Last Straw

A couple of people now have asked me to post the quotes that cur­rently appear at ran­dom in the top right hand corner of my blog, so here they are in ran­dom order. I’ll add new ones at the top.

Through­out the world, on any given day, a man, a woman or child is likely to be dis­placed, tor­tured, killed or “disappeared,” at the hands of gov­ern­ments or armed polit­ical groups. More often than not, the United States shares the blame. —Amnesty Inter­na­tional, 1996

The 20^th cen­tury has been char­ac­ter­ized by three devel­op­ments of great polit­ical import­ance: the growth of demo­cracy; the growth of cor­por­ate power; and the growth of cor­por­ate pro­pa­ganda as a means of pro­tect­ing cor­por­ate power against demo­cracy. —Alex Carey

What do I want from this life? What makes you happy is not enough. All the things that sat­isfy our instincts only sat­isfy the animal in us. I want to be proud of myself. I want more. I want to look up to myself and when I die, I want to smile because of the things I have done, not cry for the things I haven’t done. —Tom Hurn­dall (a friend of mine who I met in Iraq, he was murdered by an Israeli soldier)

To ini­ti­ate a war of aggres­sion … is not only an inter­na­tional crime; it is the supreme inter­na­tional crime dif­fer­ing only from other war crimes in that it con­tains within itself the accu­mu­lated evil of the whole. —Nuremberg Trial Pro­ceed­ings, 30^th Septem­ber 1946

Choice is an illu­sion, cre­ated between those with power, and those without. —The Mer­ovingian, The Mat­rix Reloaded

The Pentagon admits that it has no intel­li­gence at all … —CNN, 21^st March 2003

The West won the world not by the superi­or­ity of its ideas or val­ues or reli­gion but rather by its superi­or­ity in apply­ing organ­ized viol­ence. West­ern­ers often for­get this fact; non-Westerners never do. —Samuel P. Hunt­ing­ton, The Clash of Civil­iz­a­tions and the Remak­ing of World Order (Note: if you want to know why the West became super­ior at apply­ing organ­ised viol­ence have a read of Guns, Germs, and Steel.)

Why of course the people don’t want war … 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

Crime is naught but mis­dir­ec­ted energy. So long as every insti­tu­tion of today, eco­nomic, polit­ical, social, and moral, con­spires to mis­dir­ect human energy into wrong chan­nels; so long as most people are out of place doing the things they hate to do, liv­ing a life they loathe to live, crime will be inev­it­able, and all the laws on the stat­utes can only increase, but never do away with, crime. —Emma Gold­man

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

In 1996, Madeleine Albright, then the US sec­ret­ary of state, was asked on national tele­vi­sion what she felt about the fact that 500,000 Iraqi chil­dren had died as a res­ult of US-led eco­nomic sanc­tions. She replied that it was ‘a very hard choice,’ but that, all things con­sidered, ‘we think the price is worth it.’ —Madeleine Albright

Win­ston Peters: the only mem­ber of Par­lia­ment named after a con­crete block. —David Lange

… our coun­try is now geared to an arms eco­nomy which was bred in an arti­fi­cially induced psy­chosis of war hys­teria and nur­tured upon an incess­ant pro­pa­ganda of fear. —Douglas MacAr­thur Amer­ican mil­it­ary leader

The Inter­net inter­prets cen­sor­ship as dam­age and routes around it. —John Gilmore

Got noth­ing against no Viet Cong. No Viet­namese ever called me a nig­ger. —Muhammad Ali, upon hear­ing the news that he is to be draf­ted. (Attributed)

It is not desir­able to cul­tiv­ate a respect for the law, so much as for the right. —Henry David Thoreau

The propagandist’s pur­pose is to make one set of people for­get that cer­tain other sets of people are human. —Aldous Hux­ley

This notion that the United States is get­ting ready to attack Iran is simply ridicu­lous. (Short pause) And hav­ing said that, all options are on the table. (Laughter). —George W. Bush

Every­one fights with their abil­it­ies — the Israelis have heli­copters and rock­ets and the Palestini­ans have noth­ing but them­selves and some very prim­it­ive home-made explos­ives. —Lea Tsemel

I grew up in an Israeli cul­ture where sui­cide attack­ers are really her­oes. Look at Sam­son, who in order to fight the Phil­istines in Gaza made the theatre col­lapse on him­self and all the civil­ians there. He is a very big hero among Jew­ish chil­dren. I grew up on the myth of bet­ter sui­cide than sur­render. So what is so spe­cial about sui­cide bombers? —Lea Tsemel

I think the Iraqi people owe the Amer­ican people a huge debt of grat­it­ude. That’s the prob­lem here in Amer­ica. They won­der whether or not there is a grat­it­ude level that’s sig­ni­fic­ant enough in Iraq. —George W. Bush, demon­strat­ing Amer­ican delu­sion and arrogance.