“The
tyranny of a prince in an oligarchy is not so dangerous to public welfare as the
apathy of a citizen in a democracy.” ---
Montesquieu
“The
tyranny of a prince in an oligarchy is not so dangerous to public welfare as the
apathy of a citizen in a democracy.” ---
Montesquieu
“Bush
and Blair both have been criticized at home since their WMD claims about
Those
basic dictums of strategy remain true today for the United States: "He who
attacks everything everywhere risks gaining nothing anywhere," and "He
who defends everything everywhere risks saving nothing anywhere." THE
SAVAGE WARS OF PEACE by Max Boot http://www.futurecasts.com/Book%20review%207-2.htm
“The
current conflict in
“ The
“The
will to act atrociously is clearly an essential ingredient in
military strategy. It is "the will to win." It can be based on hate -
or an overriding need to win - or an ideological belief that justifies callous
disregard for the suffering caused by the destruction of economic facilities.”
MILITARY FUTURECAST: TACTICS AND STRATEGY IN THE 21ST CENTURY http://www.futurecasts.com/Military_futurecast.html
“Considering
the power of the dark side, it becomes evident
why the evil empires of the world are so attracted to atrocious conduct. They
find it useful not only against military adversaries, but against domestic
political threats as well. They have both "the will to win" their
conflicts, and "the will to rule" their subjects. Despots wage
ceaseless warfare not only against their military adversaries, but against their
own peoples as well.” MILITARY FUTURECAST: TACTICS AND STRATEGY IN THE 21ST
CENTURY http://www.futurecasts.com/Military_futurecast.html
“The
Dark Side enables Evil Emperors to crush political opposition and maintain
absolute political power. Nevertheless, evil is invariably self
destructive. As Winston Churchill pointed out, the forces of evil must
eventually lose whenever good men are able to make a credible stand somewhere on
the field of battle. Moreover, even when evil empires like the
“Truth
and reason are invariably the first casualties
of (war). Intellectuals and media elements that refuse to slavishly follow the
party line are quickly targeted for silencing or elimination. Ultimately, the
willingness to compromise and accommodate differing interests within and across
national boundaries also falls by the wayside.” MILITARY FUTURECAST: TACTICS
AND STRATEGY IN THE 21ST CENTURY http://www.futurecasts.com/Military_futurecast.html
“The
world's war fever has declined in vital areas of the world because it has been
quenched in blood and, sometimes, in bankruptcy. … Only when every other
family has lost a son or father, and the streets of every town exhibit the
crippled and disfigured of modern war, does war fever wane and previously
aggressive nations become willing to consider diplomatic compromise and
accommodation as an alternative to war. This was the only way these lessons
could be taught to the European Great Powers -- now that
“Military
force is still the bedrock of relations between sovereign nations. Despite all
the wishful thinking about the United Nations, international law, and the rights
and responsibilities of modern nations, it is the force of Western arms - and
only the force of Western arms - that protects Western interests in the
international arena - induces the world's would be aggressors both large and
small to restrain themselves - and gives a multitude of peaceful states the
opportunity and courage to resist various pressures of aggression. It is the
force of Western arms - and only the force of Western arms - that maintains an
international environment in which commerce can flourish and international law
and diplomacy can maintain even the minimum degree of effectiveness currently
attained. You can have force without law, and law without justice, but you can't
have justice without law, and you can't have law without force. The
basic reality is that you can have force without law, and law without justice,
but you can't have justice without law, and you can't have law without force.
"Rights" in the abstract - without the force and the will to maintain
them - are illusory. That the necessary "policing" power has been
abused on more than one occasion doesn't in any way detract from the need for it
or change the adverse consequences whenever and wherever it proves
inadequate.” MILITARY FUTURECAST: TACTICS AND STRATEGY IN THE 21ST
CENTURY http://www.futurecasts.com/Military_futurecast.html
“Repression is for a dictatorship what propaganda is for the democracy.” Noam Chomsky
"It
would be an oxymoron to call opinion balanced." Is
The New York Times a Liberal Newspaper? By Daniel Okrent.
New York Times. Week in Review, Sunday, July 25, 2004. Backup.
http://www.csudh.edu/dearhabermas/okrent01bk.htm
"Chalmers
Johnson ... wrote Blowback and recently The Sorrows of
Empire. I highly recommend Sorrows of Empire as it is an
out standing historic presentation of the development of
On
December 3, 1888, President Grover Cleveland delivered his annual
address to Congress. Apparently Cleveland had taken notice of the
Santa Clara County Supreme Court headnote, its politics, and its
consequences, for he said in his speech to the nation, delivered
before a joint session of Congress: "As we view the achievements
of aggregated capital, we discover the existence of trusts,
combinations, and monopolies, while the citizen is struggling far in
the rear or is trampled to death beneath an iron heel. Corporations,
which should be the carefully restrained creatures of the law and the
servants of the people, are fast becoming the people's masters."
"Fascism
should more properly be called corporatism, since it is the merger of state and
corporate power." - Benito Mussolini.
"If
you are chained into a bed with an elephant, you have little hope that things
will get better but you know that unless you are constantly moving with the
beast things could get an awful lot worse." David Parnas, talking
about
"The
people who mistreat the prisoners will be treated as war criminals."
George W. Bush (Globe & Mail March 26, 2003 Worldbeat) - this was when
captured
"Allow
the President to invade a neighboring nation, whenever he shall deem it
necessary to repel an invasion, and you allow him to do so, whenever he may
choose to say he deems it necessary for such a purpose, and you allow him to
make war at pleasure...if, today, he should choose to say he thinks it necessary
to invade Canada, to prevent the British from invading us, how could you stop
him? You may say to him, 'I see no probability of the British invading us' but
he will say to you, 'Be silent; I can see it, if you don't.'" Abraham
Lincoln
Let
us kneel By LARRY SKARIN, Globe & Mail Letter to the Editor, Saturday,
August 7, 2004 - Rochester, N.Y. -- I must respond to Gerald R. Hallghall's
suggestion that ". . . vitriolic and endless criticism" is heaped on
U.S. President George W. Bush because of his professed Christianity. Mr.
Hallghall goes on to say that this is persecution, and claims that Christians
around the world are being subjected to it. As a 62-year-old American who
follows Canadian politics as closely as American, I will say this:
1. There are versions of Christianity that do not try to subject public policy
to religion. Prime Minister Paul Martin and
2. The most momentous thing a leader can do is send his country to war. Mr.
Bush did, and his reasoning has since been found erroneous and wanting;
3. Mr. Martin and former
4. Mr. Bush presides over a redistribution of wealth through tax policy,
making the rich richer and the poor poorer. John Kenneth Galbraith said:
"[These people believe] that the poor have too much money and the rich
don't have enough."
Those are the reasons for my vitriol against Mr. Bush. And it's not his
Christianity. But he has gotten me to pray.
Asked
to explain why suicide bombing is gaining new converts, Dr. Jerrold Post (a
"When
disappearance became state practice across Latin America in the 70s it aroused
revulsion in democratic countries where it is a fundamental tenet of
legitimate government that no state actor may detain - or kill - another human
being without having to answer to the law. Not only has President Bush
discarded that principle, he even brags about it. In his state of the union
address in February 2003, he said: "More than 3,000 suspected terrorists
have been arrested in many countries. Many others have met a different fate.
Put it this way, they're no longer a problem to the
"The
debate about whether it is better to be loved or feared
is shaping up as a major issue," said Lee Feinstein, a senior fellow at the
Council on Foreign Relations, which collaborated on the Pew study. ...
