Quote of the month:
"Those to whom evil is done/
Do evil in return."
--W.H. Auden
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****Disclaimer: OK-OK--so this highly political page probably doesn't belong on this type of site, but it IS our personal page, so . . . here goes. If you are allergic to "political" issues, just move on and try another page.
In today's political climate with dissent often labelled as "unpatriotic", let me state this: I support and love my country, the United States of America. What I take issue with is the government of my country--its foreign and domestic policies since the early 20th century.
Peaceful dissent and "naked emperor-spotting", I believe, are among the most patriotic things I can do. -- Bruce, 2002
"Do you have blacks too?"
- President George W. Bush (5/28/02) -- Der Spiegel Germany's leading newsmagazine (not reported in any US media)
Question asked of Brazilian President Fernando Henrique Cardoso. Condoleezza Rice jumped in to save President Cardoso from the embarrassment of having to answer such a stupid question, informing President Bush that Brazil was home to more blacks than any country in the world outside Africa.
"During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act."
-- George Orwell
"Extremism in defense of liberty is no vice. Tolerance in the face of tyranny is no virtue."
- Anonymous (sometimes mis-attributed to Barry Goldwater)
"If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better
than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not
your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May
your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our
countrymen."
-- Samuel Adams, speech at the Philadelphia State House, August 1, 1776.
"Those that give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety,
deserve neither liberty nor safety." -- Ben Franklin, (1759)
May 1996
Lesley Stahl of the 60 Minutes TV program: "We have heard that a half million children have died [because of sanctions against Iraq]. I mean, that's more children than died in Hiroshima and you know, is the price worth it?"
U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright: "I think this is a very hard choice, but the price we think---the price is worth it."
"From the outset, we have made it clear that construction of the pipeline we have proposed across Afghanistan could not begin until a recognized government is in place that has the confidence of governments, lenders, and our company."
"As with the proposed Central Asia oil pipeline, CentGas can not begin construction until an internationally recognized Afghanistan Government is in place."
-- John J. Maresca, Vice President of International Relations, Unocal Corporation, speaking before the committee on International Relations, House of Representatives, February 12, 1998
"The Central Intelligence Agency owns everyone of any significance in the major media."
-- William Colby, former Director of the CIA
" . . . .those who ask questions could face government charges".
--Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld (referring to questions asking what the government may have known prior to 9/11)
"My freedom is more important than your great idea". Bumper sticker
"Never believe anything until it is officially denied."-- Claud Cockburn
Official FBI definition of terrorism:
"Terrorism is the unlawful use of force or violence against persons or property to intimidate or coerce a government, the civilian population, or any segment thereof, in furtherance of political or social objectives."
By its own definition the hypocrite U.S. government is guilty of terrorism - on a massive, international scale. And for over 100 years! The U.S. government has broken international law and the Geneva Convention many times with its brutal use of force and horrific violence against persons and property, to intimidate and coerce governments, civilian populations, and many segments thereof, in furtherance of political, social and especially economic objectives.
"We never see the smoke and the fire, we never smell the blood, we never see the terror in the eyes of the children, whose nightmares will now feature screaming missiles from unseen terrorists, known only as Americans."
- Martin Kelly, The Nonviolence Web: A Guide to the Contemporary Peace Movement
"The September 11 attacks were a monstrous calling card from a world gone horribly wrong. The message may have been written by Osama bin Laden (who knows?) and delivered by his couriers, but it could well have been signed by the ghosts of the victims of America's old wars.
"The millions killed in Korea, Vietnam and Cambodia, the 17,500 killed when Israel - backed by the U.S. - invaded Lebanon in 1982, the 200,000 Iraqis killed in Operation Desert Storm, the thousands of Palestinians who have died fighting Israel's occupation of the West Bank. And the millions who died, in Yugoslavia, Somalia, Haiti, Chile, Nicaragua, El Salvador, the Dominican Republic, Panama , at the hands of all the terrorists, dictators and genocidists who the American government supported, trained, bankrolled and supplied with arms."
-- Arundhati Roy, East Indian activist and fighter for women's rights. Author of The God of Small Things
"Beware the leader who bangs the drums of war in order to whip the citizenry into a patriotic fervor, for patriotism is indeed a double-edged sword. It both emboldens the blood, just as it narrows the mind. And when the drums of war have reached a fever pitch and the blood boils with hate and the mind has closed, the leader will have no need in seizing the rights of the citizenry. Rather, the citizenry, infused with fear and blinded by patriotism, will offer up all of their rights unto the leader and gladly so. How do I know ? For this is what I have done. And I am Caesar."
