"And God said Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the whole earth and
subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the
birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the
earth."
- Genesis 1:28. Genesis is the first book of the Hebrew Bible (the
Tanakh) and the Christian Old Testament
******************************
When the LORD thy God shall bring thee into the land whither thou
goest to possess it, and hath cast out many nations before thee, the
Hittites, and the Girgashites, and the Amorites, and the Canaanites,
and the Perizzites, and the Hivites, and the Jebusites, seven nations
greater and mightier than thou;
And when the LORD thy God shall deliver them before thee; thou shalt
smite them, and utterly destroy them; thou shalt make no covenant with
them, nor shew mercy unto them:
Neither shalt thou make marriages with them; thy daughter thou shalt
not give unto his son, nor his daughter shalt thou take unto thy son.
For they will turn away thy son from following me, that they may serve
other gods: so will the anger of the LORD be kindled against you, and
destroy thee suddenly.
But thus shall ye deal with them; ye shall destroy their altars, and
break down their images, and cut down their groves, and burn their
graven images with fire.
For thou art an holy people unto the LORD thy God: the LORD thy God
hath chosen thee to be a special people unto himself, above all people
that are upon the face of the earth.
- Deuteronomy 7:1-6, Deuteronomy is the fifth book of the Hebrew Bible
(the Tanakh) and the Christian Old Testament and is traditionally
accepted to be the words of Moses, delivered on the eve of the
occupation of Canaan
******************************
"Even a woman is good and so is a slave, although it may be said that
a woman is an inferior thing and a slave beneath consideration"
- Plato, Greek philosopher, mathematician, and founder of the Academy
in Athens, 427-347 BC
******************************
"Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as
false, and by the rulers as useful."
- Seneca the Younger, Roman Stoic philosopher, statesman, dramatist,
and humorist, tutor and advisor to emperor Nero., 4 BC-65 AD
******************************
"As for heretics their sin deserves banishment, not only from the
Church by excommunication, but also from this world by death. To
corrupt the faith, whereby the soul lives, is much graver than to
counterfeit money, which supports temporal life. Since forgers and
other malefactors are summarily condemned to death by the civil
authorities, with much more reason may heretics as soon as they are
convicted of heresy be not only excommunicated, but also justly be put
to death."
- Thomas Aquinas, Italian Dominican friar, priest and immensely
influential philosopher and theologian, Catholic Saint, 1225-1274
******************************
"They ... brought us parrots and balls of cotton and spears and many
other things, which they exchanged for the glass beads and hawks'
bells. They willingly traded everything they owned... . They were
well-built, with good bodies and handsome features.... They do not
bear arms, and do not know them, for when I showed them a sword, they
took it by the edge and cut themselves out of ignorance. They have no
iron. Their spears are made of cane.... They would make fine
servants.... and I believe they would become Christians very easily,
for it seemed to me that they had no religion. With fifty men we could
subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want."
- Christopher Columbus, Italian explorer, navigator, and colonizer,
diary entry describing his very first contact with natives in the 'new
world', October 12, 1492
******************************
"When the Spaniards first touched this Island (Cuba), this Cacic, who
was thoroughly acquainted with them, did avoid and shun them as much
as in him lay, and defended himself by force of Arms, wherever he met
with them, but at length being taken he was burnt alive, for flying
from so unjust and cruel a Nation, and endeavoring to secure his Life
against them, who only thirsted after the blood of himself and his own
People.
Now being bound to the post, in order of his Execution a certain Holy
Monk of the Franciscan Order, discours'd with him concerning God and
the Articles of our Faith, which he never heard of before, and which
might be satisfactory and advantageous to him, considering the small
time allow'd him by the Executioner, promising him Eternal Glory and
Repose, if he truly believ'd them, or other wise Everlasting Torments.
After that Hathney had been silently pensive sometime, he askt the
Monk whether the Spaniards also were admitted into Heaven, and he
answering that the Gates of Heaven were open to all that were Good and
Godly, the Cacic replied without further consideration, that he would
rather go to Hell then Heaven, for fear he should cohabit in the same
Mansion with so Sanguinary and Bloody a Nation.