"There are a lot of places in the poll where you can see that the shock of
Sept. 11 is just a central concern for the American public," Mr. Mead said.
One of those appeared to be the belief, held by 43 percent, that torture could
sometimes be justified by circumstances, a number that is notable considering
the prison abuse scandal in Iraq." August 19, 2004,
"I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country." : Thomas Jefferson
"I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. As a result of the war, corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavour to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed." : Abraham Lincoln
"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
The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to the point where it becomes stronger than the democratic state itself. That in its essence is fascism - ownership of government by an individual, by a group or any controlling private power.": Franklin D. Roosevelt
"The real truth of the matter is, as you and I know, that a financial element in the large centers has owned the government of the U.S. since the days of Andrew Jackson." : Franklin D. Roosevelt
"With numbing regularity good people were seen to knuckle under the demands of authority and perform actions that were callous and severe. Men who are in everyday life responsible and decent were seduced by the trappings of authority, by the control of their perceptions, and by the uncritical acceptance of the experimenter's definition of the situation, into performing harsh acts. A substantial proportion of people do what they are told to do, irrespective of the content of the act and without limitations of conscience, so long as they perceive that the command comes from a legitimate authority" Stanley Milgram, 1965
"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
"A
strange species we are. We can stand anything God and nature can throw at us
save only plenty. If I wanted to destroy a nation, I would give it too much, and
I would have it on its knees, miserable, greedy, sick." -John
Steinbeck (1902-1968), Letter in The
"Individuals have international duties which transcend the national obligations of obedience.therefore [individual citizens] have the duty to violate domestic laws to prevent crimes against peace and humanity from occurring." : Nuremberg War Crime Tribunal, 1950
Man is subject to innumerable pains and sorrows by the very condition of humanity, and yet, as if nature had not sown evils enough in life, we are continually adding grief to grief and aggravating the common calamity by our cruel treatment of one another: Joseph Addison
"If we do not maintain Justice, Justice will not maintain us.": Francis Bacon
He who does wrong does wrong against himself. He who acts unjustly acts unjustly to himself, because he makes himself bad: Marcus Aurelius
Underlying the whole scheme of civilization is the confidence men have in each other, confidence in their integrity, confidence in their honesty, confidence in their future: Bourke Cockran
"When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.": Edmund Burke
To
the wrongs that need resistance, To the right that needs assistance, To the
future in the distance, Give yourselves: Carrie Chapman Catt
"Women
make up more than half the population, perform 2/3 of the world's work ...
However women earn only 10% of the world's income and own 1% of the world's
property ... If we are serious about achieving peace then we must be committed
to women's empowerment." from Peace, Conflict, and Violence: Peace
Psychology for the 21st Century http://www.peace.ca/peacepsychology.htm
"I
am a war president." U.S. President George W. Bush (January 8,
2004 Meet the Press)
He
said he has a (single-minded) vision of leading "this world towards more
peace and freedom". ... "
"I am not going to change, see?" U.S. President George W. Bush (January 8, 2004 Meet the Press)
"In
the attempt to defeat terrorism, let us not become the enemies we deplore."
Barbara Lee, American Congresswoman, who alone voted against Bush's war
escalation are more prophetic and sobering than ever.
On
spanking kids (corporal punishment): "(Globe and Mail columnist) Margaret
Wente undercut her own argument that child rearing is like dog training when
writing that she would hit the dog with a rolled-up newspaper as a method of
discipline. Humane dog-training methods never involve striking the dog.
A dog that is struck becomes hand-shy and fearful, not obedient, and probably
more dangerous than it would otherwise have been. If a child is to be
trained like a dog, then the child should most definitely not be struck, unless
the object is to produce a fearful, aggressive child." Letter to the
editor of the Globe and Mail from Noel Boulanger
A
child dies of hunger every five seconds. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/4078003.stm
.
| "American values in action",
Secretary of State Colin Powell candidly acknowledging (January 2004) the
hope that Tsunami aid might improve the Pros |
|
| - Tsunami relief | - Torture and killing of scores of
detainees in - -U.S. Troops Kill Civilians in Botched Strikes ("Collateral Damage") -illegal wars (eg. Iraq) -use of depleted uranium (see video at http://www.bushflash.com/pl_lo.htm - warning: scenes are shocking) -pre-emptive attack against perceived enemies when perceived in the "National Interest" -War profiteering http://www.truthout.org/docs_05/010205X.shtm -blackening of U.S. moral authority around the world -political attacks of the United Nations -vote against key international laws, including the International Criminal Court, Nuclear Non-proliferation -embracing nuclear proliferation and real politiks -the creation and enforcement of a worldwide "Pax Americana," or American peace (imperialism; global domination) -U.S. Quietly Tries to Replace U.N. Nuclear Agency Chief and other key U.N. officials -approve deception as a military tool (eg. psyops, misinformation, lying, etc.) and hence create trust crisis -meddling, covert and overt influence in other countries, against their wishes -"stealing" others' resources -Bush Administration Paid Pundit $240K to support Law/influence content on his nationally syndicated television show -$1 million deal with Ketchum that produced "video news releases" designed to look like news reports -doubts over the 2000 and 2004 election returns |
"For now the appalling truth is that
there has been no remedy for the documented torture and killing of foreign
prisoners by this American government." War Crimes, The Washington
Post | Editorial, Thursday 23 December 2004 http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/122404B.shtml
“Bush
did confront (Canadian Prime Minister) Martin and used the sort of language that
sets Canadians on edge. "He leaned across the table and said, 'I'm not
taking this position, but some future president is going to say, 'Why are we
paying to defend
“Every
time intellectuals have the chance to speak yet do not speak, they join the
forces that train people not to be able to think and imagine and feel in morally
and politically adequate ways. When they do not demand that the secrecy
that makes elite decisions absolute and unchangeable be removed, they too are
part of the passive conspiracy to kill off public scrutiny. When they do
not speak, when they do not demand, when they do not think and feel and act as
intellectuals – and so as public individuals – they too contribute to the
moral paralysis, the intellectual rigidity, that now grip both leaders and led
around the world.” C. Wright Mills (1958)
“The
American way of life is a weapon of mass destruction … It is impossible
for 4.5% of the world’s population to use 40% of the resources without
stealing.” S. Brian Willson http://www.brianwillson.com
“It
is time to break down a make believe mythology … If the world carries on the
way it is going, there will be a major ‘die-off’ – likely in Africa and
Asia, if not beyond.” S. Brian Willson (see also http://dieoff.org
)
Pot calling
the kettle black: Another edict from the
"Our
strength as a nation state will continue to be challenged by those who employ a
strategy of the weak using international fora, judicial processes, and
terrorism." (U.S. Department of Defense 2005 National Defense
Strategy, At page 5 under "Our Vulnerabilities", http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Mar2005/d20050318nds2.pdf
). Analysis by Prof. Barry E. Carter, Georgetown University Law Center: It
is a bit surprising to read that the Pentagon, in a document signed by Secretary
of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, says that international fora (presumably including
the United Nations) and legal processes (presumably including the U.S. courts)
are apparently on a level with terrorism and part of "a strategy of the
weak." Analysis by Howard N Meyer, author THE WORLD COURT IN
ACTION: … members may be shocked but should not be surprised that the World
Court for judging among the nations and the International Criminal Court for
trial and the punishment of world class criminals, (together being the organs of
global justice,) would be so contemptuously characterized in an official United
States Document. The Scalia test for "original intent" would
tell us "What you see is what you get:" that is, that is, the words
used by Mr Rumsfeld should be understood in light of their plain meaning.
