With less
than 5% of
world population the USA
has
over 2.4 million of 9.8
million world prisoners! The majority
of U.S. inmates are in due to the drug war.
Corporatism QUOTES. "Fascism should more
properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and
corporate power." ~An anonymous analysis of Benito Mussolini's fascism
in Italy. More on corporatism: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporatism
Note: I don't know who some of these authors are, but I am intrigued by
the
quotes, whether I agree or disagree with them. Emphasis, text
colors, larger text, bold formatting, etc. have been added
to some of the quotes.
-- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
"Unless you become more watchful in your States and check this
spirit of monopoly and thirst for exclusive privileges you will in the
end find that the most important powers of Government have been given
or bartered away, and
the control of your dearest interests have been passed into the
hands of these
corporations."
--President Andrew Jackson, Farewell Address, March 4, 1837 (2). http://www.cannabisculture.com/news/gwbayer
"A clique of U.S. industrialists is hell-bent to bring a fascist state
to supplant our democratic government and is working closely with the
fascist
regime in Germany and Italy. I have had plenty of opportunity in my
post in
Berlin to witness how close some of our American ruling families are to
the Nazi
regime. . . Certain American industrialists had a great deal to do
with
bringing fascist regimes into being in both Germany and Italy. They
extended
aid to help Fascism occupy the seat of power, and they are helping to
keep it
there." -- William E. Dodd, U.S. Ambassador to Germany, 1937.
See: Shadow of the Swastika. http://www.capnasty.org/taf/issue7/elkhorn1.htm
and http://users.actweb.net/~eye/arms_industry_world_war_2.htm
"These companies, not the lunatic Nazi fanatics, are the main war
criminals.
If the guilt of these criminals is not brought to daylight and if they
are not punished, they will pose a much greater threat to the future
peace of the world than Hitler if he were still alive."
-- Telford Taylor, US-Chief Prosecutor, 1947 Nuremberg War Trial
against the managers of
IG Farben. http://www.cannabisculture.com/news/gwbayer
"Forces one to consider the possibility that when corporate evil
reaches a certain status, it simply cannot be defeated."
-- New York Times blurb from their review of the book "The
Crime and Punishment of
I.G. Farben" http://www.cannabisculture.com/news/gwbayer
"Merchants have no country. The mere spot they stand on does not
constitute so strong an attachment as that from which they draw their
gains."
-- Thomas Jefferson to Horatio Gates Spafford, 17 Mar.
1817, cited in Papers 14:221 (1). http://www.cannabisculture.com/news/gwbayer
"Behind the visible government there is an invisible government
upon the throne that owes the people no loyalty and recognizes no
responsibility. To destroy this invisible government, to undo the
ungodly union between corrupt business and corrupt politics is
the task of a statesman."
-Teddy Roosevelt, the 26th President of the United States,
during his 1912 election campaign (104). http://www.cannabisculture.com/news/gwbayer
"We must face the appalling fact that we have been betrayed by both
the Democratic and Republican Parties."
-- Martin Luther King, Jr.
"The only difference between Bush and Gore is the velocity with
which
their knees hit the floor when corporations knock at the
door."
-- Ralph Nader, 2000 election.
"Government is not reason; it is not eloquence; it is force!
Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master."
-- George Washington.
"Our military organization today bears little relation to that
known by any of my predecessors, or indeed by the fighting men of World
War II or Korea.
Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no
armaments industry.
American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make
swords as well. But now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation
of national defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent
armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half
million men and women are directly engaged in the defense
establishment. We annually spend on military security more than the net
income of all United States corporations.
This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large
arms industry is new in the American experience.
The total influence -- economic, political, even spiritual -- is felt
in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal
government. In the councils of government, we must guard against the
acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by
the
military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous
rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.
We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our
liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for
granted."
-- Dwight D. Eisenhower. http://www.u.arizona.edu/~jcook/maw/eisen.html
"The two party system just means that the corporations cut
two
checks instead of one."
-- Barry Crimmins.
"Head like a Hole. Black as your Soul. I'd rather Die than give
you Control"
-- Nine Inch Nails. Song lyrics.