And thus God and the Holy Catholick Faith are Praised and Reverenced
by the Practices of the Spaniards in America."
- Bartolomé de las Casas, Spanish Dominican priest, 1552
******************************
"I do not think it is necessary to believe that the same God who has
given us our senses, reason, and intelligence wished us to abandon
their use, giving us by some other means the information that we could
gain through them"
- Galileo Galilei, Italian physicist and astronomer, 1564-1642
******************************
"Which is more likely: That the whole natural order is suspended? Or
that a Jewish minx should tell a lie?"
- David Hume, Scottish philosopher, on the subject of 'virgin birth', 1711-1776
******************************
"The comfort of the rich depends upon an abundant supply of the poor."
- Voltaire, French writer, deist and philosopher, 1694-1778
******************************
"Don't be deceived when they tell you things are better now. Even if
there's no poverty to be seen because the poverty's been hidden. Even
if you ever got more wages and could afford to buy more of these new
and useless goods which industries foist on you and even if it seems
to you that you never had so much, that is only the slogan of those
who still have much more than you. Don't be taken in when they
paternally pat you on the shoulder and say that there's no inequality
worth speaking of and no more reason to fight because if you believe
them they will be completely in charge in their marble homes and
granite banks from which they rob the people of the world under the
pretence of bringing them culture. Watch out, for as soon as it
pleases them they'll send you out to protect their gold in wars whose
weapons, rapidly developed by servile scientists, will become more and
more deadly until they can with a flick of the finger tear a million
of you to pieces."
- Jean Paul Marat, French scientist, physician and revolutionary, died 1793
******************************
"Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be
dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other.
War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and
armies and debts and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the
many under the domination of the few. In war, too, the discretionary
power of the Executive is extended; its influence in dealing out
offices, honors, and emoluments is multiplied; and all the means of
seducing the minds, are added to those of subduing the force of the
people. The same malignant aspect in republicanism may be traced in
the inequality of fortunes and the opportunities of fraud, growing out
of a state of war, and in the degeneracy of manners and of morals
engendered by both. No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst
of continual warfare."
- James Madison, 4th US President, 1795
******************************
"Give me control of a nation's money and I care not who makes the laws."
- Mayer Amschel Rothschild, founding father of international finance, died 1812
******************************
"There must be Religion. Otherwise the poor would murder the rich."
- Napoléon Bonaparte, Emperor of the French, 1769-1821
******************************
When a white man kills an Indian in a fair fight it is called
honorable, but when an Indian kills a white man in a fair fight it is
called murder. When a white army battles Indians and wins it is called
a great victory, but if they lose it is called a massacre and bigger
armies are raised. If the Indian flees before the advance of such
armies, when he tries to return he finds that white men are living
where he lived. If he tries to fight off such armies, he is killed and
the land is taken anyway. When an Indian is killed, it is a great loss
which leaves a gap in our people and a sorrow in our heart; when a
white is killed three or four others step up to take his place and
there is no end to it. The white man seeks to conquer nature, to bend
it to his will and to use it wastefully until it is all gone and then
he simply moves on, leaving the waste behind him and looking for new
places to take. The whole white race is a monster who is always hungry
and what he eats is land.
- Cheeseekau, Shawnee war chief and eldest brother and mentor to
Tecumseh, 1760-1792
******************************
"President Dew has shown that the institution of Slavery is a
principal cause of civilization. Perhaps nothing can be more evident
than that it is the sole cause. If any thing can be predicated as
universally true of uncultivated man, it is that he will not labor
beyond what is absolutely necessary to maintain his existence. Labour
is pain to those who are unaccustomed to it, and the nature of man is
averse to pain. Even with all the training, the helps and motives of
civilization, we find that this aversion cannot be overcome in many
individuals of the most cultivated societies. The coercion of Slavery
alone is adequate to form man to habits of labour. Without it, there
can be no accumulation of property, no providence for the future, no
taste for comforts or elegancies, which are the characteristics and
essentials of civilization. He who has obtained the command of
another's labour, first begins to accumulate and provide for the
future, and the foundations of civilization are laid.... Since the
existence of man upon the earth, with no exception whatever, either of
ancient or modern times, every society which has attained civilization
has advanced to it through this process."