It is a tragic reality that military leaders and their cohorts in our
schools, colleges, and media, have discredited international "judicial
processes," that were brought into being by forgotten American heroes, the
leaders of the peace movement of a century ago, united in their effort with
the founding leaders of our American Society of International Law. Only
those eager to complete the militarization of our beloved country, launched
during Reagan's administration, when they were junior officers, suffused now
with hubris as they have become generals and admirals, could be so
arrogant. Would that those who wish for a "culture of peace"
understand that only by civil administrators with the courage to demolish a
culture of war can we remove the militarism that is subverting the land of the
free.
“Enter John
Bolton, who, as the former
In 1995, in a moment of candor, then
Ambassador to the U.N. Madeleine Albright declared, "the U.N. is a tool
of American foreign policy."
"Muslims do not ‘hate our
freedom,' but rather, they hate our policies. The overwhelming majority
voice their objections to what they see as one-sided support in favor of
Gwynne Dyer captures war's essence when he contends that, by becoming soldiers, "Men agree to die when we tell them to."
"(What) it basically comes down to, is
it my right to choose between what I think is right and what I think is
wrong?" asks Pfc. Dan Felushko, 24. "And nobody should make
me sign away my ability to choose between right and wrong." But
Felushko had signed a contract to be with the U.S. Marine Corps. "It's a
devil's contract if you look at it that way," he says.
"But you can't have an Army of
free-thinkers," says CBS News Correspondent Scott Pelley. "You
wouldn't have an Army."
"I have to say that my image of my country always being the good guy, and always fighting for just causes, has been shattered." Brandon Hughey
"Canadian law has changed since the
See highlighted Quotes from George Orwell's book "1984" and its analysis.
"I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. As a result of the war, corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavour to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed." : Abraham Lincoln
"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
The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to the point where it becomes stronger than the democratic state itself. That in its essence is fascism - ownership of government by an individual, by a group or any controlling private power.": Franklin D. Roosevelt
"The real truth of the matter is, as you and I know, that a financial element in the large centers has owned the government of the U.S. since the days of Andrew Jackson." : Franklin D. Roosevelt
"With numbing regularity good people were seen to knuckle under the demands of authority and perform actions that were callous and severe. Men who are in everyday life responsible and decent were seduced by the trappings of authority, by the control of their perceptions, and by the uncritical acceptance of the experimenter's definition of the situation, into performing harsh acts. A substantial proportion of people do what they are told to do, irrespective of the content of the act and without limitations of conscience, so long as they perceive that the command comes from a legitimate authority" Stanley Milgram, 1965
"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
"A strange species we are. We can stand anything God and nature can throw at us save only plenty. If I wanted to destroy a nation, I would give it too much, and I would have it on its knees, miserable, greedy, sick." -John Steinbeck (1902-1968), Letter in The Washington Post, 28 Jan 60
"Individuals have international duties which transcend the national obligations of obedience. Therefore [individual citizens] have the duty to violate domestic laws to prevent crimes against peace and humanity from occurring." : Nuremberg War Crime Tribunal, 1950
Man is subject to innumerable pains and sorrows by the very condition of humanity, and yet, as if nature had not sown evils enough in life, we are continually adding grief to grief and aggravating the common calamity by our cruel treatment of one another: Joseph Addison
"If we do not maintain Justice, Justice will not maintain us.": Francis Bacon
He who does wrong does wrong against himself. He who acts unjustly acts unjustly to himself, because he makes himself bad: Marcus Aurelius
Underlying the whole scheme of civilization is the confidence men have in each other, confidence in their integrity, confidence in their honesty, confidence in their future: Bourke Cockran
"When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.": Edmund Burke
To the wrongs that need resistance, To the right that needs assistance, To the future in the distance, Give yourselves: Carrie Chapman Catt
"In the attempt to defeat terrorism, let us not become the enemies we deplore." Barbara Lee, American Congresswoman, who alone voted against Bush's war escalation are more prophetic and sobering than ever.
"First we must study how colonization works to de-civilize the colonizer, to brutalize him in the true sense of the word, to degrade him, to awaken him to buried instincts, to covetousness, violence, race hatred, and moral relativism." Aime Cesaire, a poet and writer from Martinique, wrote not quite 50 years ago in his 'Discourse on Colonialism'.
CIA Halts Interrogation Tactics - UPDATED - Sunday June 27, 2004 Washington (AP) - The CIA has suspended use of some White House-approved aggressive interrogation tactics employed to extract information from reluctant al-Qaida prisoners, The Washington Post said. Citing unnamed intelligence officials, the newspaper reported in Sunday's editions that what the CIA calls "enhanced interrogation techniques" were put on hold pending a review by Justice Department and other lawyers. The techniques include such things as feigned drowning and refusal of pain medication for injuries. The paper quoted current and former CIA officers aware of the recent decision as saying the suspension reflects the agency's concern about being accused of unsanctioned and illegal activities, as it was in the 1970s. The decision applies to CIA facilities around the world, but not to military prisons at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and elsewhere, the Post said. A CIA spokesman declined to comment on the issue, it said. It said CIA interrogations will continue, but without the suspended techniques, which also include feigning suffocation, "stress positions," light and noise bombardment, sleep deprivation, and making captives think they are being interrogated by another government. The newspaper said the interrogation methods were approved by Justice Department and National Security Council lawyers in 2002, outlined to congressional leaders and required the authorization of CIA Director George J. Tenet for use. Click here for Full Washington Post Article and related links. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A8534-2004Jun26.html ;
"We believe no more in Bonaparte's fighting merely for the liberties of the seas than in Great Britain's fighting for the liberties of mankind. The object is the same, to draw to themselves the power, the wealth and the resources of other nations." Thomas Jefferson
The Pentagon even got in on the act, releasing a study last month (February 2004) that suggested that one outcome of global warming could be the rise of mass civil unrest. In one scenario, drought, famine and rioting erupt across the world, spurred on by climate change. As countries face dwindling food supplies and scarce natural resources, conflict becomes the norm. "Disruption and conflict will be endemic features of life," says the Pentagon study. "Once again, warfare would define human life."
"Men for years now have been talking about war and peace. But now no longer can they just talk about it. It is no longer a choice between violence and nonviolence in this world; it is nonviolence or nonexistence. That is where we are today." Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., "I've been to the mountaintop" speech (the day before he was assassinated) http://www.stanford.edu/group/King/publications/speeches/I%27ve_been_to_the_mountaintop.pdf
"We owe it to the future of civilization not to allow the world's worst leaders to develop and deploy and therefore blackmail the freedom-loving nations with the world's worst weapons ..." George W. Bush. Saturday, August 3, 2002.
"He
who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to
perpetrate it" -Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Resignation letter of Ambassador Kiesling The following is the text of John Brady Kiesling's letter of resignation to Secretary of State Colin L. Powell. Mr. Kiesling is a career diplomat who has served in United States embassies from Tel Aviv to Casablanca to Yerevan. "Until this Administration it had been possible to believe that by upholding the policies of my president I was also upholding the interests of the American people and the world. I believe it no longer."
THE ABSURDITY OF MURDER
Albert Gumbo
T’is absurd isn’t it? Does it make sense then
For a strong man living in a house of stone
To murder a peasant dwelling in a mud hut,
When the inevitability of death is common to both of them?
The peasant in his own simple way
Accepting the inevitability of death as God’s will,
Is free to speak his mind and stay
Than live in constant fear and flee to the hill.
