"There isn't a trick in the racketeering bag that the military gang is blind to. It has its 'finger men" (to point out enemies), its "muscle men" (to destroy enemies), its "brain guys" (to plan war preparations), and a "Big Boss" (supernationalistic capitalism). "It may seem odd for me, a military man to adopt such a comparison. Truthfulness compels me to do so. I spent 33 years and four months in active military service as a memeber of our country's most agile military force -- the Marine Corps. I served in all commissioned ranks from second lieutenant to Major General. And during that period I spent more of my time being a high-class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for captialism. "I suspected I was just a part of a racket at the time. Now I am sure of it. Like all members of the military profession I never had an original thought until I left the service. My mental faculties remained in suspended animation while I obeyed the orders of the higher-ups. This is typical with everyone in the military service. Thus I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and CUba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-12. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that the Standard Oil went its way unmolested. "During those years, I had, as the boys in the back room would say, a swell racket. I was rewarded with honors, medals and promotion. Looking back on it, I feel I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three city districts. I operated on three continents." -- General Smedley Butler, former US Marine Corps Commandant,1935
"You never hear of any disturbances in Northern Luzon [Philippines]... because there isn't anybody there to rebel. That country was marched over and cleared out.... The good lord in Heaven only knows the number of Filipinos that were put under the ground; our soldiers took no prisoners; they kept no records; they simply swept the country and wherever or however they could get hold of a Filipino they killed him." -- A Republican member of Congress in an eyewitness report on the US invasion of the Philippines, 1899
"Many members of her family were killed. She personally saw children around the age of eight being raped, and then [the soldiers] would take their bayonets and make mincemeat out of them. With their guns they would shoot at their faces...." The Army would cut people up and put soap and coffee in their stomachs as a mocking, [the woman said]. They would slit the stomach of a pregnant woman and take the child out, as if they were taking eggs out of an iguana. That is what I saw." -- Representative Barbara Mikulski (now a US Senator) relating the story of a peasant woman, a victim of the Mazote massacre in El Salvador in 1981, where a US trained elite battalion killed more than 1,000 people.
"He may be a son-of-a-bitch, but at least he's our son-of-a-bitch." -- President Franklin Roosevelt -- justifying support for Nicaragua's dictator Anastasio Somoza
"Tortures range from simple but brutal blows from a truncheon to electric shocks. Often the torture is more refined: the end of a reed is placed in the anus of a naked man hanging suspended downwards on the pau de arara [parrot's perch] and a piece of cotton soaked in petrol is lit at the other end of the reed. Pregnant women have been forced to watch their husbands being tortured. Other wives have been hung naked beside their husbands and given electric shocks on the sexual parts of their body, while subjected to the worst kind of obscenities. Children have been tortured before their parents and vice versa. The length of sessions depends upon the resistance capacity of the victims and have sometimes continued for days at a time." -- Amnesty International, describing the torture suffered by Brazilians at the hands of the military and the US-run Office of Public Safety (OPS) in the 1960s
"Fuck your Parliament and your Constitution. We pay a lot of good American dollars to the Greeks, Mr. Ambassador. If your Prime Minister gives me talk about Democracy, Parliament and Constitutions, he, his Parliament, and his Constitution may not last very long." -- President Lyndon Johnson to Greek Ambassador, 1970s
" The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum - even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there's free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate. " -- Noam Chomsky, American linguist and US media and foreign policy critic
"Propaganda is to a democracy what violence is to a dictatorship." -- William Blum, Rogue State
"A terrorist is someone who has a bomb but doesn't have an air force." -- William Blum, Rogue State, p93
"The great masses of the people at the very bottom of their hearts tend to be corrupted rather than consciously evil ... they more easily fall a victim to a big lie than to a little one, since they themselves lie in little things, but would be ashamed of lies that were too big." -- Adolph Hitler, Mein Kampf, Houghton Mifflin, 1971; (original version 1925) vol 1. chapter 10, p231
"... our leaders are cruel because only those willing to be inordinately cruel and remorseless can hold positions of leadership in the foreign policy establishmen ... People capable of expressing a full human measure of compassion and empathy toward faraway powerless strangers ... do not become president of the United States, or vice president, or secretary of state, or national security adviser or secretary of the treasury. Nor do they want to." -- William Blum, from the book Rogue State, p7
