Quotations page 2

"Americans are the best entertained and the least informed people in the world."

Neil Postman

*****

"Far from being the terrorists of the world, the Islamic peoples have been its victims, principally the victims of U.S. fundamentalism, whose power, in all its forms-military, strategic, and economic-is the greatest source of terrorism on Earth.... People are neither still nor stupid. They see their independence compromised, their resources and land and the lives of their children taken away, and their accusing fingers increasingly point north: to the great enclaves of plunder and privilege. Inevitably, terror breeds terror and more fanaticism. But how patient the oppressed have been. Their distant voices of rage are now heard; the daily horrors in faraway brutalized places have at last come home."

John Pilger

*****

" Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of State and corporate power."

Benito Mussolini

*****

" 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

*****

"The United States is no longer the nation its citizens once thought: a place, unlike most others in the world, free from censorship and thought police, where people can say what they want, when they want to, about their government... Until the citizens of this land aggressively defend their First Amendment rights of free speech, there is little hope that the march to censorship will be reversed. The survival of the cornerstone of the Bill of Rights is at stake."

Angus Mackenzie, Secrets

*****

" 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

*****

"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

*****

" In the 1980s capitalism triumphed over communism. In the l990s it triumphed over democracy. "

David Korten

*****

"The U.S. government leaders ... have created an idol, the military machine. They require the people of this country to sacrifice to this idol. Not only tax dollars, but the lives and futures of the nation's young people, the health of communities and society, and the well-being of natural resources and the environment are all offered up at the altar of military might."

Friends Committee on National Legislation

*****

"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

*****

"A properly functioning system of indoctrination has a variety of tasks. Its primary target are the "stupid and ignorant masses". They must be kept that way; marginalized, and isolated. Ideally, each person should be alone in front of the TV screen watching sports, soap operas, or comedies, deprived of organizational structures that permit individuals lacking resources to discover what they think and believe in, to engage in interaction with others, to formulate their own concerns and programs, and to act to realize them. This hapless multitude are the proper targets of the mass media and a public education system geared to obedience and training in needed skills, including the skill of repeating patriotic slogans on timely occasions."

Noam Chomsky

*****

"Until we go through it ourselves, until our people cower in the shelters of New York, Washington, Chicago, Los Angeles and elsewhere while the buildings collapse overhead and burst into flames, and dead bodies hurtle about and, when it is over for the day or the night, emerge in the rubble to find some of their dear ones mangled, their homes gone, their hospitals, churches, schools demolished - only after that gruesome experience will we realize what we are inflicting on the people of Indochina ..."

William Shirer

*****

"Our rulers for more than half a century have made sure that we are never to be told the truth about anything that our government has done to other people."

Gore Vidal

*****

"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

*****

"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

*****

"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

*****

"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

*****

"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."

Rev. James M. Lawson and actor Mike Farrell

*****

"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

*****

'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

*****

"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

*****

" 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

*****

"Arms manufacturers need war like umbrella makers need rain."

Eduardo Galeano

*****

"First they came for the communists, but I was not a communist - so I said nothing.
Then they came for the social democrats, but I was not a social democrat - so I did nothing.
Then they came for the trade unionists, but I was not a trade unionist.
And then they came for the Jews, but I was not a Jew - I did little.
Then when they came for me, there was no one left who could stand up for me."

Martin Niemoller, German anti-Nazi pastor during World War II

*****

"Globalization can be seen as the triumph of capitalism: the ascendancy of economics over politics, of corporate demands over public policy, of the private over the public interest, of the transnational corporation and its global framework over the national state."

Gary Teeple

*****

" Everyone's values are defined by what they will tolerate when it is done to others. "

William Greider

*****

"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."

Former president of the American Chamber of Commerce in Guatemala

*****

" 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

*****

"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, former U.S. Supreme Court Justice

*****

"Perhaps, you have a responsibility to be informed, to know for yourself. To know the truth. And then, perhaps you must decide with your own conscience and you r personal energy and your resources what you should do."

Isabel Allende

*****

" We are willing to accept lies if they make our lives easier. "

Producer from the TV series "People's Century"

*****

"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

*****

"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, former U.S. Supreme Court Justice

*****

"If you want to know about the world and understand and educate yourself, you have to dig;
dig up books and articles, read and find out for yourself."

John Stockwell

*****

"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

*****

"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

*****

William O. Douglas, former U.S. Supreme Court Justice

*****

" To keep information from the public is the function of the corporate media."

Gore Vidal

*****

"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

*****

"Poor people living in third-world countries are not the only victims of the so-called new world order. At the heart of this "new" order is a troubling paradox: Poor people within the United States, and the country as a whole, are getting poorer at the same time as the rich within the United States are getting richer."

Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer

*****

*****

"The 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."

David Edwards

*****

"Around the world, the message 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

*****

"Big corporations and billionaires fund 90 percent to 98 percent of the Democratic and Republican Party budgets."

Howard Zinn

*****

"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

*****

"When the powerful begin to act irresponsibly, it's the responsibility of the rest of us to take their power away from them."

Barbara Ehrenreich

*****

" [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)

*****

"[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

*****

"Bringing democratic control to the conduct of foreign policy requires a struggle merely to force the issue onto the public agenda."

Eric Alterman

*****

"Our country when right, to be kept right. When wrong, to be put right."

Carl Shurz

*****

" 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

*****

... "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

*****

" 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

*****

" 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 recent Director of the Center for Defense Information

*****

"The two major parties have abdicated their responsibility to lead, to advocate solutions, and to promote true democracy."

Ralph Nader

*****

"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 political alternatives that are now available."

Tony Benn, British Labour Party Member of Parliament

*****

"In the United States, both the Republican and Democratic Parties, with only a few prominent exceptions, have been and are in the pay of the corporate media and communication giants."

John Nichols and Robert McChesney

*****

"You know the one thing that is wrong in this country? Everyone gets a chance to have their fair say."

President Bill Clinton

*****

"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

*****

"It's like Pravda... It's a capitalist consolidation of the press - with consequences the same as Pravda: Horrifying distortion and sabotage!"

Toni Morrison, about Florida during the 2000 presidential election

*****

" 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

*****

" 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

*****

"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

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