The strong man, on the other hand, lives in distress
And with every murder imagines new enemies
Causing him to ensconce himself in a fortress
Still refusing to accept any peace treaties
Surely t’is much easier to afford the peasant clean water
Schools, clinics and paved roads for his harvest;
For if the peasant’s mind is at peace and at rest
The strong man need not live in fear!
T’is absurd isn’t it?
"All deaths, young or old, expected or not, are similar and at the same time incommensurable ... From this arises both reverence for life and awe at death. That's why I find it odd that the sense of profound national mourning over the shuttle deaths seemed to find no echo in the deaths that will inevitably result from the coming war on Iraq. ... Yet a death is a death, and war, as British journalist Robert Fisk passionately insists, is not about winning or losing, it is about death... that is why one sees war as a last resort ... how can you fail to make a link to the coming war and death ... "Why should the world put up with Saddam for one minute more?" ... what's really astonishing is the callowness of the question ... "I am running out of patience with Saddam Hussein". Well, everybody runs out of patience, but most of the world is a bit grownup and doesn't assume that whatever irritates it is the sole priority for action ... Oh, and there's another reason the world doesn't react as he wishes. That's because it opposes war ... In other words, because this war is undemocratic in a broad, not an electoral, sense; and democracy is supposed to be what separates "us" from the evil ones. ... what is at stake is not whether Iraq is in breach, material or otherwise, of some resolution, or whether it is hiding weapons ... It is whether these are sufficient reason or threat to the security of the world's people to take the catastrophic step to war. That's what counts, not some legal point-making as if the UN is moot court in law school. For lesser violations, there are other remedies, such as indicting Saddam at the International Criminal Court -- if the United States would stop boycotting the thing." Rick Salutin, Globe and Mail, February 7, 2003 http://www.globeandmail.ca
"Violence is not a knife in the hand. It grows like a poison tree inside other people who have not learned to value other human beings." Frances Lawrence
"After
going through this material (this web site generally, and the Frank Dorrel video
http://www.peace.ca/infovideo.htm
particularly), there are a few truths that appear to me:
1. these stories are too good not to be addressed by the mainstream media in the
proper course of the business of investigative journalism. Since they have
not, then one would reasonably conclude that the mainstream media is in
collusion with the government-military-industrial complex to hide this
information from the public (silence is as good as hiding and complicity).
2. there is no effective opposition, including media, holding the government
accountable for these atrocities. Accordingly, democracy (as intended) is
not working properly.
3. the government-military-industrial complex does not have a rational
explanation to justify or disprove these claims of atrocities or they would be
publicly available -- I could find no such response from the U.S. or other
governments
(and it is not satisfactory to simply dismiss these claims of atrocities as
preposterous)." - Bob Stewart
"War is just a racket. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of people. Only a small inside group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few at the expense of the masses." Excerpt from a speech delivered in 1933, by Major General Smedley Butler, USMC. Click on link for complete speech
"If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail."
"I'm an American tired of American lies"
by Hollywood actor Woody Harrelson
Hollywood actor Sean Penn's Open Letter to Bush in
Washington Post
Ex-US President Jimmy Carter Slams 'Arrogant' US Foreign Policy
"The main reason we have wars, and violence on a major scale, is 'unscrupulous leaders' motivated by greed for money and power who manipulate (using factors such as religion, race, illiteracy, poverty, etc.) the general public to do his bidding. ... The more power a leader (or person) has, the more responsible they are. Taking this a step further, then, the U.S. Government has the highest responsibility as the world's only superpower. The only bodies more powerful are the U.S. public and the world's public which both have the power to motivate the U.S. Government." Robert Stewart
"Statistically, 1% +/- of the population with weapons and intent make the world hell for the rest (there are another approximately 5 to 10% who can be called 'co-homicidal', who participate but would not initiate). But we, the general public (i.e. 90% +), let them do it. As the Carnegie Institute indicates, 'It is not that we do not know what to do, it is that we do not do it.' " Robert Stewart"The road to the future leads us smack into the wall. We simply ricochet off the alternatives that destiny offers: a demographic explosion that triggers social chaos and spreads death, nuclear delirium and the quasi-annihilation of the species... Our survival is no more than a question of 25, 50 or perhaps 100 years." -- Jacques Cousteau
"We must understand the seriousness of this situation. The United States has made serious mistakes in the conduct of its foreign affairs, which have had unfortunate repercussions long after the decisions were taken. Unqualified support of the Shah of Iran led directly to the Islamic revolution of 1979. Then the United States chose to arm and finance the [Islamic] mujahedin in Afghanistan instead of supporting and encouraging the moderate wing of the government of Afghanistan. That is what led to the Taliban in Afghanistan. But the most catastrophic action of the United States was to sabotage the decision that was painstakingly stitched together by the United Nations regarding the withdrawal of the Soviet Union from Afghanistan. If you look at those matters, you will come to the conclusion that the attitude of the United States of America is a threat to world peace. Because what [America] is saying is that if you are afraid of a veto in the Security Council, you can go outside and take action and violate the sovereignty of other countries. That is the message they are sending to the world. That must be condemned in the strongest terms." Nelson Mandela in a Newsweek interview (September 16, 2002)
"Of
all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded
because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent
of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes. And armies, and debts, and
taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of
the few. In war, too, the discretionary power of the Executive is extended.
Its influence in dealing out offices, honors, and emoluments is multiplied;
and all the means of seducing the minds, are
added to those of subduing the force of the people. The same malignant aspect
in republicanism may be traced in the inequality of fortunes, and the
opportunities of fraud, growing out of a state of war...and in the degeneracy
of manners and morals, engendered by both. No nation could preserve its
freedom in the midst of continual warfare."
--James Madison, April 20, 1795
"War is just a racket. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of people. Only a small inside group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few at the expense of the masses. I believe in adequate defence at the coastline and nothing else. If a nation comes over here to fight, then we'll fight. The trouble with America is that when the dollar only earns 6 percent over here, then it gets restless and goes overseas to get 100 percent. Then the flag follows the dollar and the soldiers follow the flag. I wouldn't go to war again as I have done to protect some lousy investment of the bankers. There are only two things we should fight for. One is the defence of our homes and the other is the Bill of Rights. War for any other reason is simply a racket. 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 men" to plan war reparations, and a "Big Boss" - Super-Nationalistic-Capitalism. It may seem odd for me, a military man to adopt such a comparison. Truthfulness compels me to. I spent thirty- three years and four months in active military service as a member of this 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 most 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 capitalism. I suspected I was just part of a racket at the time. Now I am sure of it. Like all the members of the military profession, I never had a thought of my own until I left the service. My mental faculties remained in suspended animation while I obeyed the orders of higher-ups. This is typical with everyone in the military service. I helped make Mexico, 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 benefits of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912 (where have I heard that name before?). I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China I helped to see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested. During those years, I had, as the boys in the back room would say, a swell racket. Looking back on it, I feel that I could have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents." -- Excerpt from a speech delivered in 1933, by Major General Smedley Butler, USMC.
"Quand les riches se font la guerre, ce sont les pauvres qui meurent." (When the rich wage war, it's the poor who die) - Jean Paul Sartre (1905-1980), Le Diable et le bon Dieu (1951)
"Through
force, fraud and violence, the people of ... Africa were relieved of their
political and economic power and forced to pay allegiance to foreign
monarchs."
Some Quotes by Noam Chomsky (noted linguist and foreign policy critic):
"the
phrase "conspiracy theories" is usually used as a weapon to discourage
institutional analysis and the asking of awkward questions" Noam Chomsky
"States are not moral agents, people are, and can impose moral standards on powerful institutions."
