"The U.S.
stopped being the benchmark of what is good for Latin America.
Because Latin America did everything that the U.S. asked it to
do and wasn't able to get out of poverty, the North American
myth lost political weight." - Gustavo Larrea, Ecuador's
security minister, September 2008.
There are some
countries whose reality is distorted by sections of the media.
And some about which straightforward lies are written. My
first trip to Caracas revealed Venezuela to be firmly in the
second category.
The idea that this country is a dictatorship is ridiculous –
probably some of those assiduously promoting it have
difficulty in keeping a straight face. Some "dictatorship"
where the president accepts the loss of a referendum to change
the constitution, which holds more national elections than
virtually any other country in the world, and where walls and
lamp-posts in areas of Caracas are vividly festooned with
posters of anti-Chávez candidates. No, a dictatorship is a
country like Saudi Arabia – whose leader is of course
officially feted on visits to London. -
Ken Livingstone, August 2008.
Israeli forces
raided ICS [Islamic Charitable Society] institutions on 6
March and 1 April seizing equipment, clothing, school buses
and food and clothing from ICS warehouses and posting military
closure orders on several buildings and offices. The charity
estimated the cost of the raids in lost equipment and damage
at US$418,000.
Describing the raids, Lynes said, "The Israeli army […] went
into a bakery and literally destroyed all the equipment. They
went into a sewing machine workshop, which is used for
training the orphan girls, and they wrecked all the sewing
machines and removed all the textiles. The machines turned up
in the town dump."
A similar series of Israeli raids has been reported in Nablus
since 7 July, with six charities reportedly joining the 50-odd
closed by Israel in the last two years. From:
Israel sets sights on Islamic organizations, July 25,
2008.
So said the UK
Home Office last week as it announced plans to give
law-enforcement agencies, local councils and other public
bodies access to the details of people's text messages, emails
and internet activity. The move followed its announcement in
May that it was considering creating a massive central
database to store all this data, as a tool to help the
security services tackle crime and terrorism.
Meanwhile in the US the FISA Amendments Act, which became law
in July, allows the security services to intercept anyone's
international phone calls and emails without a warrant for up
to seven days. Governments around the world are developing
increasingly sophisticated electronic surveillance methods in
a bid to identify terrorist cells or spot criminal activity.
... More surveillance does not necessarily lead to a higher
level of societal security. From:
Surveillance made easy, NewScientist, August 23, 2008.
Art and
Aesthetics
“Everyone does what they can to
avoid thinking. Laziness is the most basic human trait. People
don’t want to think - they can’t make the connection between
entertainment and thought. They want immediate kicks. People
will not be human until they get pleasure from thought - only a
thinking person can be a full person.” – Czech Film director
Vera Chytilova, 1978.
"Every satisfied desire arouses the
desire for more." - Sylvie Fleury
"It is a mistake to believe if you
paint circles, cubes or some profound jumble of lines that you
are being revolutionary - in comparison to Makart, perhaps. ...
Your brushes and pens, which should be your weapons, are empty
straws. Go out of your rooms, ... allow yourselves to be
captured by the ideas of working people, and help them in their
struggle against a rotten society." - George Grosz 1920"
"Nature is our
best teacher." - Karl Blossfeldt
"Freedom is not
something you are given, but something you have to take." -
Meret Oppenheim
"I couldn't
care less what people call it [art], as long as we can
make what we want." - Atelier Van Lieshout
"No matter how
much joy the exercise of a noble craft can
bestow, let us not forget that it is a means of
repeating and multiplying." - M.C. Escher
"Taxonomy, i.e.
the classification of the natural world, is a
system of order imposed by man and not an
objective reflection of nature. Its categories
are actively applied and contain the assumptions,
values and associations of human society." -
Mark Dion
"Beauty is that
which provokes the greatest number of ideas in
the shortest time," said the18th century
Dutch writer Hemsterhuis.
"A bar is a sad
place, a place full of strangers who are killing
time, postponing the idea they are going to die"
- Edward Kienholz
"I think the
whole idea of continuance after death is an
understandable projection of man's ego."
Artist Edward Kienholz
Art comes from
emotion and the strongest emotion is pain
therefore all the best artists are masochists.
"We shape clay
into a pot, but it is the emptiness inside that
holds whatever we want." - Tao Te Ching
"Chaos is the
beginning; simplicity is the end." - M.C.
Escher
"Beauty? Let me tell you something
- being thought of as 'a beautiful woman' has spared me nothing
in life. No heartache, no trouble. Love has been difficult.
Beauty is essentially meaningless and it is always transitory."
- Halle Berry
Too many so
called artists obscure their lack of talent with a lack of
substance and ambiguity. - Freydis
Economics
Cleveland’s
mayor Frank Jackson knows who to blame: Wall Street. The
mayor’s office is suing some of the world’s biggest banks.
including Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, HSBC and Royal Bank of
Scotland’s Greenwich Capital, claiming they acted like
organised criminals financing the sale of products that they
knew could do nothing but harm to Cleveland. Sub-prime
mortgages have proved as bad as drugs in the destruction they
have wrought on the community, he said.
“Follow the
money,” said Jackson. “If you ask organised crime figures why
they persist in doing what they are doing, knowing the damage
they are doing and the risks they are taking if they are held
accountable, do you know what they will say to you? The money
was just too good. You ask these financiers on Wall Street why
they persist in doing this when they know the risks they are
running and the damage they are doing to their communities and
shareholders, do you know what they will tell you? The money
was just too good.” From:
Cleveland: ghost town created by America’s loan scandal,
February 24, 2008.
The 16th
amendment to the US constitution calling for a "small" income
tax was enacted to compensate for the anticipated loss of
revenue from the lowering of tariffs from 37% to 27% as
authorized by the Underwood Tariff of 1913, the same year the
Federal Reserve System was established. "Small" now translates
into an average of 50% with federal and state income taxes
combined. Free trade is only free in the sense that it is
funded by the income tax.
The supply-side argument that corporate tax cuts stimulate
economic growth only holds if at least half of the benefits of
the tax cut are channeled toward rising wages instead of
higher return on capital with the additional benefit of lower
capital gain tax. Thus a case can be made to couple all
corporate tax cuts with an index on wage rises to match or
exceed corporate earnings. One of the reasons why strong
corporate earnings have not helped the current credit crisis
can be traced to the disproportional rise in equity prices
having come from stagnant wages in the same corporations. -
Henry C K Liu, January 2008
The report
points out that the costs of the Iraq war in particular have
been increasing rapidly with this year's expected tally of
$135 billion amounting to a 40 percent increase over 2006. It
notes that the average cost of a single U.S. soldier in Iraq
last year was $390,000, up 22 percent from the $320,000 it
cost in 2003.
Congressional Agency Predicts War Costs Will Climb,
July 11, 2007.