" Covert action should not be confused with missionary work." -- Henry ('Hank the Rank') Kissinger, commenting on the US sellout of the Kurds in Iraq in 1975
They made a wasteland and called it peace." -- Tacitus, Roman historian. - 1st century AD
"[Genocide] certainly is a valid word in my view, when you have a situation where we see thousands of deaths per month, a possible total of I million to 1.5 million over the last nine years. If that is not genocide, then I don't know quite what is." -- Denis Halliday, former UN humanitarian coordinator - on effect of US sanctions on Iraqi people
"The Wall Street Journal is read by the people who run the country. The New York Times is read by people who think they run the country. The Washington Post is read by people who think they ought to run the country. USA Today is read by people who think they ought to run the country but don't understand the Washington Post. The Los Angeles Times is read by people who wouldn't mind running the country if they could spare the time. The Boston Globe is read by people whose parents used to run the country." -- The Nation magazine
"Get some new lawyers." -- US Secretary of State Madeline Albright to British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook when he told her he was informed that the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia was illegal under international law
This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing Goverment, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it or their revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow it." -- Abraham Lincoln, 1861
"We are not hated because we practice democracy, value freedom, or uphold human rights. We are hated because our government denies these things to people in Third World countries whose resources are coveted by our multinational corporations. That hatred we have sown has come back to haunt us in the form of terrorism and in the future, nuclear terrorism." -- Robert Bowman, Vietnam Veteran, presently bishop of the United Catholic Church in Melbourne Beach, FL., from The National Catholic Reporter, Oct. 2, 1998
"Terrorism has become a sort of screen created since the end of the Cold War by policymakers in Washington ... It is fabricated to keep the population afraid and insecure, and to justify what the United States wishes to do globally." -- Edward Said, Palestinian activist and author, International Socialist Review, Aug/Sep 2001, p30
"Military intervention to maintain the global status quo will become a constant feature of international relations, whether this is justified in terms of fighting drugs, fighting terrorism, containing "rogue states," opposing "Islamic fundamentalism," or containing China." -- Walden Bello, sociologist and author, International Socialist Review, Aug/Sep 2001, p8
" In the 1980s capitalism triumphed over communism. In the l990s it triumphed over democracy. " -- David Korten, The Post-Corporate World, p1
" Rogue states that are internally free - and the U.S. is at the outer limits in this respect - must rely on the willingness of the educated classes to produce accolades and tolerate or deny terrible crimes." -- Noam Chomsky, Rogue States, p11
"All the emphasis on crime and drugs and pornography used to justify the suppression of the internet is really aimed at suppressing knowledge of the radical politic alternatives that are now available." -- Tony Benn, British Labour Party member of Parliament - CovertAction Quarterly, April / June 2001, p43
"The search of the young today is more specific than the ancient search for the Holy Grail. The search of the youth today is for ways and means to make the machine-and the vast bureaucracy of the corporation state and of government that runs that machine - the servant of man. That is the revolution that is coming. It could be a revolution in the nature of an explosive political regeneration. It depends on how wise the Establishment is. If, with its stockpile of arms, it resolves to suppress the dissenters, America will face, I fear, an awful ordeal." -- William O. Douglas, Points of Rebellion, 1969, p96
"The only thing worth globalizing is dissent." -- Arundhati Roy, author, The Progressive magazine, April 2001, p38
"It is money, money, money! Not ideas, not principles, but money that reigns supreme in American politics." -- Senator Robert Byrd, West Virginia
"... the media serve the interests of state and corporate power, which are closely interlinked, framing their reporting and analysis in a manner supportive of established privilege and limiting debate and discussion accordingly." -- Noam Chomsky
As corruption becomes routine in Washington in both parties, it trickles down as a corrupting influence in everyone's lives. Democracy is the ultimate casualty ... As democracy ebbs, Americans retreat into private cocoons, feeling helpless to make a difference... In a democracy, civic participation and the belief in one's ability to contribute to the common good is the most important guarantor of public morality. When that belief fades, so too does the vision of the common good itself. " -- Charles Derber, Corporation Nation, p316
" ...the CIA has overthrown functioning democracies in over 20 countries." -- John Stockwell, former CIA official and author