"UN Ambassador Albright, later Secretary of State, put the matter pretty frankly when she was admonishing the Security Council when it was refusing to go along with US policies towards Iraq. She said the United States will act multilaterally when we can, and unilaterally when we must, unconstrained by solemn treaty obligations. The World Court, the foundations of world order or anything else are irrelevant. That's been the case all along, not just for the United States. It's been demonstrated in action in shocking ways, no need to review. It's now a principle. What that means is that the international political order is officially dead, not just dead in practice. The United Nations is fine as long as it serves United States interests. Otherwise, get lost." Noam Chomsky, Whose World Order: Conflicting Visions http://www.acs.ucalgary.ca/~gharris/ ; updated in the Summer/Fall 2001 issue of the McGill International Review http://www.irsam.ca/mir/
Some Quotes from
George Bernard Shaw:
"The
problem in defense spending is to figure how far you should go without
destroying from within what you are trying to defend from without."
Dwight D. Eisenhower
"The
rights of municipalities to engage in boycotts (like those which helped to end
apartheid in South Africa, or which oppose brutal dictatorial practices in
Burma) are currently being viewed as restrictions on trade." Marc
Pilisuk, Globalism and Structural Violence (in the new text 'Peace, Conflict and
Violence: Peace Psychology for the 21st Century', ISBN 0-13-096821-8, Prentice
Hall)
"Without
a global revolution in consciousness, nothing will change for the better in the
sphere of our being as humans, and the catastrophe toward which we are headed
... will be unavoidable." Vaclav Havel
"Religion
is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich." Napolean
"The
war is waged by each ruling group against its own subjects, and the object
of the war is not to make or prevent conquests of territory, but to keep the
structure of society intact." 1984 / George Orwell
"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 English-speaking countries, especially the United States and Britain, have a deeply cynical policy of double standards regarding the Islamic world of 1.3 billion people ... In spite of Osama Bin Laden’s violence, his primitive politics and his misogyny he is the most popular figure in this Islamic world, where he has little competition from the corpulent kings, generals, dictators and juntas, who obey orders from the west ... I was with Arabs in Iraq, Jordan and Palestine while they listened to Osama Bin Laden’s first video and saw the reaction: Their faces were wet with tears. He pierced their hearts with his message, which had three arrows: First: That America will never have peace until Palestine has peace and justice. Second: That America will never have peace as long as 6,000 Iraqi children die each month due to U.S. enforced UN sanctions. Third: America will never have peace as long as the west maintains tyrants and puppet rulers in the Islamic world. The Islamic world sees 6,000 Iraqi children die every month for ten years and sees that the west doesn’t care, but when 3,000 people die in the World Trade Centers the whole world shakes and is now on the brink of many wars ... this is part of a pervasive double-standard by which the blood of Americans is worth so much more than the blood of Iraqis or Afghanis." George Galloway, MP from Scotland, and Senior Vice Chairman Parliamentary Labour Party Foreign Affairs Committee, Britain.
2001
P.U.-litzer Prizes For Media Performances Announced By Norman
Solomon, FAIR.org, 12-16-1 - The P.U.-litzer Prizes were established a
decade ago to give recognition to the stinkiest media performances of the year.
As each winter arrives, I confer with Jeff Cohen of the media watch group FAIR
to sift through the large volume of entries. This year, the competition was
especially fierce. We regret that only a few journalists can win a P.U.-litzer. And
now, the tenth annual P.U.-litzer Prizes, for the foulest media performances of
2001:
* "LOVE A MAN IN A UNIFORM" AWARD -- Cokie Roberts of ABC News "This
Week" - On David Letterman's show in October, Roberts gushed: "I
am, I will just confess to you, a total sucker for the guys who stand up
with all the ribbons on and stuff, and they say it's true and I'm ready to
believe it. We had General Shelton on the show the last day he was chairman
of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and I couldn't lift that jacket with all the
ribbons and medals. And so when they say stuff, I tend to believe it."
* PROTECTING VIEWERS FROM THE NEWS PRIZE -- CNN Chair Walter Isaacson - "It
seems perverse to focus too much on the casualties or hardship in
Afghanistan," said Isaacson, in a memo ordering his staff to accompany
any images of Afghan civilian suffering with rhetoric that U.S. bombing is
retaliation for the Taliban harboring terrorists. As if the American public may
be too feeble-minded to remember Sept. 11, the CNN chief explained: "You
want to make sure that when they see civilian suffering there, it's in the
context of a terrorist attack that caused enormous suffering in the United
States."
* PROTECTING READERS FROM THE NEWS PRIZE -- Panama City News Herald - An
October internal memo from the daily in Panama City, Florida, warned its
editors: "DO NOT USE photos on Page 1A showing civilian casualties
from the U.S. war on Afghanistan. Our sister paper ... has done so and received
hundreds and hundreds of threatening e-mails... DO NOT USE wire stories
which lead with civilian casualties from the U.S. war on Afghanistan. They
should be mentioned further down in the story. If the story needs rewriting
to play down the civilian casualties, DO IT."
* BEST EMBRACE OF TERRORIST MINDSET AWARD -- columnist Ann Coulter - This
category had many candidates -- pundits apparently trying to sound as
fanatical as the terrorists they were denouncing - but it was won by Coulter,
who wrote in September: "We know who the homicidal maniacs are. They are
the ones cheering and dancing right now. We should invade their countries,
kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity."
Runner-up: Thomas Woodrow and The Washington Times, for a column headlined
"Time to Use the Nuclear Option," which asserted: "At a bare
minimum, tactical nuclear capabilities should be used against the bin Laden
camps in the desert of Afghanistan. To do less would be rightly seen by the
poisoned minds that orchestrated these attacks as cowardice."
* TORTUOUS PUNDITRY PRIZE -- Jonathan Alter of Newsweek - In the Nov.
5 edition, under the headline "Time to Think About Torture,"
Newsweek's Alter wrote: "In this autumn of anger, even a liberal can find
his thoughts turning to ... torture. OK, not cattle prods or rubber hoses,
at least not here in the United States, but something to jump-start
the stalled investigation of the greatest crime in American history....
Some people still argue that we needn't rethink any of our old assumptions
about law enforcement, but they're hopelessly 'Sept. 10' -- living in a
country that no longer exists."
* CHILD WARNOGRAPHY AWARD -- Bob Edwards, NPR News - On a Nov. 26
broadcast, the longtime anchor of "Morning Edition" interviewed a
12-year-old boy about a new line of trading cards marketed "to teach
children about the war on terrorism" by "featuring photographs
and information about the war effort." The elder male was enthusiastic
as he compared cards. "I've got an Air Force F-16," Edwards said.
"The picture's taken from the bottom so you can see the whole payload
there, all the bombs lined up." After the boy replied with a bland
"yeah," Edwards went on: "That's pretty cool."
* "WILD ABOUT THAT MADMAN" AWARD -- Thomas Friedman of The New York
Times - "I was a critic of Rumsfeld before, but there's one thing ...
that I do like about Rumsfeld," columnist Friedman declared on Oct. 13
during a CNBC appearance. "He's just a little bit crazy, OK? He's just
a little bit crazy, and in this kind of war, they always count on being
able to out-crazy us, and I'm glad we got some guy on our bench that our
quarterback -- who's just a little bit crazy, not totally, but you never know
what that guy's going to do, and I say that's my guy."
* "HISTORY IS FOR WIMPS" PRIZE -- Newsweek - When Newsweek
published a Dec. 3 cover story on George W. and Laura Bush, it was a paean
to "the First Team" more akin to worship than journalism. Along
the way, the magazine explained that the president doesn't read many books:
"He's busy making history, but doesn't look back at his own, or the
world's.... Bush would rather look forward than backward. It's the way he's built,
and the result is a president who operates without evident remorse or
second-guessing."
