, sailors, and airmen. We must hate until we win." - Lord Beaverbrook, quoted in Niemals! by Heinrich Goitsch.
"There is only one power which really counts. The power of political pressure. We Jews are the most powerful people on earth, because we have this power, and we know how to apply it." - Vladimir Jabotinsky, Jewish Daily Bulletin, July 27, 1935.
"Before the end of the year, an economic bloc of England, Russia, France and the U.S.A will be formed to bring the German and Italian economic systems to their knees." - Paul Dreyfus, "La Vie de Tanger" May 15, 1938.
On the 3rd of June, 1938, the American Hebrew boasted that they had Jews in the foremost positions of influence in Britain, Russia and France, and that these "three sons of Israel will be sending the Nazi dictator to hell." - Joseph Trimble, the American Hebrew.
"Germany is our public enemy number one. It is our object to declare war without mercy against her. One may be sure of this: We will lead that war!" - Bernard Lecache, the president of the "International League Against Racism and Anti-Semitism," in its newspaper "Droit de Vivre" (Right to Life), 9 November, 1938.
"The war now proposed is for the purpose of establishing Jewish hegemony throughout the world." - Brigadier General George Van Horn Mosely, The New York Tribune, March 29, 1939.
"I wish to confirm in the most explicit manner, the declaration which I and my colleagues made during the last months, and especially in the last week: that the Jews "stand by Great Britain and will fight on the side of the democracies." Our urgent desire is to give effect to these declarations. We wish to do so in a way entirely consonant with the general scheme of British action, and therefore would place ourselves, in matters big and small, under the co-ordinating direction of His Majesty's Government. The Jewish Agency is ready to enter into immediate arrangements for utilizing Jewish manpower, technical ability, resources, etc." - Chaim Weizmann, President of the World Jewish Congress, Head of the Jewish Agency and later President of Israel, the London Times, September 5, 1939, and the London Jewish Chronicle, September 8, 1939.
"The millions of Jews who live in America, England and France, North and South Africa, and, not to forget those in Palestine, are determined to bring the war of annihilation against Germany to its final end." - Central Blad Voor Israeliten in Nederland, September 13, 1939.
"Stop talking about peace conditions! Break Germany in pieces!" - The Daily Herald, No.7426, 9 December, 1939.
"The Jews, taken collectively, view this war as a holy war." - The Daily Herald, No.7450, 1939, quoted in "Reichstagsbrand, Aufklärung einer historischen Legende," by U. Backes, K.H. Janßen, E. Jesse, H. Köhler, H. Mommsen, E Tobias.
"Even if we Jews are not physically at your side in the trenches, we are morally with you. This war is our war and you fight it with us." - Schalom Asch, Les Nouvelles Litterairres, February 10, 1940.
"In losing Germany, Jewry lost a territory from which it exerted power. Therefore it was determined to re-conquer it." - Louis Marschalko, "The World Conquerors : The Real War Criminals."
"The World Jewish Congress has been at war with Germany for seven years." - Rabbi M. Perlzweig (head of the British Section of the World Jewish Congress), Toronto Evening Telegram, February 26, 1940.
"The Second World War is being fought for the defense of the fundamentals of Judaism." - Rabbi Felix Mendlesohn, Chicago Sentinel, October 8, 1942.
"We are not denying and are not afraid to confess that this war is our war and that it is waged for the liberation of Jewry... Stronger than all fronts together is our front, that of Jewry. We are not only giving this war our financial support on which the entire war production is based, we are not only providing our full propaganda power which is the moral energy that keeps this war going. The guarantee of victory is predominantly based on weakening the enemy forces, on destroying them in their own country, within the resistance. And we are the Trojan horses in the enemy's fortress. Thousands of Jews living in Europe constitute the principal factor in the destruction of our enemy. There, our front is a fact and the most valuable aid for victory." - Chaim Weizmann, President of the World Jewish Congress, Head of the Jewish Agency and later President of Israel, in a Speech on December 3, 1942, in New York.
"Played golf with Joe Kennedy (U.S. Ambassador to Britain). He says that Chamberlain stated that America and world Jewry forced England into World War II." - James Forrestal, Secretary of the Navy (later Secretary of Defense), Diary, December 27, 1945 entry.
"It is untrue that I or anyone else in Germany wanted war in 1939. It was wanted and provoked solely by international statesmen either of Jewish origin or working for Jewish interests. Nor had I ever wished that after the appalling first World War, there would ever be a second against either England or America." - Adolf Hitler, April, 1945.
In another example of the ever-growing censorship in the United States, readers are reporting that Noam Chomsky's new book, "9/11"
is being pulled from book store shelves.
"The biggest government conspiracy of all is the claim that there are no
government conspiracies!"
A. "Well, no, we're supporting them, the - oh, wait a minute, wait a minute, I'm sorry, I was thinking of El Salvador, because of the previous, when you said Nicaragua. Here again, this is something upon which the national security interests, I just - I will not comment."
"Others [terrorists] are engaging even in an eco-type of terrorism
whereby they can alter the climate, set off earthquakes, volcanos
remotely through the use of electromagnetic waves... So there are
plenty of ingenious minds out there that are at work finding ways
in which they can wreak terror upon other nations...It's real, and
that's the reason why we have to intensify our [counterterrorism]
efforts."
--Secretary of Defense William Cohen at an April 1997
counterterrorism conference sponsored by former Senator Sam Nunn
"We have come to recognize that there are potentially desirable
limits to economic growth. There are also potentially desirable
limits to the indefinite extension of political democracy...A
government which lacks authority ...will have little ability, short
of cataclysmic crisis, to impose on its people the sacrifices which
may be necessary.."