" There is ...a huge tacit conspiracy between the U.S. government, its agencies and its multinational corporations, on the one hand, and local business and military cliques in the Third World, on the other, to assume complete control of these countries and "develop" them on a joint venture basis. The military leaders of the Third World were carefully nurtured by the U.S. security establishment to serve as the "enforcers" of this joint venture partnership, and they have been duly supplied with machine guns and the latest data on methods of interrogation of subversives." -- Edward Herman, economist and media analyst
" What would have happened if millions of American and British people, struggling with coupons and lines at the gas stations, had learned that in 1942 Standard Oil of New Jersey [part of the Rockefeller empire] managers shipped the enemy's fuel through neutral Switzerland and that the enemy was shipping Allied fuel? Suppose the public had discovered that the Chase Bank in Nazi-occupied Paris after Pearl Harbor was doing millions of dollars' worth of business with the enemy with the full knowledge of the head office in Manhattan [the Rockefeller family among others?] Or that Ford trucks were being built for the German occupation troops in France with authorization from Dearborn, Michigan? Or that Colonel Sosthenes Behn, the head of the international American telephone conglomerate ITT, flew from New York to Madrid to Berne during the war to help improve Hitler's communications systems and improve the robot bombs that devastated London? Or that ITT built the FockeWulfs that dropped bombs on British and American troops? Or that crucial ball bearings were shipped to Nazi-associated customers in Latin America with the collusion of the vice-chairman of the U.S. War Production Board in partnership with Goering's cousin in Philadelphia when American forces were desperately short of them? Or that such arrangements were known about in Washington and either sanctioned or deliberately ignored?" -- Charles Higham, researcher, about U.S.-Nazi collaboration during WWII
" Coming to grips with ... U.S./CIA activities in broad numbers and figuring out how many people have been killed in the jungles of Laos or the hills of Nicaragua is very difficult. But, adding them up as best we can, we come up with a figure of six million people killed-and this is a minimum figure. Included are: one million killed in the Korean War, two million killed in the Vietnam War, 800,000 killed in Indonesia, one million in Cambodia, 20,000 killed in Angola ... and 22,000 killed in Nicaragua. These people would not have died if U.S. tax dollars had not been spent by the CIA to inflame tensions, finance covert political and military activities and destabilize societies. " -- John Stockwell, former CIA official and author
" ... the CIA had been running thousands of operations over the years... there have been about 3,000 major covert operations and over 10,000 minor operations... all designed to disrupt, destabilize, or modify the activities of other countries... But they are all illegal and they all disrupt the normal functioning, often the democratic functioning, of other societies. They raise serious questions about the moral responsibility of the United States in the international society of nations. " -- John Stockwell, former CIA official and author
"What the United States has done to the country [Cambodia] is greater evil than we have done to any country in the world..." -- California Congressman Pete McClosky following a visit to Cambodia in the 1970s
" By the later years of the Reagan regime, a preferred nomenclature suited to U.S. interests became standardized for the Third World. In the case of nations to be rolled back (e.g., Nicaragua), governments were called terrorist and the insurgents were labeled democratic. In the case of countries to be supported against "communist" insurgencies (e.g., El Salvador and the Philippines), the governments were called democratic and the insurgents were labeled terrorists. " -- from the book Rollback by Thomas Bodenheimer and Robert Gould
"... the United States has given frequent and enthusiastic support to the overthrow of democracy in favor of "investor friendly" regimes. The World Bank, IMF, and private banks have consistently lavished huge sums on terror regimes, following their displacement of democratic governments, and a number of quantitative studies have shown a systematic positive relationship between U.S. and IMF / World Bank aid to countries and their violations of human rights." -- Edward S. Herman, economist and media analyst
" [Nearly 70% of the military budget] is to provide men and weapons to fight in foreign countries in support of our allies and friends and for offensive operations in Third World countries .. Another big chunk of the defense budget is the 20% allocated for our offensive nuclear force of bombers, missles, and submarines whose job it is to carry nuclear weapons to the Soviet Union... Actual defense of the United States costs about 10% of the military budget and is the least expensive function performed by the Pentagon... " -- Rear Admiral Gene LaRoque, U.S. Navy retired