- William Harper, American philosopher, 1837
******************************
"I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would
have designedly created parasitic wasps with the express intention of
their feeding within the living bodies of Caterpillars."
- Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, 1859
"Coal is a portable climate. It carries the heat of the tropics to
Labrador and the polar circle; and it is the means of transporting
itself whithersoever it is wanted. Watt and Stephenson whispered in
the ear of mankind their secret, that a half-ounce of coal will draw
two tons a mile, and coal carries coal, by rail and by boat, to make
Canada as warm as Calcutta."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson, american author, 1860
******************************
The prejudice against color, of which we hear so much, is no stronger
than that against sex. It is produced by the same cause, and
manifested very much in the same way. The negro's skin and the woman's
sex are both prima facie evidence that they were intended to be in
subjection to the white Saxon man.
- Elizabeth Cady Stanton, American social activist, abolitionist, and
leading figure of the early women's rights movement, from a Speech
before the New York Legislature, 1860
******************************
"I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and
causes me to tremble for the safety of my country.... corporations
have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will
follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong
its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all
wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed."
- Abraham Lincoln, 1864
******************************
(The Potlatch is) "by far the most formidable of all obstacles in the
way of Indians becoming Christians, or even civilized."
- William Duncan, Anglican Missionary in BC, 1875
******************************
"The term person means an individual other than an Indian."
- The Indian Act of Canada, 1876 (until 1951)
******************************
"Sitting Bull, most renowned Sioux of modern history, is dead. He was
not a Chief, but without Kingly lineage he arose from a lowly position
to the greatest Medicine Man of his time, by virtue of his shrewdness
and daring. He was an Indian with a white man's spirit of hatred and
revenge for those who had wronged him and his. In his day he saw his
son and his tribe gradually driven from their possessions: forced to
give up their old hunting grounds and espouse the hard working and
uncongenial avocations of the whites. And these, his conquerors, were
marked in their dealings with his people by selfishness, falsehood and
treachery.
What wonder that his wild nature, untamed by years of subjection,
should still revolt? What wonder that a fiery rage still burned within
his breast and that he should seek every opportunity of obtaining
vengeance upon his natural enemies. The proud spirit of the original
owners of these vast prairies inherited through centuries of fierce
and bloody wars for their possession, lingered last in the bosom of
Sitting Bull. With his fall the nobility of the Redskin is
extinguished, and what few are left are a pack of whining curs who
lick the hand that smites them. The Whites, by law of conquest, by
justice of civilization, are masters of the American continent, and
the best safety of the frontier settlements will be secured by the
total annihilation of the few remaining Indians. Why not annihilation?
Their glory has fled, their spirit broken, their manhood effaced;
better that they die than live the miserable wretches that they are.
History would forget these latter despicable beings, and speak, in
later ages of the glory of these grand Kings of forest and plain that
Cooper loved to heroism.
We cannot honestly regret their extermination, but we at least do
justice to the manly characteristics possessed, according to their
lights and education, by the early Redskins of America."
- L. Frank Baum, author of the childrens' book, 'The wizard of OZ',
from an editorial in his paper, The Saturday Pioneer, December 20,
1890, days before the Wounded Knee Massacre of up to 300 Lakota Sioux
by the US 7th Cavalry Regiment
******************************
"The peculiar policy of the government in employing so weak and
vacillating a person as General Miles to look after the uneasy
Indians, has resulted in a terrible loss of blood to our soldiers, and
a battle which, at its best, is a disgrace to the war department.
There has been plenty of time for prompt and decisive measures, the
employment of which would have prevented this disaster. The Pioneer
has before declared that our only safety depends upon the total
extirmination [sic] of the Indians. Having wronged them for centuries
we had better, in order to protect our civilization, follow it up by
one more wrong and wipe these untamed and untamable creatures from the
face of the earth. In this lies future safety for our settlers and the
soldiers who are under incompetent commands. Otherwise, we may expect
future years to be as full of trouble with the redskins as those have
been in the past."