“[Climate change] is
the greatest and widest-ranging market failure ever seen." - Sir
Nicholas Stern
Remember that we do
not have an "ownership" society when all we own is debt. -
Axel Merk
It is clear
that job cuts, energy-driven inflation—and the higher interest
rates imposed by the Federal Reserve to keep inflation in
check—are compounding the pressure felt by working Americans.
Yet the painful consequences of this reality find no
meaningful reflection in media coverage, the political
campaigns of major party candidates, or federal policy. On the
contrary, the decline in the housing market has been
characterized as a temporary “price correction.” This
euphemism is in part calculated to contain panic and prevent a
mass sell-off before housing values decline further. -
WSWS, October 9, 2006
Don't fool yourself:
capital only looks out for capital. - Freydis
[On the
conviction of Enron's Lay and Skilling] "It's a stunning
verdict,'' said John Carney, a former federal prosecutor now
at Baker & Hostetler. "It's the end of a chapter but not the
end of a book. Enron was an icon of American business. Ken Lay
was one of the most revered and respected CEOs in the country.
To see him go like that is probably one of the greatest falls
in business history.'' -
Bloomberg news, May 2006.
"Whenever the
stakes are high, that's when there will be disputes about the
science." - David Ozonoff of Boston University on toxic
TCE
pollution, March 2006
On why traffic congestion forms: "It's the science of
complexity. In large-group dynamics, special things happen
because each individual is trying to maximize their own
benefit." - Craig Davis, University of Michigan physicist,
MSNBC May 2006.
“In
a consumer-based global market economy, low wages lead directly
to overcapacity, because consumer demand depends on high wages.”
- Henry C K Liu
"There are basic human needs that every economy is required to
satisfy before market rules can be applied." - Henry C K Liu
"We [United
States] have 50% of the world's wealth, but only 6.3% of its
population. Our real task in the coming period is to maintain
this position of disparity." George F Kennan, 1948.
"Whatever his other
accomplishments, Bush will go down in history as the most
fiscally irresponsible chief executive in American history.
Since 2001, government spending has gone up from $1.86
trillion to $2.48 trillion, a 33 percent rise in four years!"
- Fareed Zakaria, 09.05
"Consumer spending has been holding up the US economy in recent
years, while most of the supply-side investment has gone
overseas. This has caused a separation between the dollar
economy and the US economy. The dollar economy expands from
global dollar hegemony while the US economy is hollowed out of
manufacturing. Dollar hegemony has deprived the US economy of
real productivity from manufacturing and forced it into virtual
productivity from finance manipulation." - Henry C K Liu
“If you are going to have socialism, then as a matter of
principle, you can’t have a free market.” - Lee Kuan Yew of
Singapore.
Economics is a lot simpler than economists and ideologues would
have you believe. Capitalists are motivated by greed. End of
story. To change their harmful behavior, you have to take away
from them the only thing they care about - money. - Charley
Reese
"It
is dangerous, however, to place excessive reliance on the market
mechanism. Markets are designed to facilitate the free exchange
of goods and services among willing participants but are not
capable, on their own, of taking care of collective needs. Nor
are they able to ensure social justice. These "public goods" can
only be provided by a political process." - George Soros
"I
don't like to talk about market share because we don't want to
share anything." - Jim Cantalupo on McDonald's corporate
strategy, January, 2004.
On a
stock market rebound:
"While we cannot predict an overshoot, history suggests that
emotional shifts from fear to greed can be quite powerful." -
Tobias Levkovich of Smith Barney, June 2003
"Black markets will always be with
us. But they will recede in importance when the public morality
is consistent with our private one. The underground [economy] is
a good measure of the progress and the health of nations. When
much is wrong, much needs to be hidden." - Eric Schlosser
"The Japanese
economic miracle was just us learning from other
people's failures." - Yotaro Hatamura head
of shippai-gaku, or 'failure-ology'
institute, 2003
"Charles Ponzi
was deemed an unprincipled conman to insulate
unregulated capitalism itself from being revealed
as a systemic Ponzi scheme." - Henry C K Liu
“Never
underestimate them,” advises Richard Hyman
of Verdict, a consultancy. “They [Wal-Mart]
foster an image as country hicks. It makes the
kill more of a surprise.”
"I can't look
for him because I'm looking for food," he
said. "You spend all that to find Osama, and
we're still hungry." Mohammed Asef, 25, on
the U$ reward of $25 million for bin Laden at a
Kabul market, November 2001.
"If I had a
billion U.S. dollars, I suspect I too would be
very committed to a fully globalized world
without any barriers and without any constraints
on what I can do with my money and how I can make
even more money." Malaysian president Dr.
Mahathir at the 'Asia-Pacific Economic
Cooperation' forum in Shanghai, October 20, 2001
"As of December
31, 2001, CitiGroup held derivative exposure of $6.25
trillion, while its combined total asset was only
$500 billion, according to the FDIC."
"U.S. currency
is the most widely circulated with nearly $600
billion worldwide, and officials want to keep
costs low, near the current 5 cents per [printed]
note."
"I'd rather be
alive at 30 percent interest than be dead at 3
percent," William Zeckendorf real-estate
tycoon.
Economics is just a
mislabeled branch of psychology - Freydis
Interest is the
price you pay to live a lifestyle you can't afford. - Freydis
"Economists"
are forever barking up the wrong tree. - Hugo
Salinas Price
It is better to deal
with a government in difficulties than with one
that has luck on its side.
If a high placed person enters into a [financial]
partnership with a Jew, he belongs to the Jew. -
Mayer Amschel Rothschild
Austrian school
"where the free market always gets
everything right"
Maynard Keynes said
'in the long run we are all dead', but what if
his parents had acted on that glib phrase, he
probably wouldn't ever have been around to
espouse it.
"Owing to the
growing complexity and difficulties of life which
weigh, not only on the masses of the workers, but
also on the middle classes, impatience,
irritation and hatred are accumulating in all the
countries of the old civilization and are
becoming a menace to public order; employment
must be found for the energy which is being
hurled out of three definite class channels: it
must be given an outlet abroad in order to avert
an explosion at home." Cecil Rhodes quoted
in Lenin's Imperialism, the highest stage of
capitalism
Credo of the businessman: 'who
cares about tomorrow when I can make a few dollars today?'
- Freydis
Food
& Drug
No advocate of
the ethanol boondoggle addresses the huge social cost that is
beginning to hit the dining-room tables across the US, Europe
and the rest of the world. Food prices are exploding as corn,
soybeans and all cereal-grain prices are going through the
roof because of the astronomical - US Congress-driven - demand
for corn to burn for biofuel.