“...When compared with the suppression of anarchy every other
question sinks into insignificance.
The anarchist is the enemy of humanity, the enemy of all mankind, and
his is a deeper degree of criminality than any other. No immigrant is
allowed to come to our shores if he is an anarchist; and
no paper published here or abroad should be permitted circulation
in this country if it propagates anarchist opinions.”
-- President Theodore Roosevelt. Message To the Senate
Committee on the Judiciary Regarding
Transmission Through the Mails of Anarchistic Publications. April
9, 1908. http://www.blancmange.net/tmh/articles/bonaparte.html
"When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask
why the poor have no food, they call me a communist."
-- Dom Helder Camara, Brazilian archbishop.
"When I fed the poor, they called me a saint. When I asked why
are they poor, they called me a communist."
-- Dom Helder Camara, Brazilian archbishop-----
Everybody knows that the dice are loaded
Everybody rolls with
their fingers crossed
Everybody knows that the war is over
Everybody knows the
good guys lost
Everybody knows the fight was fixed
The poor stay poor, the
rich get rich
That's how it goes
Everybody knows
Everybody knows that
the boat is leaking
Everybody knows that the captain lied
Everybody got
this broken feeling
Like their father or their dog just died
Everybody
talking to their pockets
Everybody wants a box of chocolates
And a long stem
rose
Everybody knows.
-- Leonard Cohen. Everybody Knows (a song).
Album: "I'm Your Man"
http://www.zmag.org/quotes/quotesResults.cfm?topic1=Culture
"Sometimes the law defends plunder and participates in it.
Sometimes the law places the whole apparatus of judges, police, prisons
and
gendarmes at the service of the plunderers, and treats the victim --
when he
defends himself -- as a criminal."
-- Frederic Bastiat, "The Law"
"Another weapon I discovered early was the power of the printed word to
sway souls to me. The newspaper was soon my gun, my flag-
a thing with a
soul that could mirror my own."
-- Adolph Hitler
What I object to on the right is the obsessive hatred, the bigotry, and
the
personal savaging of their opponents, all achieved through an echo
chamber
of talk radio, the Internet and Rupert Murdoch's media outlets.
That
kind of well-funded disinformation campaign has no analog on the left.
"
-- David Brock, The Washington Post, Feb. 26, 2002.
"Without censorship, things can get terribly confused in the
public mind."
-- General William Westmoreland, United States Army.
"Marihuana influences Negroes to look at white people in the eye,
step on white men's shadows and look at a white woman twice."
-- Hearst newspaper article, 1934.
“Marihuana is more dangerous than heroin or cocaine.”
-- Harry J.
Anslinger (Federal Bureau of Narcotics), Scientific American, May,
1938.
"It is the presence of a camera that makes the trap work,
because we can enjoy watching Moore's victim feel torn between wanting
to punch
him for his audacity and knowing that when a camera is pointed at you,
the
safest thing to do is just smile and squirm."
-- The Times (London) on Michael Moore, 1999.
"The earliest known woven fabric was apparently of hemp,
which began to be worked in the eighth millennium (8,000-7,000 BC)."
-- Columbia History of the World, 1981.
"we should distrust any enterprise that requires new
clothes."
-- Henry David Thoreau.
"Washing one's hands of the conflict between the powerful
and the powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral"
-- Paulo Freire.
" ... the criminalization of certain substances is a technique of
social control. The economic policies of the last 20 years are a
rich
man's version of structural adjustment.You create a
superfluous population, which in the US context is largely poor,
black, and Hispanic, and a much wider population that is
economically
dissatisfied. You read all the headlines about the great economy, but
the facts
are quite different. For the vast majority, these neoliberal policies
have had a
negative effect. With regard to wages, we have only now regained
the wage
levels of 30 years ago. Incomes are maintained only by working
longer and harder, or with both adults in a family working."
-- Noam Chomsky. The Week Online with DRCNet. Feb 8,
2002. http://www.drcnet.org/wol/223.html#noamchomsky
and http://www.bcmarijuanaparty.ca/mpnews_96.htm
"Satan for president -- why settle for the lesser of two evils."