-- JULIUS CAESAR
"The greatest crime since World War II has been U.S. foreign policy."
-- Ramsey Clark, former U.S. Attorney General under President Lyndon Johnson
"What would you think of a man who not only kept an arsenal in his home, but was collecting at enormous financial sacrifice a second arsenal to protect the first one? What would you say if this man so frightened his neighbors that they in turn were collecting weapons to protect themselves from him?
"What if this man spent ten times as much money on his expensive weapons as he did on the education of his children?
"What if one of his children criticized his hobby and he called that child a traitor and a bum and disowned him? And he took another child who obeyed him faithfully and armed that child and sent it out into the world to attack neighbors?
"What would you say about a man who introduces poisons into the water he drinks and the air he breathes?
"What if this man not only is feuding with the people on his block but involves himself in the quarrels of others in distant parts of the city and even in the suburbs?
"Such a man would clearly be a paranoid schizophrenic... with homicidal tendencies."
-- Robert Anton Wilson,The Illuminatus!
"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
"The greatest purveyor of violence on earth is my own government." - Martin Luther King Jr.,1967
"In American spy parlance, it's called 'blowback' - the unintended consequences of covert activity kept secret from the U.S. public. The covert recruitment of a Nazi spy network to wage a shadow war against the Soviet Union was the CIA's 'original sin' and it ultimately backfired against the United States."
- Martin A. Lee, author of The Beast Reawakens
"I will never apologize for the United States of America - I don't care what the facts are."
-- President George H.W. 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.
"Never before in modern history has a country dominated the earth so totally as the United States does today. America is now the Schwarzenegger of international politics: showing off muscles, obtrusive, intimidating. The Americans, in the absence of limits put to them by anybody or anything, act as if they own a kind of blank check in their McWorld."
-- Der Spiegel Germany's leading newsmagazine, 1997
"I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones."
-- Albert Einstein
"When the people fear the government, there is tyranny. When government fears the people, there is liberty."
-- Thomas Jefferson
"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, British writer, 1894-1963
"The United States spends more on arms annually, $275 billion presently, than the rest of the Security Council combined. U.S. arms expenditures are approximately 25 times the gross national product of Iraq. The U.S. has in its stockpiles more nuclear bombs, chemical and biological weapons, more aircraft, rockets and delivery systems in number and sophistication than the rest of the world combined. Included are twenty commissioned Trident II nuclear submarines any one of which could destroy Europe."
-- Ramsey Clark, former U.S. Attorney General Letter to the U.N., November 1998
"Any dictator would admire the uniformity and obedience of the [U.S.] media."
-- Noam Chomsky, M.I.T. professor of linguistics prolific author & U.S. foreign policy critic
"I did not know how much was ended. When I look back now from this high hill of my old age, I can see the butchered women and children lying heaped and scattered all along the crooked gulch as plain as I saw them with eyes still young. And I can see that something else died there in the bloody mud, and was buried in the blizzard. A people's dream died there. It was a beautiful dream..."
-- Black Elk, Oglala Holy Man on the aftermath of the Massacre at Wounded Knee
[The massacre at Wounded Knee, South Dakota took place in December, 1890. Soldiers of the United States Army Seventh Cavalry used gattling guns to slaughter 300 helpless Lakota children, men and women.]
"There is not one of you who dares to write your honest opinions, and if you did, you know beforehand that it would never appear in print. I am paid weekly for keeping my honest opinions out of the paper I am connected with. Others of you are paid similar salaries for similar things, and any of you who would be so foolish as to write honest opinions would be out on the streets looking for another job.
"If I allowed my honest opinions to appear in one issue of my paper, before twenty-four hours my occupation would be gone.
"The business of the journalist is to destroy the truth, to lie outright, to pervert, to vilify, to fawn at the feet of mammon, and to sell the country for his daily bread.
"You know it and I know it, and what folly is this toasting an independent press.
"We are the tools and vassals of the rich men behind the scenes. We are the jumping jacks, they pull the strings and we dance. Our talents, our possibilities and our lives are all the property of other men.
"We are intellectual prostitutes."