* BLAME CERTAIN AMERICANS FIRST PRIZE -- televangelist/pundits - Jerry
Falwell and Pat Robertson - On the national "700 Club" TV show,
with host Robertson expressing his agreement, Falwell blamed the Sept. 11
attacks on various Americans who had allegedly irritated God: "I
really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and
the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an
alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American Way, all of them
who have tried to secularize America, I point the finger in their face and
say, 'You helped this happen.'"
* AMERICA UNITED EXCEPT FOR THOSE DECADENT TRAITORS AWARD -- Andrew Sullivan
of The New Republic and Sunday Times of London - Columnist Sullivan,
as if trying to prove that a gay rights advocate can be as hysterically
right-wing as a Falwell, wrote in mid-September: "The middle part of
the country -- the great red zone that voted for Bush -- is clearly ready
for war. The decadent left in its enclaves on the coasts is not dead -- and may
well mount a fifth column."
* SHEER O'REILLYNESS AWARD -- Fox News Channel's Bill O'Reilly and Catherine
Seipp of MediaWeek - A February profile of O'Reilly in MediaWeek quoted the
TV host's claim that the Los Angeles Times had never named the woman who'd accused
Bill Clinton of raping her in 1978: "They never mentioned
Juanita Broaddrick's name, ever. The whole area out here has no idea what's
going on, unless you watch my show." After it was pointed out that
O'Reilly was wrong and that Broaddrick had been repeatedly mentioned in the
L.A. Times, the writer of the MediaWeek profile, Catherine Seipp, commented
that she would likely have caught the error "if I hadn't been so
mesmerized by O'Reilly's sheer O'Reillyness. There's just something
about a man who's always sure he's right even when he's wrong."
Norman Solomon's latest book is "The Habits of Highly Deceptive
Media." Reprinted from FAIR: http://www.fair.org/media-beat/011213.html
If fear wins out, the anger may be turned inward and lead to self-destructive behavior. ... If fear wins out against anger, a person's thinking can come to be dominated by pessimism. Of course, some pessimism comes from practical experience. As Helen Caldicott puts it, "the international balance of terror, economic pressures, and the frustration of dealing with a biased government and unresponsive bureaucracy leave many Americans feeling helpless." But pessimism also takes the form of irrational ideas and myths, such as the myth that human nature is intrinsically evil and war-like." courtesy of David Adams, Psychology for Peace Activists http://www.culture-of-peace.info/ppa/title-page.html
"One method that the State uses to repress movements for peace and justice is to outlaw organizations and force the membership underground where personal integration is much more difficult to achieve." David Adams, Psychology for Peace Activists http://www.culture-of-peace.info/ppa/title-page.html
The
military-industrial complex promotes war preparation in order to profit from
government orders which are free from the competition of a capitalist market....
militarism has historically been used not only for war between states, but also
for the maintenance of power within the state. David Adams, Psychology for
Peace Activists http://www.culture-of-peace.info/ppa/title-page.html
What
if we understood that, today, there is no such thing as national security as
long as the basic human needs of large portions of humanity are not met?In
today’s world made transparent by television and other telecommunications, any
country that attains prosperity unshared by its fellow nations can only breed
resentment and hatred. John Robbins http://www.foodrevolution.org/terrorandlove.htm
The
basis of imperialism according to the classic definition of Hobson: the use of
government machinery to secure economic gains abroad.
Some Quotes from Dr. Johan Galtung ('father' of peace
research):
" 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
"Is there any man, is there any woman, let me say any child here", Woodrow Wilson asked a year after the First World War ended, "that does not know that the seed of war in the modern world is industrial and commercial rivalry?". In 1919, as US citizens watched a shredded Europe scraping up its own remains, the answer may well have been no. But the lessons of war never last for long. courtesy of George Monbiot
"Those who make peaceful resolution impossible make violent resolution inevitable." John F. Kennedy
"Violence is a form of resourcelessness; in other words, we use violence when we lack the creativity to come up with a nonviolent solution." Ursula Franklin, Canadian.
Some Quotes by U.S. President Bill Clinton:
"If we don't change, our species will not survive... Frankly, we may get to the point where the only way of saving the world will be for industrial civilization to collapse." -Maurice Strong quoted in the September 1, 1997 edition of National Review magazine on the impending global environmental catastrophe.
Some Quotes by Ramsey Clark, former United States Attorney General and human rights
activist:
"If we see that Germany is winning we should help Russia and if Russia is winning we ought to help Germany and that way let them kill as many as possible." Harry S. Truman, 1941
In the words of World Bank President James D. Wolfensohn: "We estimate that tens of thousands more children will die worldwide and some 10 million more people are likely to be living below the poverty line of $1 a day because of the terrorist attacks. This is simply from loss of income. Many, many more people will be thrown into poverty if development strategies are disrupted." (story at http://www.worldbank.org/developmentnews/stories/html/100101a.htm )
"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
"'What makes suicide bombers tick?' asked Foreign Policy magazine in 2000. Terrorism specialists offer a nuanced appraisal, arguing that suicide terrorism has inherent tactical advantages over conventional terrorism: It is a simple and low-cost operation (requiring no escape routes or complicated rescue operations); it guarantees mass casualties and extensive damage (since the suicide bomber can choose the exact time, location, and circumstances of the attack); there is no fear that interrogated terrorists will surrender important information (because their deaths are certain); and it has an immense impact on the public and the media (due to the overwhelming sense of helplessness). Dr. Ramadan Shalah, secretary-general of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, summarized the chilling logic of the new terror tactic: 'Our enemy possesses the most sophisticated weapons in the world and its army is trained to a very high standard ... We have nothing with which to repel killing and thuggery against us except the weapon of martyrdom. It is easy and costs us only our lives ... Human bombs cannot be defeated, not even by nuclear bombs.'"
"Today, the greatest threats facing any nation's security may not be military threat. Increasingly, they are complex issues related to the environment such as: population growth, water scarcity, pollution, and economic stability." The Center for Defense Information www.cdi.org
In the sociopathic language of our leaders, I suppose that Columbine & Santee would be viewed as "acceptable collateral damage." Marvin Berlowitz
Pastor Martin Niemoller, writing in Germany before his arrest in the 1930s: "The Nazis came for the Communists, and I didn't speak up because I was not a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I was not a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak up because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics and I was a Protestant, so I didn't speak up....by that time there was nobody left to speak up for anyone."
"Commanders should consider community relations
activities as a fundamental part of building public support for military
operations. Public affairs operations bring together Air Force people and the
civilian community through events such as air shows that feature the US
Air Force Air Demonstration Squadron (the Thunderbirds), open houses,
anniversary activities, civic leader tours, support for local community
activities, and recruiting efforts. Effective community relations create
mutual acceptance, respect, appreciation and cooperation between the Air
Force and civilian community. ... Public affairs operations support a
strong
national defense, in effect preparing the nation for war, by building
public trust and understanding for the military's contribution to
national security and its budgetary requirements. These operations make
taxpayers aware of the value of spending defense dollars on readiness,
advanced weapons, training, personnel, and the associated costs of
maintaining a premier aerospace force. With public and congressional
backing, military leaders are able to effectively recruit, equip, and
train airmen to perform the full spectrum of military operations."