-- Anonymous T-Shirt Quote.
"Think of the press as a great keyboard on which the
government can play."
-- Joseph Goebbels, Nazi Propaganda Minister.
"Capitalism is Man Exploiting Man;
Communism is just the opposite." -- Old East Block Joke
Q: What has Boris Yeltsin succeeded
in doing, in just a few years,
Which the Communists weren't able
to do in seventy years?
A: Make Communism look good." -- Russian joke, mid-1990s.
"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 Air Force (Luftwaffe) commander, at
the Nuremberg Trials after World War II.
"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
"There is not one of you who dares to write your honest opinions,
and if you did, you know beforehand that it would never appear in
print.
I am paid weekly for keeping my honest opinion out of the paper
I am connected with.
... We are the tools and vassals of rich men behind the scenes.
We are the jumping jacks, they pull the strings and we dance."
-- John Swinton, then the preeminent New York
journalist, as guest of honour at a banquet given him by the
leaders of
his craft. Probably in 1880. Source: Labor's Untold Story, by
Richard O. Boyer and Herbert M. Morais, published by United Electrical,
Radio
& Machine Workers of America, NY, 1955/1979.
"The World Bank, IMF, and private banks have consistently
lavished huge sums on terror regimes,
following their displacement of democratic governments, and a number of
quantitative studies have shown a systematic positive relationship
between U.S. and IMF/World Bank aid to countries and their violations
of human rights."
-- Edward S. Herman, economist, U.S. media and foreign policy
critic,
and author of The Real Terror Network. http://free.freespeech.org/americanstateterrorism/RealTerrorNetwork.html
"According to Business Week, the average CEO [Chief Executive
Officer] made 42 times the average blue-collar worker's pay in
1980, 85 times in 1990 and a staggering
531 times in 2000."
-- AFL-CIO "Executive Paywatch" http://www.aflcio.org/paywatch/ceopay.htm
"We also became aware of deep connections between the law-enforcement
community and the intelligence community. I,
personally, repeatedly heard from prosecutors and people in the
law-enforcement world that CIA agents were required to sit in
on
the debriefing of various people who were being questioned about the
drug trade.
They were required to be present when witnesses were being prepped
for
certain drug trials. At various times the intelligence community
inserted itself in that legal process. I believe that that was an
impropriety;
that that should not have occurred."
-- Jack Blum, former special counsel to the 1987
"Kerry" Committee (Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on
Terrorism, Narcotics and International Operations), speaking before the
October 1996
Senate Select Intelligence Committee on alleged CIA drug trafficking to
fund
Nicaraguan Contras in the 1980s. Chaired by Senator Arlen Specter,
author of the
"magic" single-bullet theory of the Warren Commission on the Kennedy
assassination. http://ciadrugs.homestead.com/files/index.html
"How fortunate for governments that the people they
administer don't think."
-- Adolf Hitler.
"We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely
controlled and dominated Governments in the world
-- no longer a Government of free opinion, no longer a
Government by conviction
and vote of the majority, but a Government by the opinion and
duress of small groups of dominant men."
-- Woodrow Wilson, U.S. President during World War I.
"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 to George Logan, 1816. http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/jefferson/quotations/jeff1320.htm
"I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and
causes me to tremble for the safety of my country ...
corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in
high places will follow, and the money power of the country will
endeavor 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. I feel at this moment more anxiety for the
safety of my country than ever before, even in the midst of war."
-- Abraham Lincoln, letter to Col. William F. Elkins, Nov 21,
1864. Reference: The Lincoln Encyclopedia, Archer H. Shaw
(Macmillan, 1950, NY).
(3) http://www.cannabisculture.com/news/gwbayer
"The first truth is that the liberty of a democracy is not safe if the
people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where
it becomes stronger
than their democratic state itself. That, in essence, is
fascism - ownership of
government by an individual, by a group, or by any other
controlling power.
Among us today a concentration of private power without equal in
history is
growing."