This year the Massachusetts Institute of Technology issued a
report concluding that using corn-based ethanol instead of
gasoline would have no impact on greenhouse-gas emissions, and
would even expand fossil-fuel use because of increased demand
for fertilizer and irrigation to expand acreage of ethanol
crops. And according to MIT, "natural-gas consumption is 66%
of total corn-ethanol production energy", meaning huge new
strains on natural-gas supply, pushing prices of that product
higher. -
The great biofuel fraud, by F William Engdahl, August
1, 2007.
At one hospital
in Birmingham the bacteria is reported to have infected 93
people, 91 of them civilians. Thirty-five died, although the
hospital was not able to establish whether the superbug was a
contributory factor.
A. baumannii is resistant to most common antibiotics and, if
left untreated, can lead to pneumonia, fever and septicaemia.
It has been identified in more than 240 military personnel in
the US since the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and has been
associated with five deaths. -
Superbug brought back by Iraq war casualties, November
8, 2006
Professor Colin Waine, chairman of
the National Obesity Forum, said that the figures revealed a
public health timebomb because children who are obese between 11
and 15 are twice as likely to die in their 50s. He added that
increased inactivity coupled with more energy-dense foods were
fuelling the problem: “Being obese at adolescence increases the
cancer risk by 21 per cent for girls and 14 per cent for boys.”
-
London Times, April 22, 2006
"Obesity has doubled for U.S.
children ages 2 to 5 and tripled for kids ages 6 to 11 in the
past 30 years, according to a 2000 study in the Journal of the
American Medical Association. " -
Bloomberg news
"The
Westerners, when they want to help us, they
should put the aid in our hands, not give it to
the leaders," Mujahed said, adding that he
would stop growing poppies if given an
alternative.
...the American
eater is like the proverbial horse that, left
unsupervised, will gorge itself until it dies."
The Onion 2000
Government
We treat
10-year sentences like they're nothing, like that's a soft
penalty, when in much of the rest of the world a decade behind
bars would be considered extraordinarily severe. This is what
separates us from other industrialized countries: It's not
just that we send so many people to prison, but that we keep
them there for so long and send them back so often. Eight
years ago, we surpassed Russia to claim the dubious
distinction of having the world's highest rate of
incarceration; today we're still No. 1. … America is expert at
turning citizens into convicts, but we've forgotten how to
transform convicts back into citizens. From: Slammed,
by Jennifer Gonnerman, Mother Jones Magazine, July/August
2008, p. 46.
The refusal to
allow Finkelstein to enter Israel is particularly telling
since Israel legally permits every Jew to exercise his or her
right to live in Israel as a citizen of the country, in
contrast to the Palestinians who fled their homes in 1948 and
1967 who are refused entry or the right of return, in
accordance with the Law of Return that is fundamental to the
Zionist state. It demonstrates that the security force
reserves to itself the right to interpret the law as it sees
fit. Israel is a home to diaspora Jews only providing that
they do not criticise its military expansionism and oppression
of the Palestinian people.
The ban on an academic critical of Israeli policy is all the
more noteworthy because Israel likes to portray itself as a
beacon of democracy in the region. In reality Finkelstein is
not the first to be barred from entering the country: Israel
regularly stops pro-Palestinian academics and peace activists
from entering Israel who go to show support for Palestinian
activists. From:
US academic Norman Finkelstein denied entry to Israel,
by Jean Shaoul, May 31, 2008.
“It’s now too
easy for autocrats to get away with mounting a sham
democracy,” said Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human
Rights Watch. “That’s because too many Western governments
insist on elections and leave it at that. They don’t press
governments on the key human rights issues that make democracy
function – a free press, peaceful assembly, and a functioning
civil society that can really challenge power.” -
2008 Report: Democracy Charade Undermines Rights
"I didn't know
there is such torture at police stations or prisons for
ordinary people," said one viewer, Amal Zaki, 25, as she was
leaving the theater. "I thought they only torture terrorists."
From:
Egypt cheers films critical of police, AP January 25,
2008
The number of
users has soared while drug-related crime is rising with
narcotics now supporting a worldwide business empire second
only in value to oil. "If policy on drugs is in future to be
pragmatic not moralistic, driven by ethics not dogma, then the
current prohibitionist stance will have to be swept away as
both unworkable and immoral, to be replaced with an
evidence-based unified system (specifically including tobacco
and alcohol) aimed at minimisation of harms to society." -
Richard Brunstrom, Chief Constable of North Wales
recommending a full legalization of drugs, October 2007.
Contrary to the
stereotype of the banana republic, only a minority of the
political bribes paid each year goes to public officials in
the developing world. The report published this week finds
"the vast majority of bribes are paid to people in richer
countries" where decision taking is "vulnerable to vast
amounts of money". From:
Organised crime: the $2 trillion threat to the world's
security, September 12, 2007.
Captain [Bryce]
Lefever [a Navy psychologist] says it is unfair to compare US
antiterror interrogations with Soviet interrogation
techniques. "Their abuse was a systematic practice to conceal
the truth," he says. "If Padilla was abused, then it was for a
righteous purpose – to reveal the truth." -
US Gov't broke Padilla through intense isolation, say experts,
August 14, 2007.
David Saranga,
the counsel for media and public affairs at the Israeli
Consulate in New York, told PR Week that the government was in
consultation with a number of public relations and advertising
firms and had not yet decided what the re-branding campaign
would focus on. Saranga did point out that two important
groups that the government wanted to reach are "liberals" and
people aged 16 to 30.
"Israel also
recently spent three years and millions of dollars developing
and test marketing an advertising campaign," Kahn noted. "And
yes, Israel does indeed 'start with I', as the country's new
tag line helpfully points out. But so does Intifada -- and it
will take more than a new marketing campaign to get potential
investors and tourists to forget Israel's ongoing conflict
with the Palestinians."
"In fact, it might require something beyond the abilities of
even the most talented marketing consultant: peace." From:
Israel Looking for an Extreme Makeover, by Bill
Berkowitz, IPS, January 12, 2007.
We'll never see
another voting meltdown in Florida--not because the system has
been fixed but because the mechanism for demonstrating that a
meltdown has occurred has simply been removed. Between the
introduction of paperless computers and the abolition of
recounts, what Florida is left with is, essentially, an
electoral regime based on blind faith. -
Guardian of the Ballot Box, by
Andrew Gumbel, 2006.
In the past, the CIA has been responsible for "covert"
operations - actions where United States sponsorship is not
detectable. These require congressional authority. The military,
meanwhile, has been at liberty to conduct "clandestine"
operations - actions that are simply hard to detect, and do not
need congressional authority.
The concern is that the Pentagon will broaden - or already has -
its definition of clandestine operations to include covert
activities. "You wind up provoking [your enemies]," says John
Pike. "They regard it as retaliation, but to the American people
[who know nothing of the covert operations], it looks like an
unprovoked attack."
Pentagon's intelligence role rising, May 18, 2006.
“Regimes collapse when people are no longer afraid and think
they’re no longer alone.” - Gordon Chang, author.
