Edward Herman: ... the NSS (National Security State) is an instrument of class warfare, organized and designed to permit an elite, local and multinational, to operate without any constraint from democratic processes. This allows the bulk of the population to be treated as a mere cost of production. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Robert McChesney: The range of debate between the dominant U.S. (political) parties tends to closely resemble the range of debate within the business class. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Capital must protect itself in every way...Debts must be collected and loans and mortgages foreclosed as soon as possible. When through a process of law the common people have lost their homes, they will be more tractable and more easily governed by the strong arm of the law applied by the central power of leading financiers. People without homes will not quarrel with their leaders. This is well known among our principal men now engaged in forming an imperialism of capitalism to govern the world. By dividing the people we can get them to expend their energies in fighting over questions of no importance to us except as teachers of the common herd. - anonymous wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Michael Rivero: The big lie about capitalism is that everyone can be rich. That's impossible. Capitalism works only if the vast majority of the population are kept poor enough to never quit working, are kept poor enough to accept distasteful jobs society cannot function without. If everyone were a millionaire, who would empty the trash or repair the sewers? It follows that the poorer the general population is made, the greater the worth of the money held by the wealthy, in terms of the lives which may be bought and sold with it. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Holly Sklar: The dream of capitalism is to co-opt people with higher living standards without redistributing any wealth. Without co-optation, widespread repression is the only guarantor of gross inequality. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Ellen Meiksins-Wood: Imperialism today is taking place in the context of...the 'universalization' of capitalism. It is not now primarily a matter of territorial conquest or direct military or colonial control. It is not now a matter of capitalist powers invading non-capitalist powers in order to bleed them dry directly and by brute force. Now it is more a matter of ensuring that the forces of the capitalist market prevail in every corner of the world (even if this means marginalizing and impoverishing parts of it), and of manipulating those market forces to the advantage of the most powerful capitalist economies and the United States in particular." ... "Military force is still central to the imperialist project, in some ways more than ever. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Philip Agee: American capitalism, based as it is on exploitation of the poor, with its fundamental motivation in personal greed, simply cannot survive without force - without a secret police force. Now, more than ever, each of us is forced to make a conscious choice whether to support the system of minority comfort and privilege with all its security apparatus and repression, or whether to struggle for real equality of opportunity and fair distribution of benefits for all of society, in the domestic as well as the international order. It's harder now not to realize that there are two sides, harder not to understand each, and harder not to recognize that like it or not we contribute day in and day out either to the one side or to the other. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Alexis de Tocqueville: Can it be believed that the democracy which overthrew the feudal system and vanquished kings will retreat before tradesmen and capitalists. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
David Watson: We now live in a state of permanent war - a global arms industry, apparently the largest single international business, must have its products used up so more can be sold. There must be profits for the capitalists and jobs for the proles... Are we not still in Caligula's Rome? wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Martin Niemöller: In Germany they first came for the Communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn't speak up because I was a protestant. Then they came for me, and by that time there was nobody left to speak up. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Edward Said: 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. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Walden Bello: 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. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Hélder Câmara: When you give food to the poor, they call you a saint. When you ask why the poor have no food, they call you a communist. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Thomas Bodenheimer: 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. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Edward Herman: Among Latin American elites, a peasant asking for a higher wage or a priest helping organize a peasant cooperative is a communist. And someone going so far as to suggest land reform or a more equitable tax system is a communist fanatic. There is no word or act suggesting the desirability of elite generosity toward the poor, or the need for education, organization or material advance for the majority, that has not been branded communistic in Latin America in recent decades. ... Since communism is the enemy and peasants trying to improve themselves, priests with the slightest humanistic proclivity, and naturally anyone seriously challenging the status quo, are communists, they are also, by definition, enemies. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Martin Luther King, Jr.: 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. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Martin Luther King, Jr.: We in the West must bear in mind that the poor countries are poor primarily because we have exploited them through political or economic colonialism. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Peter Phillips: ... the media in the United States effectively represents the interests of corporate America, and ... the media elite are the watchdogs of what constitutes acceptable ideological messages, the parameters of news and information content, and the general use of media resources. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
John Stockwell: It is the function of the CIA to keep the world unstable, and to propagandize and teach the American people to hate, so we will let the Establishment spend any amount of money on arms. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Albert Einstein: I came to America because of the great, great freedom which I heard existed in this country. I made a mistake in selecting America as a land of freedom, a mistake I cannot repair in the balance of my lifetime. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Ralph McGehee: Death squads have been created and used by the CIA around the world - particularly the Third World - since the late 1940s, a fact ignored by the elite-owned media. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
John Stockwell: One might call this the "Third World War." It is a war that has been fought by the United States against the Third World. Others call it the Cold War and focus on the anti-Communist and anti-Soviet rationales, but the dead are not Soviets; they are people of the Third World. It might also be called the Forty-Year War, like the Thirty-Year and Hundred-Year Wars in Europe, for this one began when the CIA was founded in 1947 and continues today. Altogether, perhaps twenty million people died in the Cold War. As wars go, it has been the second or third most destructive of human life in all of history, after World War I and World War II. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
John Stockwell: ... the United States (is) cast in the role of Praetorian Guard, protecting the interests of the global financial order against fractious elements in the Third World. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
John Stockwell: Nothing illustrates the power to rationalize cynicism as well as the Public Safety Program, also called the Office of Public Safety. For about twenty-five years, the CIA, working through the Agency for International Development, trained and organized police and paramilitary officers from around the world in techniques of population control, repression, and torture. Schools were set up in the United States, Panama, and Asia, from which tens of thousands graduated. In some cases, former Nazi officers from Hitler's Third Reich were used as instructors. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Philip Agee: A considerable proportion of the developed world's prosperity rests on paying the lowest possible prices for the poor countries' primary products and on exporting high-cost capital and finished goods to those countries. Continuation of this kind of prosperity requires continuation of the relative gap between developed and underdeveloped countries - it means keeping poor people poor. Increasingly, the impoverished masses are understanding that the prosperity of the developed countries and of the privileged minorities in their own countries is founded on their poverty. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Ariel Sharon: I want to tell you something very clear, don't worry about American pressure on Israel, we, the Jewish people control America, and the Americans know it. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