- L. Frank Baum, author of the childrens' book, 'The wizard of OZ',
from an editorial in his paper, The Saturday Pioneer, January 3, 1891,
days after the Wounded Knee Massacre of up to 300 Lakota Sioux by the
US 7th Cavalry Regiment
******************************
ABORIGINIES, n. Persons of little worth found cumbering the soil of a
newly discovered country. They soon cease to cumber; they fertilize.
ALLIANCE, n. In international politics, the union of two thieves who
have their hands so deeply inserted in each other's pockets that they
cannot separately plunder a third.
CORPORATION, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit
without bearing individual responsibility.
MILLENNIUM, n. The period of a thousand years when the lid is to be
screwed down, with all reformers on the under side.
RELIGION, n. A daughter of Hope and Fear, explaining to Ignorance the
nature of the Unknowable.
- Ambrose Bierce, author, from The Devil's Dictionary, circa 1890
******************************
"The law, in it's majestic equality, forbids the rich, as well as the
poor, to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets and to steal
bread"
- Anatole France, French author, 1894
******************************
"The masses have never thirsted after truth. They turn aside from
evidence that is not to their taste, preferring to deify error, if
error seduce them. Whoever can supply them with illusions is easily
their master; whoever attempts to destroy their illusions is always
their victim"
- Gustave Le Bon, French social psychologist, sociologist,
anthropologist, inventor, and amateur physicist, 1895
******************************
"Reformers who are always compromising, have not yet grasped the idea
that truth is the only safe ground to stand upon."
- Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, American social
activist, abolitionist, and leading figure of the early women's rights
movement, from 'The Woman's Bible', 1895/1898
******************************
"The battle we have fought, and are still fighting, for the forests is
a part of the eternal conflict between right and wrong, and we cannot
expect to see the end of it... we must count on watching and striving
for these trees, and should always be glad to find anything so surely
good and noble to strive for."
- John Muir, Environmental Pioneer, to the Sierra Club, 1895
******************************
"Let me make the superstitions of a nation and I care not who makes
its laws or its songs either."
- Mark Twain, American author, 1897
******************************
"The gods offer no rewards for intellect. There was never one yet that
showed any interest in it."
- Mark Twain, American author, 1903
******************************
"They made us many promises, more than I can remember, but they never
kept but one; they promised to take our land, and they took it."
- Red Cloud, Lakota Chief, 1822-1909
******************************
"Some of the biggest men in the United States, in the field of
commerce and manufacture, are afraid of something. They know that
there is a power somewhere so organized, so subtle, so watchful, so
interlocked, so complete, so pervasive, that they had better not speak
above their breath when they speak in condemnation of it."
- Woodrow Wilson, US President, 1913
******************************
"We had all left our countries as a result of the war. We were agreed
that the war had been contrived by the various governments for the
most autocratic, sordid and materialistic reasons; we were familiar
with the book 'J'accuse', and even without it we would have had little
confidence in the decency the German Kaiser and his generals. (Hugo)
Ball was a conscientious objector, and I had escaped by the skin of my
teeth from the pursuit of the police myrmidons who for their so-called
patriotic purposes, were massing men in the trenches of Northern
France and giving them shells to eat. None of us had much appreciation
for the kind of courage it takes to get shot for the idea of a nation
which is at best a cartel of pelt merchants and profiteers in leather,
at worst a cultural association of psychopaths who, like the Germans,
marched off with a volume of Goethe in their knapsacks, to skewer
Frenchmen and Russians on their bayonets."
- Richard Huelsenbeck, dadaist, 1920
******************************
"Our object is to continue until there is not a single Indian in
Canada that has not been absorbed into the body politic, and there is
no Indian question, and no Indian department."
- Duncan Campbell Scott, poet, essayist and Deputy Superintendent
General of Indian Affairs Canada, 1920
******************************
"I do not understand the squeamishness about the use of gas. I'm
strongly in favour of using poison gas against uncivilized tribes."
- Winston Churchill, British Secretary of State for the Colonies,
speaking of Iraqi Kurds, 1922
******************************
"The Jews are undoubtedly a race, but they are not human"
- Adolf Hitler, National Socialist German Workers Party Chairman, 1923
******************************
"If I can't dance, I don't want to be part of your revolution."