US Air Force
"The U.S. itself is taking penal action against states and individuals all over the world, violating the sovereignty of other states. But at the same time the U.S. will not accept a quite reasonable right for other countries to prosecute, before an international tribunal, in the event U.S. citizens should commit the worst types of crimes (war crimes, genocide, crimes against humanity, etc.) on their territory." Frederik S. Heffermehl
"The Cuban crisis in 1962 was not the only case
where the world was inches away from devastation; there were many similarly
dangerous situations. One type was the recurrent malfunctioning of
electronic detection and communication systems. It is a wonder that we
got through alive. Nuclear deterrence is a gamble that some time will
be lost." Lee Butler, USA, retired Four Star General, who served
until 1994 as Commander in Chief of the long-range air, land and sea based
nuclear forces of the United States. Commentary: "I wish to
mention and honour one of the people we should thank for our continuing
existence, a Russian colonel, Stanislav Petrov. For three terrifying
minutes on a September night in 1983 he held firm as alarms blared and
lights flashed across his nuclear control bunker, falsely indicating a
nuclear attack. Had he followed his orders, Soviet missiles would have
erased numerous U.S. cities. It would have been the end for us all.
After initial promises of the honour he deserved, the incident was hushed up
and Petrov was sacked by embarrassed superiors. Today he lives
forgotten and ill outside Moscow." Frederik S. Heffermehl
"Unless the present law-based international order is respected in the years to come, the international community will face disintegration and international uncertainty that has not been seen since the 1930s." Hon. Lloyd Axworthy, past Minister of Foreign Affairs Canada and Knut Vollebaek, past Foreign Minister of Norway.
"In 1961 President John F. Kennedy asked the
U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff "If your present nuclear war plans were
executed as planned, how many people would die in the Soviet Union and
China?" ... The total death-toll ... was estimated by the Joint Chiefs
to be in the neighborhood of 600,000,000 dead. One hundred Holocausts.
... How ordinary, patriotic, conscientious Americans, men I worked with
every day and drank beer with at night, could have brought into being a
machinery for destruction on this scale, with the readiness to use it, is a
horror and a mystery to me that I have struggled to understand ever since.
... It is a reality whose existence in each one of these states has depended
from its beginning on governmental secrecy, on people keeping secrets from
their fellow citizens." Daniel Ellsberg, USA, author, his
publication of the Pentagon Papers in 1971 helped end the Vietnam war and
bring an end to the Nixon Presidency. Commentary: "Hardly anyone
discovered the reality that the war planners were calculating explosive
power only and not all the other enormous consequences of a nuclear
attack." Lee Butler, USA, retired Four Star General, who served until
1994 as Commander in Chief of the long-range air, land and sea based nuclear
forces of the United States.
"... Richard Nixon was deceiving the public
about his policy in Vietnam just as his five predecessors had done, and that
like them he was on a secret course that would almost surely prolong and
escalate a wrongful, hopeless war." Daniel Ellsberg, USA, author, his
publication of the Pentagon Papers in 1971 helped end the Vietnam war and
bring an end to the Nixon Presidency.
"The phenomenon of denial, which, when it comes to nuclear weapons (and a Culture of Violence generally?), is something we are confronting right now. ... Dr. Robert Jay Lifton's greatest contribution is his identification of a phenomenon he calls "collective numbing" or a societywide denial, and how that denial is linked to the government's embrace of nuclear weapons (violence?)." Jonathan Schell and Charles B. Strosier, co-director of the Center on Violence and Human Survival (with editorial comments)
"If you look at world history, ever since men began
waging war, you will see that there's a permanent race between sword and shield.
The sword always wins. The more improvements that are made to the shield, the
more improvements are made to the sword. We think that with these [anti-missile
] systems, we are just going to spur swordmakers to intensify their
efforts."
("With a Don't Be Vexed Air, Chirac Assesses U.S," New York Times,
December 17, 1999)
" 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
"Wars can be prevented just as surely as they can be provoked, and we who fail to prevent them, must share the guilt for the dead." General Omar Bradley
"Two thirds of the boys from Harlem won't live past middle age." Geoffrey Canada, author of 'Fist, Stick, Knife, Gun'
"87% of television movies solve interpersonal conflicts with violence." Betty Reardon, author of 'A Culture of Peace: Core Learnings for the Twenty-First Century'
"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
"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
"Capitalism is the extraordinary belief that the nastiest of men, for the nastiest of reasons, will somehow work for the benefit of us all." -- Economist John Maynard Keynes
"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
" 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
" [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
"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
" 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
"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
" Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel. " Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) English author, literary scholar and social critic
" 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
"The Department of National Defence (Canada) has the largest budget of any federal (Canadian) government department." Canadian Peace Alliance
" 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
Some Quotes by Edward S. Herman, economist, author, and US media and foreign policy critic:
"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
"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
" 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 - from the book 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
Some Quotes by
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 (download a video with Stockwell, talking about the Third World War)
" 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/Dec 1998)
"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
"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
In 1997, the six governments which executed the greatest number of people per capita were China, Iran, Iraq, Nigeria, Florida and Texas.
" 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
" 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 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
"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." Hermann Goering, Nazi leader, at the Nuremberg Trials after World War II
"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 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
"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
" The most unpardonable sin in society is independence of thought." Emma Goldman, American anarchist and feminist, 1869-1940
" 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
" 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
" 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 balI 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
" 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, missiles, 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
" 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
"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 (Progressive magazine, July 1999)
"Bringing democratic control to the conduct of foreign policy requires a struggle merely to force the issue onto the public agenda." Eric Alterman, author
"The problem after a war is with the victor. He thinks he has just proved that war and violence pay. Who will teach him a lesson?" - A.J. Muste
The following was proposed shortly after World War II by an advisor to the U.S. government, George F. Kennan. He was also the first to formulate the so called containment strategy, which dominated U.S. foreign policy for almost a half century: "We have about 50% of the world's wealth, but only about 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 without detriment to our national security... We need not deceive ourselves that we can afford ... the luxury of altruism ... We should cease to talk about ... unreal objectives such as human rights, the rising of living standards and democratization. The day is not far off when we are going to deal in straight power concepts."
Commentary: Further, and this will be difficult (but not insurmountable) current national foreign policies must change. For example, "Social justice, as a goal urged by the United Nations, refers to striving for equality between entire peoples, that is a global attack on global poverty. Such an attack cannot be launched without radically changing the current trade patterns and financial arrangements between the affluent and impoverished worlds. It cannot be launched without expressly disavowing national policies of the sort proposed by Mr. Kennan.
In a recent article in Foreign Affairs entitled "Saving the UN", U.S. Senator Jesse Helms writes: "As it currently operates, the United Nations does not deserve continued American support... [[it] is being transformed from an institution of sovereign nations into a quasi-sovereign entity in itself. The transformation represents an obvious threat to U.S. national interests.. This situation is untenable. The United Nations was originally created to help nation-states facilitate the peaceful resolution of international disputes. However, the United Nations has moved from facilitating diplomacy among nation-states to supplanting them altogether. Boutros Ghali has said as much. In his Agenda for Peace. he declared... "The time of absolute and exclusive sovereignty ... has passed. Its theory has never matched reality ..." Such thinking is -in step with the nearly global movement toward greater centralization of political power ... This process must be stopped ... U.N. reform is much more than saving money. It is about preventing unelected bureaucrats from acquiring ever greater powers at the expense of elected national leaders. It is about restoring the legitimacy of the nation-state ... the UN bureaucracy mistakenly believes that caring for the needs of all the world's people is . . its job.... There must be a termination of unnecessary committees and conferences ... In addition to wasteful conferences like the Beijing women's summit, ... the United Nations continually sponsors workshops, expert consultations, technical consultations, and panel discussions.... Most of these can be terminated at a savings of millions of dollars . . The time has come for the United States to deliver an ultimatum: Either the United Nations reforms, quickly and dramatically, or the United States will end its participation.... Withholding U.S. contributions has not worked. In 1986 Congress passed the Kassebaum-Solomon bill, which said to the United Nations in clear and unmistakable terms, reform or die. The time has come for it to do one or the other."