--President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. (One Thousand Americans,
George Seldes, page 5.) http://www.emperors-clothes.com/articles/randy/swas3.htm
"Next the statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting the
blame upon the nation that is attacked, and every man will be glad
of those conscience-soothing falsities, and will diligently study them,
and
refuse to examine any refutations of them; and thus he will by and
by
convince himself that the war is just, and will thank God for the
better sleep
he enjoys after this process of grotesque self-deception."
-- Mark Twain, in The Mysterious Stranger. 1916.
"... At that interview the [CIA] recruitment officer told me he
wanted me to join the Agency and then return to Los Angeles where I
would attend the Los Angeles Police Academy and
use my position as a police officer as a cover. The CIA
officer provided me with a stack of documents which he said were
necessary for me to complete for a background check. The interview
ended.
Because I knew that CIA domestic operations were illegal and
because I felt extremely uncomfortable with that proposition, I never
completed the forms or had any further official contact with the Agency
until seven years later.
After my graduation from UCLA in June 1973 I joined the LAPD ... "
-- Mike Ruppert, ex-Los Angeles narcotics cop. 1997 written
statement submitted to Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. http://www.copvcia.com/bio1.html
"...somebody has to take governments' place, and business seems to
me to be a logical entity to do it."
-- David Rockefeller - Newsweek International, Feb 1 1999.
"The size of the lie is a definite factor in causing it to be believed,
for the vast masses of the nation are in the depths of their hearts
more easily
deceived than they are consciously and intentionally bad. The
primitive
simplicity of their minds renders them a more easy prey to a big
lie
than a small one, for they themselves often tell little lies but would
be
ashamed to tell a big one."
"Through clever and constant application of propaganda,
people can be made to see paradise as hell, and also the other way
around, to
consider the most wretched sort of life as paradise."
-- From Benito Mussolini, contributing to the "London
Sunday Express," December 8, 1935.
"For criminal organizations, participating in covert
operations offers much more than money. They may get a voice in selecting
the new government. They may get a government that owes them for
help in
coming to power. They may be able to use their connections with the
United
States government to enhance their political power at home and to wave
off the
efforts of the American law enforcement community."
-- Jack Blum. Prepared October 1996 statement
of former special counsel to the 1987 "Kerry" Committee
(Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on Terrorism, Narcotics and
International
Operations), for the October 1996 Senate Select Intelligence Committee
on
alleged CIA drug trafficking to fund Nicaraguan Contras in the 1980s.
Chaired by
Senator Arlen Specter, author of the "magic" single-bullet theory of
the Warren Commission on the Kennedy assassination.
"It's coming through a hole in the air,
from those nights in Tiananmen Square.
It's coming from the feel
that it ain't exactly real,
or it's real, but it ain't exactly there.
...Democracy is coming to the U.S.A."
-- Leonard Cohen. From the song called "The Future."
"The Matrix is a system, Neo. That system is our enemy. And when
you're inside, and look around, what do you see? Businessmen.
Teachers.
Lawyers. Carpenters. The very minds of the people we are trying to
save.
But, until we do, these people are still a part of that system. And,
that makes
them our enemy. You have to understand: Most of these people are
not ready
to be unplugged. And many of them are so inured, so hopelessly
dependent
on the system, that they will fight to protect it.
-- Morpheus (from the flick "The Matrix") after Neo sees the
woman in the red dress become an agent.
"I know of no country in which there is so little independence of
mind and real freedom of discussion as in America."
-- Alexis de Tocqueville, French political thinker, traveler,
author of "Democracy in America."
1805-1859.
"We have no honorable intentions in Vietnam. Our minimal
expectation is to occupy it as an American colony and maintain
social
stability for our investments. This tells why American helicopters
are
being used against guerrillas in Colombia and Peru.
Increasingly the role our nation has taken is the role of those who
refuse to
give up the privileges and pleasures that come from the immense
profits of
overseas investment."