- Emma Goldman, anarchist, paraphrased? 1931
******************************
"Secular schools can never be tolerated because such schools have no
religious instruction, and a general moral instruction without a
religious foundation is built on air; consequently, all character
training and religion must be derived from faith... We were convinced
that the people needs and requires this faith. We have therefore
undertaken the fight against the atheistic movement, and that not
merely with a few theoretical declarations: we have stamped it out."
- Adolf Hitler, Reichsstatthalter of Prussia, 1933
******************************
"The Catholic Church considered the Jews pestilent for fifteen hundred
years, put them in ghettos, etc, because it recognized the Jews for
what they were... I recognize the representatives of this race as
pestilent for the state and for the church and perhaps I am thereby
doing Christianity a great service by pushing them out of schools and
public functions."
- Adolf Hitler, Reichsstatthalter of Prussia, 1933
******************************
"There is no conflict between Jewish and Arab nationalism because the
Jewish nation is not in Palestine and the Palestinians are not a
nation."
- David Ben-Gurion, Zionist and first Prime Minister of Israel, 1936
******************************
"I do not agree that the dog in a manger has the final right to the
manger even though he may have lain there for a very long time. I do
not admit that right. I do not admit that a great wrong has been done
to the Red Indians of America or the black people of Australia. I do
not admit that a wrong has been done to these people by the fact that
a stronger race, a higher-grade race, a more worldly wise race, has
come in and taken their place."
- Winston Churchill, British citizen, To the Peel Commission on a
Jewish Homeland in Palestine, 1937
******************************
"The ability to deal with people is as purchasable a commodity as
sugar or coffee and I will pay more for that ability than for any
other under the sun."
- John D. Rockefeller, tycoon, founder of Standard Oil, circa 1937
******************************
"One man, one family driven from the land; this rusty car creaking
along the highway to the west. I lost my land, a single tractor took
my land. I am alone and I am bewildered. And in the night one family
camps in a ditch and another family pulls in and the tents come out.
The two men squat on their hams and the women and children listen.
Here is the node, you who hate change and fear revolution. Keep these
two squatting men apart; make them hate, fear, suspect each other.
Here is the anlage of the thing you fear. This is the zygote. For here
"I lost my land" is changed; a cell is split and from its splitting
grows the thing you hate - "We lost *our* land." The danger is here,
for two men are not as lonely and perplexed as one. And from this
first "we" there grows a still more dangerous thing: "I have a little
food" plus "I have none." If from this problem the sum is "We have a
little food," the thing is on its way, the movement has direction.
Only a little multiplication now, and this land, this tractor are
ours. The two men squatting in a ditch, the little fire, the side-meat
stewing in a single pot, the silent, stone-eyed women; behind, the
children listening with their souls to words their minds do not
understand. The night draws down. The baby has a cold. Here, take this
blanket. It's wool. It was my mother's blanket-take it for the baby.
This is the thing to bomb. This is the beginning - from "I" to "we."
If you who own the things people must have could understand this, you
might preserve yourself. If you could separate causes from results; if
you could know that Paine, Marx, Jefferson, Lenin, were results, not
causes, you might survive. But that you cannot know. For the quality
of owning freezes you forever into "I," and cuts you off forever from
the "we.""
- John Steinbeck, American author, from The Grapes of Wrath, 1939
******************************
"I am certainly a hard [man] and willing to help solve the Jewish
question, but people who come from our own cultural sphere just are
not the same as the brutish hordes in this place. Is the slaughter to
be carried out by the Lithuanians and Letts, who are themselves
rejected by the population here? I couldn't do it. I beg you to give
clear directives [in this matter,] with due consideration for the good
name of our Reich and our Party, in order that the necessary action
can be taken in the most humane manner. Heil Hitler!"
- Wilhelm Kube, Generalkommissar for Byelorussia, 1941
******************************
"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, English novelist, essayist, journalist and critic, 1945
******************************
"Why, of course, the PEOPLE don't want war. Why would some poor slob
on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that 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 in
America, 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 tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for
lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the
same way in any country."