-- John Swinton, New York Times editor in a speech before the New York Press Club, 1953 co-author Manufacturing Consent
"All that is necessary for the forces of evil to prevail in the world is for enough good men to do nothing."
-- Edmund Burke British statesman, 1729-1797
"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
"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 of Inventing Reality: The Politics of News Media
"We paid $3 billion for these television stations. We will decide what the news is. The news is what we tell you it is." -
-- T.V. station manager of a Murdoch/News Corp.-owned T.V. station in Florida
The station manager is alleged to have said this to two of the station's on-air reporters, Jane Akre and Steve Wilson, when they refused to water down their investigative report on Monsanto's bovine growth hormone. When the reporters continued to resist management-ordered story changes which they felt were false and misleading, they were fired.
"No man escapes when freedom fails,
the best men rot in filthy jails.
And those who cry 'Appease! Appease!',
are hung by those they tried to please."
-- HORACE MANN
"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 advertising - 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."
-- Soviet correspondent based five years in the U.S. quoted on thirdworldtraveler.com
"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,French political thinker, traveler, author of Democracy in America, 1805-1859
Cost of weapons contract for building fighter jets won by Lockheed-Martin Corp. last October, in billions: $200
Rank of this contract among biggest U.S. defense contracts in history: 1
Percent by which this exceeds the entire yearly operating budget of New York City: 400%
Percent it exceeds the amount of U.S. humanitarian aid given to Afghanistan: 76823%
Amount it exceeds the gross domestic product of all Central American nations combined, in billions: $72
Number of years $200 billion would fully fund the national Head Start program for at-risk youth: 4
"When people decry civilian deaths caused by the U.S government, they're aiding propaganda efforts. In sharp contrast, when civilian deaths are caused by bombers who hate America, the perpetrators are evil and those deaths are tragedies.
When they put bombs in cars and kill people, they're uncivilized killers. When we put bombs on missiles and kill people, we're upholding civilized values. When they kill, they're terrorists. When we kill, we're striking against terror."
---Norman Solomon, "Orwellian Logic 101 - A Few Simple Lessons," at: www.fair.org/media-beat/980827.html
[I]f in fact the September 11 attacks were an act of war, as we're told repeatedly, then the casualties of the World Trade Center were clearly civilian war casualties. Why then has the media devoted so much time to their deaths?
--William Blum, December 18, 2001
If this were a dictatorship, it'd be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I'm the dictator.
-- President G. W. Bush
"There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws."
--Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged, Ch. III, "White Blackmail"
"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
"Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves."
-- WILLIAM PITT (to the House of Commons, 1783)
"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
"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
"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
"We need a common enemy to unite us." -- Condoleeza Rice, March 2000
"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
"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 . . . 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."
-- Nazi leader, Hermann Goering, at the Nuremberg Trials before he was sentenced to death
"Terrorists are just Freedom Fighters pointed back at us."-- Michael Rivero
"Trusting the government is like paying the cannibals to eat you last".
-- UNKNOWN
"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
"The nationalist does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, but he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them." --- George Orwell, Notes on Nationalism,
"First a new theory is attacked as absurd. Then it is admitted to be true but insignificant. Finally it is seen to be so important that its adversaries claim that they themselves discovered it."
-- William James
In 1974, President Nixon signed a Bill to create the National Cancer Institute and to launch a
much publicized "war on cancer" which was expected to conquer the cancer treatment problems in a
decade. Two decades later, it is apparent to everyone that the "war on cancer" was another Viet Nam,
and we lost!
-- William H. Moore, Jr. Attorney at Law , March 22, 1995
I once asked my history teacher how we were expected to learn anything useful from his subject, when it seemed to me to be nothing but a monotonous and sordid succession of robber baron scumbags devoid of any admirable human qualities. I failed history. -- Sting
Number of physicians in the U.S.
700,000
Accidental deaths caused by physicians per year
120,000
Accidental deaths per physician
0.171
Number of gun owners in the U.S.
80,000,000
Number of accidental gun deaths per year (all age groups)
1,500
Accidental deaths per gun owner
0.0000188
Therefore, doctors are approximately 9,000 times more dangerous than gun owners.
Taken from the Benton County NewsTribune on the seventeenth of November, 1999
"In the counsels of Government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the Military Industrial Complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists, and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals so that security and liberty may prosper together."