"In
our tactical decisions, we are operating contrary to our
strategic interest," The chief of the Israeli military
identified as 'Yaalon' on actions against Palestinians ,October
2003.
"The
technology of war is out of control; I'm a warrior, but my
conclusion is that war is obsolete." & "The sole purpose of war
is to kill and destroy. There are no winners." - Former U.S.
Army Maj. Douglas Rokke
"Under capitalism we have a state in the proper sense of the
word, that is, a special machine for the suppression of one
class by another, and of the majority by the minority at that."
- VI Lenin from The State and Revolution.
"An
entrepreneurial society can't exist if political
freedom disappears, and if Big Brothers, public
and private, are invading our daily existence
with impunity." Dan Gillmor journalist, 2003
"The government
has declared total war against us, and our
response is to politically disregard the state,
its representatives and its laws. A new, grass-roots
power must be built by the people. ... The birth
of this new power will not recognize old
institutions." - "Byron,"
commander of the rebel FARC army's 51st front in
Colombia, June 26, 2002.
The ultimate test of
the government's success will be whether Russia
becomes a comfortable and safe place to live,
work and make money, "so that people aspire
to go to Russia and not to leave it."
Vladimir Putin's state of the nation address of
04.02
Our Government is
the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or
ill, it teaches the whole people by its example.
Crime is contagious. If the Government becomes a
lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it
invites every man to become a law unto himself;
it invites anarchy. . . . To declare that in the
administration of the criminal law, the end
justifies the means . . . would bring terrible
retribution. Against this pernicious doctrine
this Court should resolutely set its face. -
Justice Louis Brandeis in Olmstead v.
United States, 1928
The enemy aggressor
is always pursuing a course of larceny, murder,
rapine and barbarism. We are always moving
forward with high mission, a destiny imposed by
the Deity to regenerate our victims while
incidentally capturing their markets, to civilise
savage and senile and paranoid peoples while
blundering accidentally into their oil wells. -
John Flynn, 1944
"When the white
man governs himself, that is self-government, but
when he governs himself and also others, it is no
longer self-government; it is despotism." -
Abraham Lincoln quoted in Lenin's Imperialism,
the highest stage of capitalism
Ayn Rand on
socialism: "Instead of prosperity, socialism
has brought economic paralysis and/or collapse to
every country that tried it. The degree of
socialization has been the degree of disaster."
Mind &
Intelligence
Multitaskers
fool themselves by rapidly switching attention and, as a
result, their output deteriorates. ... Chronic distraction,
from which we all now suffer, kills you more slowly. Meyer
says there is evidence that people in chronically distracted
jobs are, in early middle age, appearing with the same
symptoms of burn-out as air traffic controllers. They might
have stress-related diseases, even irreversible brain damage.
But the damage is not caused by overwork, it’s caused by
multiple distracted work. One American study found that
interruptions take up 2.1 hours of the average knowledge
worker’s day. This, it was estimated, cost the US economy $588
billion a year. Yet the rabidly multitasking distractee is
seen as some kind of social and economic ideal. From:
Stoooopid .... why the Google generation isn’t as smart as it
thinks, July 20, 2008.
People want the
recognition, the validation, the sense of having a place in
the culture [because] we no longer know where we belong, what
we're about or what we should be about."
Without any meaningful standard by which to measure our worth,
we turn to the public eye for affirmation. "It's really the
sense that Hey, I exist in this world, and that is important.
That I matter," Niedzviecki says. Our "normal" lives therefore
seem impoverished and less significant compared with the media
world, which increasingly represents all that is grand and
worthwhile, and therefore more "real." -
Lakshmi Chaudhry, January 2007.
"An intellectual
is someone whose mind watches itself. " - Albert Camus
"Robots don't do
well with changing situations. The real world is very confusing
to them." - Mark Maimone of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory,
March 2004.
"True genius is
creative and makes all from nothing." - Jean-Jacques Rousseau
"Men who are too
superior to their epoch are generally without influence upon
it." - Gustave Le Bon
"The United States has got some of
the dumbest people in the world. I want you to know that.'' -
Ted Turner in 1996.
"Three scales
of intelligence, one which understands by itself,
a second which understands what is shown it by
others, and a third which understands neither by
itself nor on the showing of others, the first of
which is most excellent, the second good, but the
third worthless." - Niccolo Machiavelli
"But the analytic
power should not be confounded with simple ingenuity; for while
the analyst is necessarily ingenious, the ingenious man is often
remarkably incapable of analysis. ... It will be found, in fact,
that the ingenious are always fanciful, and truly never
otherwise than analytic." From EA Poe's The Murders in the Rue
Morgue.
"Man is a
creature of habit, not of reason nor yet of instinct." - John
Dewey, 1921.
"Cosmology is
the ultimate quest for knowledge." - Author
John D. Barrow
"Honesty is
essential to intelligence — a fact ignored
more and more fashionably by the press. Without
honesty, the power of intelligence is wasted on
"spinning." Casey Fahy
Intelligence needs
to be the norm not the anomaly. - F.
If ignorance is
bliss then genius is a tormented hell. - F.
In cyberspace
ignorance is your worst enemy. - F.
Politics
and Politicos
“Our country
and the entire international community cannot stand by as a
terror-supporting state fulfills its most aggressive
ambitions.” – Vice President Cheney, oblivious to irony
and hypocrisy, referring to Iran in October 2007.
There is a
difference between being sure and being right. Bush's
conviction, here as elsewhere, came not from an independent
analysis of the facts - of the interests and intentions of the
nations involved - but from the wellspring of faith. He has
confused rhetoric, however uplifting, and reality. -
Mark Danner on George W. Bush - faith over facts, 2007.
"Iran needs to
learn to respect us, and Iran certainly needs to respect
American power in the Middle East." - R. Nicholas Burns,
undersecretary of state for political affairs, January 2007.
At one point,
Rice said that the difficult circumstances in the Middle East
could represent opportunity. "I don't read Chinese but I am
told that the Chinese character for crisis is wei-ji, which
means both danger and opportunity," she said in Riyadh. "And I
think that states it very well. We'll try to maximize the
opportunity."
But Victor H. Mair, a professor of Chinese at the University
of Pennsylvania, has written on the Web site http://pinyin.info,
a guide to the Chinese language, that "a whole industry of
pundits and therapists has grown up around this one grossly
inaccurate formulation." He said the character "ji" actually
means "incipient moment" or a "crucial point." Thus, he said,
a wei-ji "is indeed a genuine crisis, a dangerous moment, a
time when things start to go awry." -
Glenn Kessler, Washington Post, January 19, 2007
"I find it
ironic that on one hand you put [Saddam Hussein] on trial for
using biological warfare, but in another country where you
sprayed chemicals for warfare, you neglect your
responsibility." - Duc Nguyen, referring to dioxin laced Agent
Orange blamed for continuing birth defects in Vietnam;
Washington Post, November 13, 2006.