-- 1975 Trilateral Commission Report on the Governability of
Democracies
"News is what someone wants to suppress. Everything else is
advertising".
--former NBC news prez Rubin Frank
"Our job is to give people not what they want, but what we decide
they ought to have."
-- Richard Salent, Former President CBS News.
"Stopping terrorism is simple. Just quit screwing around with other
people's countries and the terrorists will go home. But the
government of the United States wants to go on screwing around with
other people's countries, refuses to stop, indeed views it as
Manifest Destiny for the United States Government to persist in
screwing around with other people's countries, and views the
inconvenience, increased tax burden, loss of civil liberties, and
even deaths among the American people as just another cost of doing
business."
-- Michael Rivero
"By way of deception, thou shalt do war."
--Motto of the Mossad
``The [government] must put the most modern medical means in the
service of this knowledge.... Those who are physically and mentally
unhealthy and unworthy must not perpetuate their suffering in the
body of their children.... The prevention of the faculty and
opportunity to procreate on the part of the physically degenerate
and mentally sick, over a period of only 600 years, would ... free
humanity from an immeasurable misfortune.''
-- Adolf Hitler
-- George H. W. Bush
-- Sigmund Freud
"One cannot wage war under present conditions without the support
of public opinion, which is tremendously molded by the press and
other forms of propaganda."
-- General Douglas MacArthur
"Politics is the womb in which war develops."
--Carl von Clausewitz
"If you give a man the correct information for seven years, he may
believe the incorrect information on the first day of the eighth
year when it is necessary, from your point of view, that he should
do so. Your first job is to build the credibility and the
authenticity of your propaganda, and persuade the enemy to trust
you although you are his enemy."
-- A Psychological Warfare Casebook Operations Research Office
Johns Hopkins University Baltimore (1958)
"Public sentiment is everything. With public sentiment nothing can
fail. Without it nothing can succeed. He who molds opinion is
greater than he who enacts laws."
--Abraham Lincoln
"The first casualty of war is truth."
--Rudyard Kipling
"All warfare is based on deception."The Art Of War
-- Sun Tzu
"Most people prefer to believe their leaders are just and fair even
in the face of evidence to the contrary, because once a citizen
acknowledges that the government under which they live is lying and
corrupt, the citizen has to choose what he or she will do about it.
To take action in the face of a corrupt government entails risks of
harm to life and loved ones. To choose to do nothing is to
surrender one's self-image of standing for principles. Most people
do not have the courage to face that choice. Hence, most propaganda
is not designed to fool the critical thinker but only to give moral
cowards an excuse not to think at all."
" Great military peoples have conquered their known world time and
time again through the centuries, only to die out in the inevitable
ashes of their fire. Well over two thousand years ago, the Chinese
philosopher, Laotzu, concluded that:
An army's harvest is a waste of thorns."
"The history of war is the history of powerful individuals willing
to sacrifice thousands upon thousands of other people's lives for
personal gains. "
-- Air Force Major Glenn MacDonald, explaining HOW anthrax came to be the biological weapon of choice in the world. Adm. William J. Crowe Jr. owns 13% of BioPort Corporation, the only source for Anthrax Vaccine.
-- Senator Daniel K. Inouye - Iran Contra Hearings
US GOVERNMENT: Supposed leader is the spoiled son of a powerful
politician, from extremely wealthy oil family
US GOVERNMENT: Leader has declared a holy war ('Crusade') against
his 'enemies'; believes any nation not with him is against him;
believes god is on his side, and that any means are justified.
US GOVERNMENT: Supported by extreme fundamentalist religious
leaders who preach hatred, intolerance, subjugation of women, and
persecution of non-believers
US GOVERNMENT: Leadership was not elected by a majority of the
people in a free and fair democratic election
US GOVERNMENT: Kills thousands of innocent civilians, some of them
children, in cold blooded bombings
US GOVERNMENT: Operates through clandestine organization (CIA) with
agents in many countries; uses bombing, assassination, other
terrorist tactics
US GOVERNMENT: Supposed leader has extensive financial ties to
Supposed leader of TERRORIST
US GOVERNMENT: Supposed leader invested heavily in US bio-chemical
companies
US GOVERNMENT: Using war as pretext to clamp down on dissent and
undermine civil liberties
-- Michael Rivero
"Religion is an invention useful to persuade men to murder each
other for conveniently located lands without having to pay them
what the job is worth."
-- Michael Rivero
-- Michael Rivero
***
-- H.L. Mencken
"The rich love nobody better than those who make them richer still.
"[The Palestinians] are beasts walking on two legs."
"We must do everything to ensure they [the Palestinian refugees]
never do return."
"It takes less mental effort to condemn than to think."
'The most unpardonable sin in society is independence of
thought."
" The majority cares little for ideals and integrity. What it
craves is display."
" The majority cannot reason; it has no judgement. It has always
placed its destiny in the hands of others; it has followed its
leaders even into destruction. The mass has always opposed,
condemned, and hounded the innovator, the pioneer of a new
truth."
" How long would authority ... exist, if not for the willingness of
the mass to become soldiers, policemen, jailers, and hangmen."
" Social and economic well-being will become a reality only through
the zeal, courage, the non-compromising determination of
intelligent minorities, and not through the mass."
" Resistance to tyranny is man's highest ideal. "