-- President Eisenhower - January 1961
We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies and competitive values. For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.
-- President John F. Kennedy
"Problems cannot be solved at the same level of awareness that created them." --Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)
"When you're dealing with the networks, you're dealing with a shadow government." - Tim O'Brien, ABC
"Always vote for principle. Though you vote alone, you may cherish the sweet reflection that your vote is never lost."
-- John Quincy Adams
We are going to impose our agenda on the coverage, by dealing with the issues and subjects that we choose to deal with. -- Richard M. Cohen, senior producer, CBS Political News
"I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me, and causes me to tremble for the safety of our country. Corporations have been enthroned, an era of corruption will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people, until the wealth is aggregated in a few hands, and the republic is destroyed."
-- Abraham Lincoln
A free press must "serve the governed, not the governors," -- Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black.
"Punctuality is the virtue of the bored." --Evelyn Waugh
"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, 1996
"If you see what passes as the news on the networks in the United States, there's virtually no coverage of the rest of the world, not even of neighboring countries like Mexico or neighboring continents like Latin America. It's essentially a very provincial culture, and that breeds ignorance. This ignorance is very useful in times of war because you can whip up a rapid rage in ill-informed populations and go to war against almost any country. That is a very frightening process." -- British writer Tariq Ali
Ill habits gather by unseen degrees,-
As brooks make rivers, rivers run to seas.
John Dryden (1631-1700); Book xv. The Worship of Æsculapius, Line 155.
"You cannot enter the same river twice.” -- Heraclitus the Greek philosopher
"Undiscriminating executions or punishments without definite findings of guilt fairly arrived at, would not fit easily on the American conscience or be remembered by our children with pride."
-- US President Truman (despite the fact that Hitler's monsters were responsible for at least 50 million deaths - 10,000 times greater than the victims of 11 September - the Nazi murderers were given a trial at Nuremberg)
“How fortunate for governments that the people they administer don't think.” -- Adolph Hitler
“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
“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
“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.
Political satire became obsolete when Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. -- Tom Lehrer
“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
“A criminal is a person with predatory instincts who has not sufficient capital to form a corporation.” -- Howard Scott
The U.S. Army's School of the Americas at Fort Benning, Georgia (http://www.soaw.org/index.html) has trained terrorists from Latin America for 55 years and the difference between terrorist and freedom fighter throughout the world is largely in the eye of the beholder
"We don't have any pesticides showing up in the food chain anymore."
-- NCI Director and ACS vice president, Dr. Frank Rauscher
"The American Cancer Society has done the American public a really great disservice."
-- Dr. David Baltimore, 1975 Nobel Laureate in Medicine for, "their discoveries concerning the interaction between tumor viruses and the genetic material of the cell."
"Blaming terrorism on non-violent Americans who use drugs is like blaming beer drinkers for Al Capone's murders,"
-- Ethan Nadelmann (DPA executive director)
“When a true genius appears in this world you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him.”
-- Swift (1706); Thoughts on Various Subjects
Competition is a nice Economics 101 concept, but all capitalists hate the idea of competition. Competition is hell on profit margins and makes for an uncertain future. Eliminating the competition is the arguably the primary goal of every industry and profession, particularly their trade and professional groups.
--Wade Frazier
Government can do any thing they want as long as they do not do it to too many people at the same time.
-- Dennis Lee
"Democracy and liberty are not the same. Democracy is little more than mob rule, while liberty refers to the sovereignty of the individual." -- WALTER WILLIAMS
Fascism 1 ... a. Totalitarianism marked by right-wing dictatorship and bellicose nationalism. 2. Oppressive, dictatorial control. The American Heritage Dictionary
Fascism a. A system of government marked by centralization of authority under a dictator, stringent socioeconomic controls, suppression of the opposition through terror and censorship, and typically a policy of belligerent nationalism and racism.
From 1985 to 1990, the United States Government approved 771 licenses for the export to Iraq of $1.5 billion worth of biological agents and high-tech equipment with military application. The United States spent virtually an entire decade making sure that Saddam Hussein had almost whatever he wanted… The Administration has never acknowledged that it took this course of action, nor has it explained why it did so. In reviewing documents and press accounts, and interviewing knowledgeable sources, it becomes clear that United States export-control policy was directed by U.S. foreign policy as formulated by the State Department, and it was U.S. foreign policy to assist the regime of Saddam Hussein.