Israeli Prime
Minister David Ben-Gurion himself is reported (by Nahum
Goldmann) to have asked in private, "Why should the Arabs make
peace? If I were an Arab leader I would never make terms with
Israel. That is natural: we have taken their country. Sure,
God promised it to us, but what does that matter to them? Our
God is not theirs. We came from Israel, it's true, but two
thousand years ago, and what is that to them? There has been
anti-Semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that
their fault? They only see one thing: we have come here and
stolen their country. Why should they accept that?" From:
America Right of Wrong by Anatol Lieven, 2004, page 196.
"The resolution
to this war [in Lebanon] must respect international law and U.N.
resolutions, not just those selected by Israel, a state that
deserves its reputation as a pariah because of its consistent
disdain for and rejection of international law and the wishes
of the international community for over half a century." -
Fouad Siniora, Prime Minister of Lebanon, August 9, 2006.
"The president is
always right.” - Steven Bradbury in
June 2006 as head of the Justice Department’s office of
legal counsel in the Bush administration.
He [Hans Blix]
also urged those negotiating with Iran to look at the issue
through their eyes. "They see 130,000 American soldiers in
Iraq, and they see American bases in Pakistan and
Afghanistan," Blix said. "They remember that (Mohammed)
Mossadeq, who was elected premier, was ousted with subversive
methods from the outside" in the 1950s.
In the broader effort to free the world of weapons of mass
destruction, the commission said the single most important
thing that countries can do is to ratify the nuclear test ban
treaty, which the U.S. Senate has rejected. From:
'Study wants nuclear weapons outlawed'
Only if we
[Americans] begin to see ourselves more clearly will we be able
to understand how others see us. We need to revise the narrative
of the American century and recognize that it has been about a
host of other things that are far more problematic than
liberation. There can be no understanding the true nature of the
American century without acknowledging the reality of Hiroshima,
Nagasaki, Dresden, Hanoi, and Haiphong. -
Andrew Bacevich, May 2006
"Political settlement demands
equity of power. Israel holds all the cards. So why is there a
demand for our surrender?" - Nawaf Mousawi of Hezbollah
On Hamas'
surprise election victory in Palestine: "Washington
miscalculated in pushing for the vote, as part of its
pro-democracy campaign in the Arab world." - Hanan Ashrawi,
Palestinian legislator,
January 2006. (That's the
funny thing about elections, sometimes the stooge doesn't
win.- F)
"Even if you get Bin Laden, you
can't be sure there won't be another Bin Laden. You cannot get
terrorists to sign a peace treaty. The only way to beat terror
is to go for the basic causes. They don't blow themselves up for
no reason, they're angry, they're frustrated. And why are they
angry? Look at the Palestinian situation. Fifty years after you
[England] created the state of Israel, things are going from bad
to worse." - Malaysia's Mahathir Mohamad on defeating
terrorism
"Our enemies are innovative and
resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new
ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we." -
George W. Bush on August 5, 2004
"What Nixon and Kissinger began,
Pol Pot completed." - John Pilger
"The liberation
of Iraq will make the world more peaceful."
- Pres. G.W. Bush, Ft. Hood Texas, April 20, 2003.
"We flaunt our
superpower status with arrogance. After war has
ended the United States will have to rebuild much
more than the country of Iraq. We will have to
rebuild America's image around the globe."-
Sen. Robert Byrd D-WV, March 19, 2003.
"If you see 10
troubles coming down the road, you can be sure
that nine will run into the ditch before they
reach you." - Calvin Coolidge
"Our [Israel's]
fate is intertwined with the Palestinians."
- Avraham Shochat, former Israeli finance
minister.
"In this city,
which has always been known for its tolerance,
the only thing we will not tolerate is
intolerance," declared District Attorney
Terence Hallinan during San Francisco 'anti-hate'
campaign, September 2002.
"The US and the
Soviet Union each spent the equivalent of 10
trillion dollars on the arms race." -
Mikhail Gorbachev, July 2002
Famous last words:
"We've destroyed al Qaeda in Afghanistan and
we have ended the role of Afghanistan as a haven
for terrorist activity,'' said Secretary of State
Colin Powell on NBC's Meet the Press. Dec. 16
2001
"America never
gave trade favors to Cuba. America embargoes Iraq.
What about human rights in China? There are no
sanctions. America believes that capitalism will
defeat socialism and that this is the best way
towards a democratic society. I am confused. If
money can change tyranny, then former President
Ronald Reagan was wrong when he called the Soviet
Union 'the Evil Empire' and said, 'Tear down this
wall [the Berlin Wall]'. He should have instead
been giving the Soviets trade favors and money."
Harry Wu interviewed for Worldnetdaily Apr 5,
2001
"This is the
greatest thing in history!" - President
Harry S. Truman upon hearing of the successful A-bombing
of Hiroshima
"Fox's
courtship of Mexicans living in the United States
isn't just for their benefit. The money they wire
home now accounts for Mexico's third-largest
source of income, after oil and tourism."
"As Mr
Berezovsky happily acknowledges: "Let's say
without hypocrisy: people wanted to elect
Zyuganov. They didn't want Yeltsin." The
money and determined efforts of the oligarchs,
after a secret pact struck at the Swiss resort of
Davos, helped to change the voters' minds. I was
wrong to help elect Putin, says bitter kingmaker
Berezovsky" By Steve Crawshaw UK Independent
in New York 28 November 2000
A former senior DIA
official told UPI: "People should keep in
mind" that Sharon is the one who visited the
Temple Mount or al-Haram al-Sharif in Jerusalem
last September with 1,000 guards in attendance.
"Why take 1,000?" he said. "First,
he wanted to provoke the Palestinians. Next, he
wanted to stick a thumb in Barak's eye. Sharon is
a planner." UPI wire Jan.17, 2001
"He [Sharon] is a pyromaniac on a
powder keg." - Afif Safieh
Bush often mangled
prepared speeches during the campaign, once
calling tactical weapons "tacular," and
referring to a school's "Preservation Week"
instead of "Perseverance Week" at an
appearance with its students. Reuters Jan 15,
2001
Trenchant insights
courtesy of the illustrious Mad. Albright:
Appearing on CNN's
"Late Edition," Secretary of State Madeleine Albright
challenged assertions that Clinton's last-ditch peace
efforts were an attempt to ensure his legacy.
"I could end my career as secretary of state
with a barnyard expletive, but I
will not do that," Albright said. "What
is true is that he is called
upon to fulfill this role. He is working very hard." January 2001.
Al Gore was facing
fresh questions about his credibility yesterday
over his claim that a labor song he heard as a
childhood lullaby wasn't even written until 1975
- when he was 27.