-- Martin Luther King, Jr.. "A Time
to Break the
Silence" speech given at Riverside Church, New York City,
April 4, 1967. http://www.uvm.edu/~wmiller/mlkbeyondvietnam.htm
"The greatest triumphs of propaganda have been accomplished, not by
doing something, but by refraining from doing. Great is truth, but
still
greater, from a practical point of view, is silence about truth."
-- Aldous Huxley
"History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period
of
social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the
appalling silence of the good people."
-- Martin Luther King, Jr.
"The situationists achieved their greatest notoriety in May 1968
when students provoked a revolt in the streets of Paris against the
Gaullist regime. At the end of 1967, a radical manifesto
surfaced
written by Guy Debord, which proved to have a major influence
on
events in France. ‘The Society of the Spectacle’ claimed that
cinema, TV, papers and advertising were all part of a worldwide
hegemony of
power in which powerful vested interests had learned to rule with
minimum
force turning everything into a media event. The staged conventions
of
the political parties to anoint politicians, the replacement of old
neighborhoods with shopping malls and fast food franchises was part of
the ‘society
of the spectacle’ precisely because they helped to destroy the general
community. ‘There is no place left where
people can discuss the realities that
concern them because they can never lastingly free themselves from
the
crushing presence of media discourse and of the various forces
organized
to relay it.’ " http://www.furious.com/perfect/situationism.html
“Every view of things that is not strange
is false.” (Valéry)
Workers of all countries, enjoy!
Permanent cultural vibration.
Drive the cop out of your head.
"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity,
and I'm not sure about the former."
-- Albert Einstein
"Italian police came into the rooms where people were sleeping.
Everybody raised up their hands, calling out 'Pacifisti!' And they beat
the shit
out of every person there ... There was blood at every sleeping
spot,
pools of it in some places."
-- Starhawk, American activist in Genoa. Reporting on G8
economic summit and counter-summit events, July
2001. http://sf.indymedia.org/display.php?id=102089
"The Latin American drug cartels have stretched their tentacles much
deeper into our lives than most people believe. It's possible they
are
calling the shots at all levels of government."
-- William Colby, former CIA Director, 1995.
"The American Republic will endure, until politicians
realize they can bribe the people with their own money."
-- Alexis de Tocqueville
"The minority, the ruling class at present, has the schools
and press, usually the Church as well, under its thumb. This
enables it to organize and sway the emotions of the masses, and
make its tool of them."
-- Albert Einstein [while living in Germany or USA?] letter
to Sigmund Freud July 30, 1932.
"Our government has kept us in a perpetual state of fear -
kept us in a continuous stampede of patriotic fervor - with the cry of
grave national emergency. Always there has been some terrible evil at
home or some monstrous foreign power that was going to gobble us up if
we did not
blindly rally behind it ..."
-- General Douglas MacArthur, 1957.
"For every dollar the boss has and didn't work for, one of us
worked for
a dollar and didn't get it."
-- Big Bill Haywood
"I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking
house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912. I helped make Mexico
and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914.
I
brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar
interests in 1916. I helped make Haiti and Cuba
a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenue in. I
helped in the rape of half a dozen Central American republics for
the
benefit of Wall Street."
-- General Smedley D. Butler, former U.S. Marine
Commandant. In "Common Sense," November 1935.
"The freedom of the press belongs to those who own one."
-- A.J. Liebling
"In religion and politics people's beliefs and convictions are
in almost every case
gotten at second-hand, and without examination."
-- Mark Twain.
"Nothing appears more surprising to those who consider human affairs
with a philosophical eye than the easiness with which the many are
governed by the few, and the implicit submission with which men
resign
their own sentiments and passions to those of their rulers. When we
inquire by
what means this wonder is effected, we shall find that, as force is
always on
the side of the governed, the governors have nothing to support them
but
opinion. It is, therefore, on opinion only that government is
founded,
and this maxim extends to the most despotic and most military
governments as
well as to the most free and most popular."
-- David Hume. Of the First Principles of Government. 1758.
"In war, truth is the first casualty."
-- Aeschylus. 525-456 B.C.