-- Samuel Gejdenson, Source: Democrat of Connecticut, chairman of a House subcommittee investigating "United States Exports of Sensitive Technology to Iraq", quoted by William Blum in "Anthrax for Export"
People never lie so much as after a hunt, during a war or before an election. -- Otto von Bismarck
"We did not win the Cold War. The thing is simple. The Soviets just went broke before we did."
-- Xian Wabei Source: "Cold War Analysis"
Talking of patriotism, what humbug it is; it is a word which always commemorates a robbery. There isn't a foot of land in the world which doesn't represent the ousting and re-ousting of a long line of successive owners.
-- Mark Twain
When the rich wage war, it is the poor who die.
-- Jean Paul-Sartre
"Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups." T-shirt
“When I was coming up, it was a dangerous world and we knew exactly who the they were. It was us versus them and it was clear who them was. Today, we're not so sure who the they are, but we know they're there.”
-- George W. Bush, February 29, 2000, Time Magazine
"They first came for the Communists and I didn't speak up- because I wasn't a Communist. Then they came for the Jews and I didn't speak up- because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists and I didn't speak up- because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics and I didn't speak up- because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me- and by that time no one was left to speak up.
-- Nazi Victim, Pastor Martin Niemoeller
Fighting crime by building more jails is like fighting cancer by building more cemeteries
-- Paul Kelly
“A Southern physician, Samuel Cartwright, argued that many of the slaves [in America] suffered from a form of mental illness, which he called `drapetomania', diagnosed as the uncontrollable urge to escape from slavery. In the second half of the 20th-centruy, this illness, in the Third World, has usually been called `communism'.”
-- William Blum; Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II
“When the mass media in some foreign countries serve as megaphones for the rhetoric of their government, the result is ludicrous propaganda. When the mass media in our country serve as megaphones for the rhetoric of the U.S. government, the result is responsible journalism.”
-- Normon Solomon
“If only more of today's military personnel would realize that they are being used by the owning elite's as a publicly subsidized capitalist goon squad.”
-- Smedley Butler
"We should strive for pessimism of the intellect but optimism of the will".
-- Used by Chomsky, author unknown]
Journal of the American Medical Association (Lazarou, J., JAMA, April 15, 1998; 279: 1200-1205), an estimated 106,000 Americans die from adverse drug reactions (ADRs) every year. The study specifically excludes adverse drug events (ADE's) which include the improper administration of pharmaceuticals and their abuse. These estimated 106,000 deaths are the direct result of FDA-approved drugs properly administered. That simply is bad chemistry and a national tragedy. ADRs are the fourth leading cause of death in this country after heart disease, cancer and strokes -- according to the study published in JAMA.
Depending on the report, an estimated 7,600 to 17,000 people die every year in this country from stomach bleeding caused by aspirin. That's significantly more than the numbers of people who reportedly died in the terrorist events of 9-11
"The hidden hand of the market will never work without a hidden fist. McDonald's cannot flourish without McDonnell Douglas, the designer of the U.S. Air Force F-15. And the hidden fist that keeps the world safe for Silicon Valley's technologies to flourish is called the U.S. Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps."
-- Thomas Friedman, The Lexus and the Olive Tree
"Fighting for peace is like fucking for virginity" -- Richard Nixon
"Two things are infinite, human stupidity and the universe, and I am not sure of the latter."
-- Albert Einstein
"I spent 33 years in the Marines. Most of my time being a high-class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer for capitalism.
"I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenue in. I helped in the rape of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street.
"War is a racket."
-- General Smedley D. Butler, former U.S. Marine Commandant in Common Sense November 1935
"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
"...free enterprise, [is] a term that refers, in practice, to a system of public subsidy and private profit, with massive government intervention in the economy to maintain a welfare state for the rich."
- Noam Chomsky
"...the consciousness of being at war, and therefore in danger, makes the handing-over of all power to a small caste seem the natural, unavoidable condition of survival".
--George Orwell, in his novel 1984
"The right wing benefited so much from September 11 that, if I were still a conspiratorialist, I would believe they'd done it."
--Norman Mailer
If wishes were horses,
Beggars would ride,
If turnips were watches,
I'd wear one at my side,
And if if's and and's were pots and pans,
There would be no need for tinker's hands.
-- source unknown
The truth is "hate speech" only to those who have something to hide
"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.