Gore has made a series of strange pronouncements
about his life, including claims to have invented
the Internet, been the basis for "Love Story"
and exposing the Love Canal disaster.
The song was penned in the mid-'70s for the
International Ladies Garment Workers Union.
Gore was decades out of diapers when the ditty
debuted in 1975 as part of a TV ad campaign for
the union. 2000
Past Nobel peace
prize recipients include Mother Teresa, the Rev.
Martin Luther King, Jr., Nelson Mandela, Yitzhak
Rabin and Yasser Arafat, Holocaust researcher
Elie Wiesel, the Dalai Lama, former U.S.
secretary of state Henry Kissinger, South African
peace activist the Rev. Desmond Tutu, Polish
Solidarity leader Lech Walesa, former U.N.
secretary-general Dag Hammarskjold, medical
researcher Albert Schweitzer.
"That since his
love depends upon his subjects, while his being
feared depends upon himself, a wise Prince should
build on what is his own", Niccolo
Machiavelli
"I am going,"
Yeltsin said in a televised address. "I did
all I could."
...yeah but to make things better or worse?
"If, by the
instruments of governmental power, a nationality
is lead towards its destruction, then rebellion
is not only the right of every member of such
people – it is his duty." Adolf Hitler,
American Constitutionalist?, Mein Kampf
Religion
"There's a
dilemma in Israel. Israel defines itself as a Jewish and
democratic state. There is fear among some Israelis that if
democracy is accorded to all its citizens this will attenuate
Israel's character as a Jewish state. So there's that built-in
tension between democracy and a Jewish state," said Wilcox. -
Philip Wilcox, president of the Foundation for Middle East
Peace
"But those enemies of mine who did not want me to be king over
them - bring them here and kill them in front of me." -
Jesus quoted in Luke 19:27, Holy Bible, New International
Version
"[M]odern theists might acknowledge that, when it comes to Baal
and the Golden Calf, Thor and Wotan, Poseidan and Apollo,
Mithras and Ammon Ra, they are actually atheists. We are all
atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed
in. Some of us just go one god further." - Richard Dawkins
"Heresy is but
the bridge between two orthodoxies." -
Francis Hackett
Don't believe in any
god that requires faith as a prerequisite for
salvation. If God is not self-evident God is
irrelevant.
"Who needs
heaven and hell? We make our own hell right here."
- Randy Weaver
"If I am going
to hell, I'm gonna have a
lot of company." - Timothy McVeigh
"To most
people, peace means the victory of their side. In
my opinion, there will be no peace in this
country without dismantling the Jewish
communities in the territories," - Susan
Sonntag May 9, 2001, speaking on Israel in
Jerusalem.
"Religions
build theories about the world and then prevent
them from being tested. Religions provide nice,
appealing and comfortable ideas, and cloak them
in a mask of 'truth, beauty, and goodness'. The
theories can then thrive in spite of being
untrue, ugly, or cruel." Susan Blackmore
"Just in terms
of allocation of time resources, religion is not
very efficient. There's a lot more I could be
doing on a Sunday morning." - Bill Gates on
religion
Iran: "We are
not East or West we are Islam."
"In January,
human rights groups slammed Israel after the
Jerusalem District Court sentenced Jewish settler
Nahum Kurman to six months of community service
for beating to death 10-year-old Palestinian
Hilmi Shousha. Kurman was fined $17,000. "
2001
"For religious
people to accuse entertainment of being damaging,
they have to realize that Christ was the first
celebrity, and religion created entertainment."
--Shock rocker Marilyn Manson. [From AP ]
``There is no
turning of the other cheek in Judaism...Judaism
is revenge,'' said Noam Federman, a long-time
friend of Binyamin Kahane and follower of his
slain father. 31.12.00
A popularized phrase
attributed to the eminent mathematical theorist
Albert Einstein, and by that virtue obviously a
genius at social insight as well, nonetheless has
been warped to fit the modern Zionist agenda. The
phrase I write of goes something like this:
"Peace can never be kept by force, only
through understanding."
Einstein must surely be spinning in his grave
having been anti-Zionist himself. His actual
statement was "Peace in PALESTINE cannot be
achieved through force, only through
understanding."
Also Schindler's list similarly corrupted the (Babylonian)
Talmud text of Sanhedrin 37a:
"Whoever preserves a single soul of Israel,
it is as if he had preserved an entire world"
...into the more gentile friendly:
"Whoever destroys the life of a single human
being...it is as if he had destroyed an entire
world; and whoever preserves the life of a single
human being ...it is as if he had preserved an
entire world."
Why not put God on
trial for crimes against humanity too eh? After
all those floods, famines, volcanoes and
earthquakes – should make an open-shut legal
case!
"And I will put
enmity between you and the woman, and between
your offspring and hers; He will crush your head,
and you will strike his heel." Genesis 3:15
School
"The purpose of
`higher' education is not to educate but to exclude as
many as possible from the various professions." - Valerie
Solanas
"I didn't like
anything about school.'' - successful inventor,
Dean Kamen
"I was bored
with it all ... it was rigid, it was stupid, it
was a lot like the news coverage now. There's
very little originality going on. Everything I've
learned I've learned on my own. I'm self-taught.
I've kept some original thinking or what I think
is original. [Other journalists] have to listen
to an editor saying yes or no. I don't listen to
anybody." - "the brutal wit of an
accomplished young nihilist" - Matt Drudge
Sleep
I don’t care
how much money you have - affluence is how much
sleep you get each night. - Freydis
Worst German import
- the early morning work ethic "Morgenstunde
hat Gold im Munde" (the morning hour has
gold in its mouth).
"How long you live
is statistically related to the amount of sleep
you obtain on average a night. The mortality rate
is lowest for people who report sleeping seven to
nine hours a night,'' Reuters: Tuesday
March 27, 2001
War & Conflict
There is also
evidence that for every dollar's worth of oil imported from
the Persian Gulf region the Pentagon takes $5 out of the
Federal budget to "secure" the flow of that oil. This is a
clear indication that the claim that the US military presence
in the Middle East is due to oil consideration is a fraud. -
Are they really oil wars?, June 25, 2008.
In Kosovo in
1999 around 290,000 sub-munitions were dropped over a 10-week
period by North Atlantic Treaty Organization aircraft. During
the five weeks of the 2006 conflict in Lebanon, as many as
four million sub-munitions were spread by Israel across the
country's southern regions, according to the ICRC. From:
The politics of cluster bombs, by Brian McCartan, May
6, 2008.
"What we are
not interested in is another war in the region," Mohammed
Naqbi, who heads the Gulf Negotiations Center, told Burns.
"Iraq is your problem, not the problem of the Arabs. You
destroyed a country that had institutions. You handed that
country to Iran. Now you are crying to Europe and the Arabs to
help you out of this mess."
LAT, January 24, 2007.