"Rise like Lions after slumber
In unvanquishable number
Shake your chains to earth like dew
Which in sleep had fallen on you -
Ye are many - they are few"
-Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822). The Mask of Anarchy. 1819. http://www.google.com/search?q=Percy+Bysshe+Shelley+Mask+of+Anarchy
"Shelley's exile was a time of great upheaval and growing
inequality in England, such equality has only been seen in modern
times
in Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair's Britain. The Napoleonic Wars
ended in
1815, although Britain was the victor it left a huge war debt and, as
in the
aftermath of the First World War, it was the poor who were forced to
pay the
price. In the Peterloo Massacre, troops cut down and killed
protesting
workers (1819). This was to influence Shelley to write The Mask of
Anarchy and 'Ode to the West Wind'. ... The Mask of Anarchy was not
published until after Shelley's death as the publisher feared
prosecution." http://www.heureka.clara.net/art/shelleyp.htm
"...the rank and file are usually much more primitive than
we imagine. Propaganda must therefore always be essentially
simple
and repetitious. The most brilliant propagandist technique will yield
no success
unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind
constantly...it
must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over
and
over."
-- Joseph Goebbels, Nazi Propaganda Minister.
"Instead of a war on poverty, They got a war on drugs, So the
police can
bother me."
-- Tupac Shakur. "Changes" from 2Pac Greatest Hits.
"In the counsels of Government, we must guard against the acquisition
of
unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the Military
Industrial Complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of
misplaced power exists, and will persist. We must never let the
weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic
processes.
We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable
citizenry
can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military
machinery of
defense with our peaceful methods and goals so that security and
liberty may
prosper together."
-- President Eisenhower's historic farewell address to the
Nation. January 1961. http://www.disclosureproject.org/videogallery.htm
and http://disclosureproject.homesite.net:7071/ramgen/ike.rm
"Never forget that everything Hitler did in Germany was legal"
-- Martin Luther King, Jr.
"A clique of U.S. industrialists is hell-bent to bring a fascist
state
to supplant our democratic government and is working closely
with the fascist regime in Germany and Italy. I have had plenty of
opportunity in my post in Berlin to witness how close some of
our American ruling families are to the Nazi regime. ... Certain
American industrialists had a great deal to do with
bringing fascist regimes into being in both Germany and Italy.
They extended aid to help Fascism occupy the seat of power,
and they are helping to keep it there."
-- William E. Dodd, U.S. Ambassador to Germany, 1937.
"Anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds
himself silenced with surprising effectiveness."
-- George Orwell, author of the book 1984.
"It is [free] market fundamentalism that has rendered the
global capitalist system unsound and unsustainable...market
fundamentalism is today a greater threat to open society than
any totalitarian ideology."
-- George Soros, legendary billionaire Wall Street
marketeer
from "The Crisis of Global Capitalism, Open Society
Endangered", 1998.
"..it does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate,
tireless minority to set brush fires in people's minds"
-- Samuel Adams
"Single acts of tyranny may be ascribed to the accidental opinion
of a
day; but a series of oppressions, begun at a distinguished period, and
pursued unalterably through every change of ministers, too plainly
prove
a
deliberate systematical job of reducing us to slaves."
-- Thomas Jefferson
"As long as I count the votes, what are you going to do about
it?"
-- "Boss" Tweed
If some beggar steals a bridle he'll be hung by a man who's stolen a
horse. There's no surer justice in the world than that which makes
the rich thief hang the poor one.
-- Peire Cardenal
"If a lawyer was arguing a case before a judge
and said, 'Your honor before you decide on the guilt or innocence of my
client, here
is $1,000.' What would we call that? We would call that a bribe.
But if an industry lobbyist walks into the office of a key
legislator and hands her or him a check for $1,000, we
call that a campaign contribution. We should call it a bribe."
-- Janice Fine, Dollars and Sense magazine.
"The advanced nations have entered a pre-fascist social condition
that
will ripen in various ugly ways if the market's imperatives prevail, if
commerce
and finance refuse to compromise their objectives."
-- William Greider, quoted in International Herald Tribune,
Dec 6, 1999,
page 17
"Of course, I have as much power as the President
has."