"By way of deception, thou shalt do war." --Motto of the Mossad
"Let the Jews, who claim to be the chosen race, prove their title by choosing the way of non-violence for vindicating their position on earth."
-- Mahatma Gandhi, Nov. 26, 1938
"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has."
--Margaret Mead
"Our government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or for ill, it teaches the whole people by its example. If the government becomes a lawbreaker it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself, it invites anarchy. Nothing can destroy government more quickly than its failure to observe its own laws, or worse, its disregard for the character of its own existence."
-- Supreme Court Justice Brandeis (in Olmstead v United States 1928, 277 U.S. 438, 485 S. Ct. 564, 575, 72 L. Ed.944)
“Facts do no cease to exist because they are ignored” - Aldous Huxley
"Of the Mossad, the Israeli intelligence service, the SAMS [The Army's School of Advanced Military Studies] officers say: 'Wildcard. Ruthless and cunning. Has capability to target US forces and make it look like a Palestinian/Arab act.'" ("US troops would enforce peace under Army study," Washington Times, Sept. 10, 2001, pg. A1, 9.)
"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." --Henry Louis Mencken
"The world is not the way they tell you it is." -- Adam Smith
"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof." -- Carl Sagan
“You don't fight wars because you're a nice guy; you fight wars to make money.”
-- Robert Young Pelton, author of "The World's Most Dangerous Places,"
“... the message to journalists is: Don't ever expect a big dumb corporation to just send you somewhere because you have a hunch. Those days are over.”
-- Robert Young Pelton, author of "The World's Most Dangerous Places,"
"I believe the profligate waste of our resources on irrelevant weapons systems and the Asian economic meltdown, as well as the continuous trail of military 'accidents' and of terrorist attacks on American installations and embassies, are all portents of a twenty-first century crisis in America's empire, an empire based on the projection of military power to every corner of the world and on the use of American capital and markets to force global economic integration on our terms, at whatever costs to others."
-- Chalmers Johnson Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire
"The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread."
--- Anatole France
"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it." -- Upton Sinclair
"The quickest way to double your money is to fold it over and put it back in your pocket."
-- Cowboy's Guide to Life
"In a bizarre and unprecedented move," Veronica Forwood, chairwoman of the British branch of Reporters without Borders, remarked, "the five major networks--CNN, NBC, ABC, CBS and Fox News Channel--have rolled over and acquiesced to the call for censorship from the US president's security adviser Condoleeza Rice."
You must carry a chaos inside you to give birth to a dancing star.
- Nietzsche
The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who in time of
great moral crises maintain their neutrality.
- Dante
"You are either part of the solution, or you are part of the problem."
- Eldridge Cleaver
Stand up. Keep fighting.
- Sen. Paul Wellstone [1944-2002]
If 95% 0f the readers of the Wall Street Journal support a war
[against Iraq], then it's GOT to be a bad idea.
- Steve Lopez, Los Angeles Times
“Does an unjustified war become justified by virtue of its commencement?”
“Never do anything against conscience even if the state demands it.” -- Albert Einstein
"In the developed countries there will be a bitter struggle for the control of their diminished resources. This struggle will merely worsen a bad situation; it will somehow have to be stopped. If left unchecked, it would lead to anarchy and to a drastic reduction of the size of the population by civil war, famine, and pestilence, the historic reducers of populations that have outgrown their means of subsistence. Consequently in all developed countries, a new way of life-a severely regimented way-will have to be imposed by a ruthless authoritarian government."
--Arnold Toynbee ("After the age of affluence," The Skeptic, July-Aug 1974)
"The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact, non-Westerners never do."
-- Samuel P. Huntington
"Nobody can overthrow me. I have the support of 700,000 troops, all the workers, and most of the people. I have the power."
-- Shah of Iran (overthrown by his people--out of power--now dead)
To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.
-- Theodore Roosevelt [1918]
"Give us your hearts and minds or we'll burn your damn huts down"…
--unknown source, slogan of Vietnam war era `Zippo Squads'
“A terrorist is someone with a bomb-and no air force”
"Seldom can America have been so friendless. Seldom can it have miscalculated as massively as it did about the likely progress of this war! And when victory does come, seldom will a victor have felt so alone." --Vir Sanghvi of the Hindustan Times (writing about "Operation Iraq Liberation").
"We had a great day. We killed a lot of people."