"In 2003, I
don't think anybody predicted it would go as long as World War
II and the wear and tear on equipment would be as intense,''
said Zakheim, now a vice president for global strategy
consultant Booz Allen Hamilton Inc. ``When I left the
department, we were spending less than $4 billion a month on
Iraq. Now it's pretty much doubled.'' - Dov Zakheim,
Pentagon's chief financial officer from 2001 to 2004.
December 6, 2006.
Israel turned
to cluster bombs in the last week of the war, apparently
frustrated at the failure of conventional weapons to rout
Hizbullah fighters from their foxholes. Mine-clearance teams
are finding evidence pointing to their provenance: the US, the
world's largest cluster bomb manufacturer, which gave Israel
$2.2bn (£1.2bn) in military aid last year.
In Nabatiye, 15 people were injured in just one day along a
bomb-strewn road. In Tibnin, 210 bombs were found around the
town hospital. "That's about as inappropriate [a use of
cluster bombs] as you can get," Mr Clark said.
Many share the blame equally between Israel and the US. "It's
like we are living in a prison," said Aisa Hussain, 38, a
Yahmour resident who has ordered his children to remain inside
his house.
... Strolling through the village he pointed to yet another
tiny black canister perched under a tree. "You see what
America is sending us," he said bitterly. "This is their idea
of democracy." From:
The Guardian, August 21, 2006.
"What makes
being a soldier great is the nobility of it — good fighting
evil. If you lose that, all this sacrifice is for no good
reason." - Maj. Peter Kilner, West Point. From:
Combat stress takes toll, June 14, 2006.
News
Excerpts
The problem the
war creates for the punditocracy and the rest of the political
establishment is twofold. First, the leaders they backed have
not only been wildly incompetent but also impervious to
reality. Offered a face-saving exit by the Baker Commission,
Bush, Cheney & Co. prefer instead to double down on disaster.
Second, there is the problem of the pundits' individual
reputations. If William Kristol, Charles Krauthammer, Lawrence
Kaplan and David Brooks et al. are so smart, why were they so
wrong about something so crucial? And why, given their sorry
records, do they and their editors still think anybody ought
to keep listening to them? At the very least, those they
misled are entitled to an explanation. -
Eric Alterman, January 2007.
A study of
urban American adults by Nancy Wells and Kristi Lekies of
Cornell University sheds some light on environmental
attitudes. Wells and Lekies found that children who play
unsupervised in the wild before the age of 11 develop strong
environmental ethics. Children exposed only to structured
hierarchical play in the wild—through, for example, Boy Scouts
and Girl Scouts, or by hunting or fishing alongside
supervising adults—do not. To interact humbly with nature we
need to be free and undomesticated in it. Otherwise, we
succumb to hubris in maturity. The fact that few children
enjoy free rein outdoors anymore bodes poorly for our future
decision-makers. -
The Thirteenth Tipping Point, by By Julia Whitty, MJ,
11/12 2006
[T]he Bush administration has launched an unusual effort to
raise charitable contributions for another cause: the
government's attempt to rebuild Iraq.
Although more than $30 billion in taxpayer funds have been
appropriated for Iraqi reconstruction, the administration
earlier this month launched an Internet-based fundraising effort
that it says is aimed at giving Americans "a further stake in
building a free and prosperous Iraq."
Contributors have no way of knowing who's getting the money or
precisely where it's headed because the government says it must
keep the details secret for security reasons.
The campaign is raising eyebrows in the international
development and not-for-profit communities, where there are
questions about its timing--given needs at home--and whether it
will set the government in competition with international
not-for-profits.
On a more basic level, experts wonder whether Americans will
make charitable donations to a
government foreign aid program and whether the contentious
environment surrounding Iraq will make a tough pitch even
tougher. - New Twist On Aid For Iraq: U.S. Seeks Donations,
By Cam Simpson, Chicago Tribune, September 18, 2005.
"They may want a lot of things associated with war - the
comradeship, the thrill that comes from holding a weapon. I
think this is what confuses people. Thrills, comradeship, all of
that can come in many different ways; it comes from war, though,
only when people are manipulated into it. To me the strongest
argument against an inherent drive to war is the extent to which
governments have to resort to get people to go to war, the huge
amounts of propaganda and deception of which we had an example
very recently. And don't forget coercion. So I discard that idea
of a natural inclination to war."
-
Howard Zinn
"The way to be pro-Israel is to work for a better Israel, and
the real Zionism is to work for an Israel that is not only
physically strong but morally strong.
There is a false equation that if you voice any criticism of
Israel you are delegitimising Israel at some level. I believe
the opposite." - Activist Rabbi Arik Ascherman, March 2005
"The Americans brought electricity to my ass before they brought
it to my house." - Jaded former detainee in Iraq's
notorious Abu Ghraib
prison.
ATO 1.2005
"When you freeze that process, you prevent the establishment of
a Palestinian state, and you prevent a discussion on the
refugees, the borders and Jerusalem. Effectively, this whole
package called the Palestinian state, with all that it entails,
has been removed indefinitely from our agenda. And all this with
authority and permission. All with a presidential blessing and
the ratification of both houses of [U.S.] Congress." - the
candid admission of Dov Weisglass, chief of staff for Ariel
Sharon, from an interview in Ha'aretz Oct. 6, 2004.
"Wal-Mart wraps itself in the American flag, but even the flags
they sell are made in China." - James Thindwa, workers
rights activist, 10.04
When Columbia University professor Zainab Bahrani visited the
site of Babylon late last spring, she was stunned to see an
American military base spreading across the hallowed ground.
Workers scooped up earth potentially rich in relics to make
blast walls. Bulldozers carved out helicopter landing pads, and
the vibrations from the choppers themselves did still more
damage. Portions of two ancient temples have collapsed and
Nebuchadnezzar II's palace is threatened. "We're very worried
about the palace walls," said Bahrani. "They're made of brick.
They rattle when the helicopters take off." From: Newsweek,
Unearthing the Bible, August 2004.
Frida Berrigan, a
senior research associate at the World Policy Institute's Arms
Trade Resource Center, said that according to the 2005 budget,
the US will spend about $1.15 billion a day, or $11,000 a
second, on defense. "In comparison, we spend half that on public
education per year per child in the United States," she said.
IPS August 19, 2004.
"Women dream more
often about friends, family and domestic settings. Men are more
likely to dream about sex and violence." Newsweek August
9, 2004.
"Torture is
nurtured and justified by ideologies that create an
ever-expanding category of 'enemy' others. ... Fear, whether or
not deliberately instilled - as in fictions about 'weapons of
mass destruction' - grants legitimacy to torture." - Martha
Huggins, sociology professor at New Orleans' Tulane University
via BBC news June 29, 2004.