" I can teach you about torture, but sooner or later you'll have to get involved. You'll have to lay on your hands and try it yourselves ... The precise pain, in the precise place, in the precise amount, for the desired effect.'' -- Head of the US Office of Public Safety (OPS) mission in Uruguay in 1981, teaching classes in the art of torture
" Any dictator would admire the uniformity and obedience of the [U.S.] media." -- Noam Chomsky, American linguist and US media and foreign policy critic
"Basic civil liberties including the right to life, liberty and the freedom of personal and political expression, suffered a drastic setback in 1981. In more than a dozen regional nations, even the most fundamental rights -- life and the inviolability of the person -- were transgressed by the government-condoned practice of harassing, torturing and murdering political opponents of those in power ... These reverses can be linked to policies adopted by the Reagan administration ... [which] has allied the U.S. with the most violent regimes in the hemispere. He [Reagan] has sanctioned atrocities and human rights abuses by providing those governments with essentially unconditioned U.S. support." -- Council on Hemispheric Affairs, 1982
Today the world faces a single man armed with weapons of mass destruction, manifesting an aggressive, bullying attitude, who may well plunge the world into chaos and bloodshed if he miscalculates. This person, belligerent, arrogant and sure of himself, truly is the most dangerous person on Earth. The problem is that his name is George W. Bush, and he is our president." - Jack M. Balkin, Knight Professor of Constitutional Law and the First Amendment at Yale Law School, September 22, 2002
Confused? Having difficulty telling the good guys from the bad guys? Use this handy guide to differences between Terrorists and the U.S. Government: > TERRORISTS: Supposed leader is the spoiled son of a powerful politician, from extremely wealthy oil family US GOVERNMENT: Supposed leader is the spoiled son of a powerful politician, from extremely wealthy oil family > TERRORISTS: Leader has declared a holy war ('Jihad') against his 'enemies'; believes any nation not with him is against him; believes god is on his side, and that any means are justified. US GOVERNMENT: Leader has declared a holy war ('Crusade') against his 'enemies'; believes any nation not with him is against him; believes god is on his side, and that any means are justified. > TERRORISTS: Supported by extreme fundamentalist religious leaders who preach hatred, intolerance, subjugation of women, and persecution of non-believers US GOVERNMENT: Supported by extreme fundamentalist religious leaders who preach hatred, intolerance, subjugation of women, and persecution of non-believers > TERRORISTS: Leadership was not elected by a majority of the people in a free and fair democratic election US GOVERNMENT: Leadership was not elected by a majority of the people in a free and fair democratic election > TERRORISTS: Kills thousands of innocent civilians, some of them children, in cold blooded bombings US GOVERNMENT: Kills thousands of innocent civilians, some of them children, in cold blooded bombings > TERRORISTS: Operates through clandestine organization (al Qaeda) with agents in many countries; uses bombing, assassination, other terrorist tactics US GOVERNMENT: Operates through clandestine organization (CIA) with agents in many countries; uses bombing, assassination, other terrorist tactics > TERRORISTS: Supposed leader has extensive financial ties to Supposed leader of US GOVERNMENT US GOVERNMENT: Supposed leader has extensive financial ties to Supposed leader of TERRORIST > TERRORISTS: Supposed leader invested heavily in US bio-chemical companies US GOVERNMENT: Supposed leader invested heavily in US bio-chemical companies > TERRORISTS: Using war as pretext to clamp down on dissent and undermine civil liberties US GOVERNMENT: Using war as pretext to clamp down on dissent and undermine civil liberties
"Why of course the people don't want war. Why should some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece? Naturally, the common people don't want war: neither in Russia, nor in England, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But after all it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship ... Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger." -- Leading Nazi leader, Hermann Goering, at the Nuremberg Trials before he was sentenced to death
The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed and hence, clamorous to be led to safety - by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." -- H.L. Mencken
The report [by mapw] forecasts a huge death toll, a massive humanitarian crisis and long term health and environmental damage from any war on Iraq. If nuclear weapons were used, the death toll would rise into the millions. The aftermath of such a military attack could include civil war, famine, epidemics, millions of refugees and economic collapse, according to the report. General Peter Gration, former Australian Chief of Defence Forces has openly supported the report and the attack scenarios postulated in the report as militarily sound, stating "I thoroughly commend this Report, and its call for humane and wise global leadership. By reminding us of the likely monumental human and environmental costs of a new war with Iraq, it has made a major contribution to the debate at a critical time." --www.mapw.org.au/mediaprofile.html
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