-- sharpshooter Sgt. Eric Schrumpf of the Fifth Marine Regiment in Iraq, 2003
"You can support the troops but not the president"
[Near-treasonous statement (?) by Republican Senator Trent Lott, during the United States' armed forces involvement in Kosovo and Iraq, 1998]
"My job as majority leader is be supportive of our troops, try to have input as decisions are made and to look at those decisions after they're made," Lott insisted. "And not to march in lock step with everything the president decides to do."
--Senator Trent Lott, 1998
“There's Adam Clymer -- major league asshole -- from the New York Times,” Bush said. “Yeah, big time,” returned Cheney.
[At a political rally in Naperville, IL, Bush spotted New York Times reporter Adam Clymer, who has been with the paper since 1977, serving as national political correspondent during the 1980 presidential race, as polling editor from 1983 to 1990 and as political editor during the successful presidential campaign of Bush's father in 1988. Cheney and Bush didn't realize they were speaking into a `live' microphone]
“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
If I knew for a certainty that a man was coming to my house with the conscious design of doing me good, I should run for my life.
-- Henry David Thoreau
“The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic, and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the TRUTH becomes the greatest ENEMY OF THE STATE.”
- Dr. Joseph M. Goebbels - Hitler's propaganda minister
"It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped. Each time a person stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance."
-- Robert Kennedy
"The hard truth is that the U.S. media left America as unprepared for these terrorist attacks as any Air Force general or CIA bureaucrat. As we dropped bombs on Iraq for 10 years running -- justified or not -- the U.S. media failed to report on it. Then suddenly, on Sept. 11, we think “We're at war” when in fact there hasn't been a day since the Gulf War ended when an American aircraft hasn't locked onto a target with a missile or bomb. We were at war; it's just that the media didn't think it was interesting enough to tell you about it. That's our lesson to learn."
-- Michael Moran, senior producer for special projects at MSNBC.com. Moran worked as the BBC's U.S. affairs analyst in London from 1993-1996.
"They made a wasteland and called it peace."
-- Tacitus, Roman historian. - 1st century AD
"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
"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
"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
"It's really not a number I'm terribly interested in."
--General Colin Powell [When asked about the 200,000 Iraqi civilians who were slaughtered by Americans in the 1991 "Desert Storm" campaign]
Israel: UN resolutions violated, ignored: 68, Iraq: 16
Israel: Countries attacked, invaded, violated: Egypt, Jordan, Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, Tunisia
Iraq: Iran, Kuwait
Israel: Countries occupied for years: Egypt, Lebanon, Syria. Iraq: NONE!
Israel: Countries currently occupying: Syria. Iraq: NONE!
Israel: Territory illegally annexed: Golan Heights, Jerusalem, Palestinian Territories.
Iraq: NONE!
Israel: Wars started: 1956, 1967, 1982. Iraq: 1980, 1990
Israel: Possesses weapons of mass destruction? Yes. Iraq: To be determined.
Israel: Possesses Nuclear weapons? Yes. Iraq: No.
Israel: Most notable atrocity committed against civilians: 17,500 Lebanese killed in 1982 invasion
Iraq: 5,000 Kurds killed in 1988.
Israel: Currently under a regime of UN Sanctions? NO! Iraq: YES!
"My dear Colette, don't worry," Lantos reportedly told Colette Avital, a member of Israeli Knesset who was visiting Washington with a delegation of the Peace Coalition. "You won't have any problem with Saddam. We'll be rid of the bastard soon enough. And in his place we'll install a pro-Western dictator, who will be good for us and good for you."
-- U.S. Rep. Tom Lantos, D-California as reported in the Israeli newspaper, Ha'aretz
"Every time anyone says that Israel is our only friend in the Middle East, I can't help but think that before Israel, we had no enemies in the Middle East."
-- John Sheehan, S.J. (a Jesuit priest)
"An evil exists that threatens every man, woman, and child of this great nation.
We must take steps to ensure our domestic security and protect our homeland."
- Adolf Hitler, proposing the creation of the Gestapo in Nazi Germany
"Fascism will come to America in the guise of National Security"
-Jim Garrison
"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness which most frightens us."
-- Marianne Williamson
Spanish philosopher José Ortega y Gasset described Americans years ago, "a primitive people, camouflaged behind the latest inventions."
"There is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people"
-- Howard Zinn