-- Bill Gates, in "The Truth, The Whole Truth, and
Nothing But The Truth", Wired, November 2000. http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/8.11/
"Practically speaking, the opponents to a reform in Massachusetts are
not a hundred thousand politicians at the South, but a hundred thousand
merchants and farmers here, who are more interested in commerce
and agriculture
than they are in humanity, and are not prepared to do justice to the
slave and
to Mexico, cost what it may. I quarrel not with far-off foes, but with
those
who, near at home, co-operate with, and do the bidding of those far
away, and
without whom the latter would be harmless."
-- Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience, 1849
"Since water is as central to food production as seed is,
and without water life is not possible, Monsanto Co. is now
trying
to establish its control over water."
-- Robert Fraley, Chief Technology Officer of Monsanto, in
The Hindu, Saturday, May 1, 1999.
"We can have a democratic society or we can have the concentration
of great wealth in the hands of the few. We cannot have both."
-- Louis Brandeis, Supreme Court Justice from 1916-1939.
Law grinds the poor, and rich men rule the law.
-- Oliver Goldsmith
"A world of unseen dictatorship is conceivable, still using
the forms of democratic government."
-- Kenneth Boulding, University of Michigan, quoted in The
Hidden Persuaders.
This quote is from Martin Niemoeller (1892-1984), a
Pastor in the Confessing Church. The quote appears in
the Congressional Record 14 October 1968, page 31636:
"When Hitler attacked the Jews I was not a Jew,
therefore I was not concerned. And when Hitler
attacked the Catholics, I was not a Catholic, and
therefore, I was not concerned. And when Hitler
attacked the unions and industrialists, I was not a
member of the unions and I was not concerned. Then,
Hitler attacked me and the Protestant church -- and
there was nobody left to be concerned."
Although there are some variations that have been published on that
famous
quotation above, the words shown are the exact ones that Niemoeller
spoke in Congress.
Martin
Niemoeller, Berlin Lutheran pastor arrested
by the Gestapo and sent to Dachau concentration camp in 1938; the
Allied forces
freed him seven years later.
"We have the greatest opportunity the world has ever seen, as long as
we
remain honest -- which will be as long as we can keep the attention
of our
people alive. If they once become inattentive to public
affairs,
you and I, and Congress and Assemblies, judges and governors would
all
become wolves."
-- Thomas Jefferson.
"The owners and managers of the press determine which
person, which facts, which version of the facts, and which ideas shall
reach the
public."
-- Report by the Commission on Freedom of the Press. Quoted
in Democracy for the Few, by Michael Parenti, and Don't Blame the
People, by
Robert Cirino. http://free.freespeech.org/americanstateterrorism/DemocracyfortheFew.html
"The exploitation of the poor can be extinguished not by effecting
the destruction of a few millionaires but by removing the ignorance
of the poor and teaching them to noncooperate with the exploiters."
-- Mohandas K. Gandhi, Haryan, July 28, 1940
``When in the course of human development, existing institutions
prove
inadequate to the needs of man, when they serve merely to enslave,
rob and
oppress mankind, the people have the eternal right to rebel
against, and
overthrow, these institutions.''
-- Emma Goldman
"We hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public
office."
-- Aesop
"If ye love wealth greater than liberty,
the tranquility of servitude greater than
the animating contest for freedom,
go home from us in peace.
We seek not your counsel, nor your arms.
Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you.
May your chains set lightly upon you,
and may posterity forget
that ye were our countrymen."
-- Samuel Adams
"In many respects, we now live in a society that is only formally
democratic, as the great mass of citizens have minimal say on the
major
public issues of the day, and such issues are scarcely debated at
all in
any meaningful sense in the electoral arena.
-- Robert W. McChesney, author of Rich Media, Poor Democracy
and
Corporate Media and the Threat to Democracy. http://sevenstories.com/Book/index.cfm?GCOI=58322100200110
Republican evil, Democrat complicity. The Republican Party gets
more corporate donations. So
Republicans lead and gutless Democrats follow their lead for the most
part. It's a pseudo-democracy usually.
-----------------------------------------------
- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- 
"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." 