There is a common
starting point to any strategy of both insurgencies and
contra-insurgencies. Who has the legitimacy? Now, with the
International Court of Justice, the human rights treaties and
the progress of liberal democracy, not to torture is not only a
need, but an obligation. Winning depends on how you conduct
yourself. Could an officer in an extreme case use some degree of
physical violence to extract information from a prisoner? No,
doing it could hurt the overall political strategy, as it has
happened in Iraq. When you mistreat your detainees, you
stimulate their opposition, their hate. - Former Salvadorian
guerrilla leader Joaquin Villalobos, May 2004.
While
traditionalists bemoan the demythologizing of heroes,
children's-book experts say truth may ultimately be more
inspiring than a glossed-over tale. Reading about imperfections
of famous people gives youngsters more freedom to dream of what
they might accomplish. "It's important for children to know that
their heroes were real people' says author Yolen. "How do you emulate
perfect?" A less-than-perfect hero—that's the real story."
Review of new history books, Feb. 2, 2004 issue of Newsweek
magazine.
"I shot one
guy in the head, and his head exploded." - Sgt Randy Davis U.S.
Army sniper, preserving American values in Iraq. From New York
Times News Service, Eric Schmitt, January 2004.
"Rah
el sani', ija el ussta" - "gone is the apprentice, in comes the
master."
Popular phrase in Baghdad used to describe the
relationship between America and Saddam's regime and the
similarity of authoritarian control tactics used by both.
"It's
like I am seeing the same movie twice and no-one is trying to
fix the problem. What was promised to Afghans with the collapse
of the Taliban was a new life of hope and change. But what was
delivered? Nothing. Everyone [i.e. Taliban] is back in
business." - Ahmed Wali Karzai in Kandahar Afghanistan, April
2003.
Through their
coverage [of Iraq], the US media are undercutting
their standing as an objective source of news and
are undermining the basis for American democracy,
with implications for years to come. While
democracy relies on an informed public, US media
outlets today appear more as tools of the US
government's perception management campaign than
objective sources of reports and analysis of the
world situation. The United States - and the
world - will suffer from this fall from the
pedestal of journalistic ideals.
By Pascale Combelles
Siegel, April 2003.
Occupation or
Liberation?
"If there is one lesson Israel can impart to
the Americans, it is that every occupation is
appalling, that it tramples the occupied and
corrupts the occupier. If the Americans pause for
a moment to see what is going on in the Tul Karm
refugee camp and in the casbah of Nablus, they
will see what they will soon become. And if
Israelis look at what is happening in Iraq,
perhaps they will understand that it is not the
Palestinians but, above all, we who have created
the present situation." By Gideon Levy for
Haaretz Daily Israel: America is not a role
model April 2003.
Royalty:
"Princess Martha Louise of Norway married
yesterday amid the cheers of tens of thousands
who set aside her groom's rather mixed reputation
as a writer, a television producer and a commoner.
Mr Behn, who was born in Denmark and grew up
south of Oslo, scores poorly in popularity polls.
His 90-page book, Sad as Hell, got mixed
reviews, and he was chided for appearing in a
television programme with Las Vegas prostitute
junkies that he also produced. He said he was
reporting their lifestyle, not endorsing it.
"
U$ Social Insecurity:
Social Security's
unfunded liability is a staggering $47 trillion
over the next 75 years, Mitchell said. That
figure represents the difference between total
promised benefits and total available resources
as the program is now structured. Failure to Repay
Trust Fund Would Be Big Wealth Transfer, By Miles
Benson, c.2001 Newhouse News Service
Red Light Cameras:
...local governments choose poorly designed
intersections, and gratuitously shorten yellow-light
cycles, to force otherwise conscientious drivers
to run red lights and pay the steep fines -- in
California, the penalty is $271, of which $70
goes to the private contractor that runs the
system.
D.C. officials expect to make at least $117
million off the red-light cameras by 2004, while
Lockheed Martin IMS expects to make about $44
million. From: Backlash
stopping red-light cameras, By Sean Scully,
Special to the Washington Times, August 2, 2001
Lobotomy:
Freeman's lobotomy procedure included knocking a
patient out with electric shocks, lifting the
eyelids and inserting an "ice-pick-like"
instrument through the tear duct. He pierced the
skull bone by tapping on the instrument with a
surgical hammer, then shoved the pointed steel
about an inch into the frontal lobe of the brain
and moved its sharp tip back and forth. This
procedure since has been universally discredited.
From: Forgotten
Dead of St. Elizabeths, By Kelly Patricia
O'Meara, Insight Magazine, July 2001
Government At Work:
Under their system, the individual is a cog in a
military machine, a cipher in an economic
despotism; the individual is a slave. These facts
are documented in the degradation and suffering
of the conquered countries, whose fate is shared
equally by the willing satellites and the
misguided appeasers of the Axis. From: [American]
Government Information Manual for the Motion
Picture Industry, Office of War Information [WWII]
"They (China's
communist party) do the propaganda because they
don't want people to forget. Starbucks doesn't
need to do much propaganda because people want to
come here and drink coffee," said Donald
Zheng 37 year-old interior designer, 01.07.01
"As experts
warn that action is necessary now to curb the
booming rise in international air travel - the
most polluting form of transport - jet-setting
celebrities appear to show no signs of ditching
their Lears. Just one trans-Atlantic flight
produces emissions equivalent to 40,000 cars
traveling from London to Leeds." The Scotsman online
Nov 20, 2000
"We know we
have missed details. We have rearranged times. We
have altered geography and in so doing we have
shrunken history by making history fit onto our
screens and to our purpose." - A candid Tom
Hanks admitting to editing history to fit
ideology and the screen. From: Tom Hanks
defends Hollywood war history re-writes,
Reuters Thursday June 7, 08:14 PM 2001.
"The
incarceration rate at the end of the Clinton
administration was 476 per 100,000 citizens,
versus 332 per 100,000 at the end of Bush's term
and 247 per 100,000 at the end of Reagan's
administration."
"[The period]
from the moment a piglet is born until the 250-plus-pound
hog is sent off to slaughter spans all of six
months. For the entire time, the animal is
confined in an 8-by-2.5-foot metal pen...." Motherjones.com
March 15 2001
"The Soviets
were masters of deception and disinformation, and
maskivovka was an important part of the Soviet
military tactic and strategic doctrine. Some
western intelligence analysts suspected that, as
late as 1960, not only most of the missiles
parading in Red Square were dummies, but even
some units of the newly created Soviet Strategic
Rocket Forces were not getting real missiles. The
Russians have a long tradition in the deception
business. One must bear in mind that it was count
Grigori Aleksandrovich Potemkim who created the
first Hollywood-style film sets."
One Japanese company
that merged with an American corporation told its
mostly male Japanese workers to desist from
groping women in the lift because western females
often held high-powered positions. Sunday Times
UK Jan 21, 2001
Look
Who's Talking
| 