As Henry Kissinger puts it succinctly, "Empires have no interest in operating within an international system; they aspire to be the international system ..."
"We have heard that a half million children have died," said "60 Minutes" reporter Lesley Stahl, speaking of US sanctions against Iraq. "I mean, that's more children than died in Hiroshima. And -- and you know, is the price worth it?" Her guest, in May 1996, U.N. Ambassador Madeleine Albright, responded: "I think this is a very hard choice, but the price -- we think the price is worth it."
At a 1993 meeting with Joint Chiefs Chairman Colin Powell--who gave his name to the doctrine that the military should be used only after a clear political goal has been set, and then only with decisive force--Secretary of State Madeleine Albright challenged the general: 'What's the point of having this superb military that you're always talking about if we can't use it'?"
This an interview with Brzezinski regarding US/CIA programs in Afghanistan "6 months before the Soviet intervention". Brzezinski, in case anyone doesn't know, is a _very senior US policy official.
1) B: "Regret what? That secret operation was an excellent idea.
It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap and you want me to regret
it?"
Commentary: If the "Afghan trap" was seen by our esteemed policy-makers as an
excellent and successful strategy - as indeed it was from their perspective - then isn't
it reasonable to assume that same strategy might be deployed elsewhere?
2) B: "What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban
or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Moslems or the liberation of
Central Europe and the end of the cold war?"
Commentary: This statement is reminescent of another by Kissinger, when asked why the US
had sold out the Kurds. He replied "You can't make omelettes without breaking
eggs". What both of these gentlemen are telling us is that there are no
observable limits to their callous Machiavellian schemes. Despite all the rhetoric
about saving the noble Aghans from the evil Ruskies - rhetoric which mobilized American
moral outrage at the time - all the while the Aghans were just pawns in the game, and
their eventual fate was of no concern to our leaders. Use them, abuse them, and then
discard them... this is how the NWO "makes omelettes".
3) B: " According to the official version of history, CIA aid to the
Mujahadeen began during 1980, that is to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan,
24 Dec 1979. But the reality, secretly guarded until now, is completely
otherwise..."
For nearly 20 years, he tells us, a major conspiracy was successfully kept secret from the
American people and the world. There were changes of administration, and changes of
personnel in the various agencies invovled, and yet nothing leaked out of the mainstream
media. People at the highest level of government were in the know, along with
who-knows-how-many field agents, support personnel, administrative staff, media insiders,
etc. etc. There is an "official version of history" and then there is reality -
the discrepency is called "conspiracy" - and by some means or the other, such
conspiracies can be kept secret successfully for decades.
Behold the brand new Treasury Secretary-designate, Lawrence "Larry" Summers, as he describes (in an internal memo) central tenets of his global economic vision.
"'Dirty' Industries: Just between you and me, shouldn't the World Bank be encouraging
MORE migration of the dirty industries to the LDCs [Less Developed Countries]? I can
think of three reasons:
"1) The measurements of the costs of health impairing pollution depends on the
foregone earnings from increased morbidity and mortality. From this point of view a
given amount of health impairing pollution should be done in the country with the lowest
cost, which will be the country with the lowest
wages. 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.
"2) The costs of pollution are likely to be non-linear as the initial increments of
pollution probably have very low cost. I've always though that under-populated
countries in Africa are vastly UNDER-polluted, their air quality is probably vastly
inefficiently low compared to Los Angeles or Mexico City. Only the lamentable facts
that so much pollution is generated by non-tradable industries (transport, electrical
generation) and that the unit transport costs of solid waste are so high prevent world
welfare
enhancing trade in air pollution and waste.
"3) The demand for a clean environment for aesthetic and health reasons is likely to
have very high income elasticity. The concern over an agent that causes a one in a
million change in the odds of prostrate cancer is obviously going to be much higher in a
country where people survive to get
prostrate cancer than in a country where under 5 mortality is is 200 per thousand.
Also, much of the concern over industrial atmosphere discharge is about visibility
impairing particulates. These discharges may have very little direct health
impact. Clearly trade in goods that embody aesthetic
pollution concerns could be welfare enhancing. While production is mobile the
consumption of pretty air is a non-tradable."
At a March 24, 1999 State Department press briefing, spokesman James Rubin was asked about this development (Yugoslavia's willingness to consider a UN peacekeeping force, but not a NATO led one):
QUESTION: Was there any follow-up to the Serbian Assembly's yesterday? They had a
two-pronged decision. One was to not allow NATO troops to come in; but the second part was
to say they would consider an international force if all of the Kosovo ethnic groups
agreed to some kind of a peace plan. It was an ambiguous collection of resolutions. Did
anybody try to pursue that and find out what was the meaning of that?
RUBIN: Ambassador Holbrooke was in Belgrade, discussed these matters extensively with
President Milosevic, left with the conclusion that he was not prepared to engage seriously
on the two relevant subjects. I think the decision of the Serb Parliament opposing
military-led implementation was the message that most people received from the
parliamentary debate. I'm not aware that people saw any silver linings.
QUESTION: But there was a second message, as well; there was a second resolution.
RUBIN: I am aware that there was work done, but I'm not aware that anybody in this
building regarded it as a silver lining.
In other words, the State Department was aware that the Serbs had once again expressed
openness to an "international presence," but this was not seen as a "silver
lining," apparently because only a NATO force was acceptable to the U.S.
In an intriguing corollary to the insistence on NATO forces, a leaked version of the
Pentagon's 1994-1999 Defense Planning Guidance report advises that the United States
"must seek to prevent the emergence of European-only security arrangements which
would undermine NATO....Therefore, it is of fundamental importance to preserve NATO as the
primary instrument of Western defense and security, as well as the channel for U.S.
influence and participation in European security affairs."
NATO reports on the bombing of a village followed a pattern similar to that of a
similar incident a few
weeks earlier (paraphrased by a reader):
1. "We don't know what happened or whether anything did.
2. The Serbs were shelling that area and may have caused the damage so they can blame it
on us.
3. We did it in the course of an attack on a legitimate target. We regretthe
collateral damage. Such damage is unavoidable in a just war.
4. The Serbs may have put the civilians there deliberately and even if they didn't they
are the bad guys in this war.
5. So blame Slobodan Milosovich for this as for everything else."
"The hidden hand of the market will never work without a hidden fist -- McDonald's cannot flourish without McDonnell Douglas, the builder of the F-15. And the hidden fist that keeps the world safe for Silicon Valley's technologies is called the United States Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps." Thomas L. Friedman, Two-time Pulitzer winning NY Times columnist, from A Manifesto for the Fast World New York Times, March 28 1999 http://www.globalpolicy.org/nations/fried99.htm
Nuclear Deterrence: "Let us understand clearly what nuclear deterrence is. It is the irrational hope that terrible fear (of the consequences of a nuclear assault) will somehow continuously promote wise decisions by fallible human beings operating under enormous pressure in conditions they can never fully control!" (Achin Vinaik, The Hindu, 1 July 1999)
Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who was then the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations wrote in his memoirs (A Dangerous Place) that "the Department of State desired that the United Nations prove utterly ineffective in whatever measures it undertook" to reverse the invasion (of East Timor). "
Some Quotes about Canada:
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