- Hermann Göring, founder of the Gestapo, commander of the Luftwaffe,
prisoner on trial for his life at Nuremberg, 1946
******************************
"We have 50 percent of the world's wealth but only 6.3 percent of its
population. In this situation, our real job...is to devise a series of
relationships which permit us to maintain this position of disparity.
To do so we have to dispense with sentimentality... we should cease
thinking about human rights, the raising of living standards and
democratization."
- George Kennan, influential US diplomat and advisor to Truman and
Eisenhower, 1948
******************************
"The power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind
simultaneously, and accepting both of them.... To tell deliberate lies
while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become
inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it
back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed, to deny the
existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of
the reality which one denies -- all this is indispensably necessary.
Even in using the word doublethink it is necessary to exercise
doublethink. For by using the word one admits that one is tampering
with reality; by a fresh act of doublethink one erases this knowledge;
and so on indefinitely, with the lie always one leap ahead of the
truth... doublethink."
- George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four, 1948
******************************
"If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a
human face -- forever."
- George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four, 1948
******************************
"Today, Easter day of the Holy Year here,
under the emblem of Notre-Dame of Paris
I accuse the universal Catholic Church of the lethal diversion
of our living strength toward an empty heaven
I accuse the Catholic Church of swindling
I accuse the Catholic Church of
infecting the world with its funereal morality
of being the running sore on the decomposed body of the West.
Verily I say unto you: God is dead
We vomit the agonizing insipidity of your prayers
for your prayers have been the greasy smoke
over the battlefields of our Europe.
Go forth then into this tragic and exalting desert
of a world where God is dead
and till this earth anew
with your bare hands
with your PROUD hands
with your unpraying hands.
Today Easter day of the Holy Year
Here under the emblem of Notre-Dame of France
we proclaim the death of the Christ-god,
so that Man may live at last."
- written by Michel Mourre and read by co-conspirator, Serge Berna
from the rostrum at Notre-Dame Cathedral during Easter High Mass while
dressed as a Dominican monk on April 9th 1950
******************************
"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired
signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are
not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is
not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers,
the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of
one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30
cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000
population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some fifty
miles of concrete pavement. We pay for a single fighter plane with a
half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new
homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people. This is, I
repeat, the best way of life to be found on the road the world has
been taking. This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense.
Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a
cross of iron"
- Dwight D. Eisenhower, US President, 1953
******************************
"How is it possible, that this culture-loving era could be so
monstrously callous and amoral? How is it conceivable that all our
lauded technological progress - our very civilization- should become
like an axe in the hands of the pathological criminal?"
- Albert Einstein, theoretical physicist, 1879 - 1955
******************************
"The word god is for me nothing more than the expression and product
of human weakness, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still
primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No
interpretation no matter how subtle can change this."
- Albert Einstein, theoretical physicist, 1954
******************************
"Our enormously productive economy ... demands that we make
consumption our way of life, that we convert the buying and use of
goods into rituals, that we seek our spiritual satisfaction, our ego
satisfaction, in consumption.... We need things consumed, burned up,
worn out, replaced, and discarded at an ever increasing rate."
- Victor LeBow, Retailing analyst, 1955
******************************
"America when will we end the human war?
Go fuck yourself with your atom bomb."
- Alan Ginsberg, American poet, from his poem 'America' 1956
******************************
"Ayn Rand's 'philosophy' is nearly perfect in its immorality, which
makes the size of her audience all the more ominous and symptomatic as
we enter a curious new phase in our society.... To justify and extol
human greed and egotism is to my mind not only immoral, but evil."
- Gore Vidal, American writer of essays, novels, screenplays, and
Broadway plays, 1961
******************************
"The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie -- deliberate,
contrived and dishonest -- but the myth -- persistent, persuasive, and
unrealistic."
- John F. Kennedy, US President, 1962
******************************
"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent
revolution inevitable."
- John F. Kennedy, US President, to Latin American diplomats, 1962
******************************
"It is incredible how tough human life can be, how quickly a person,
even with a broken arm, a dislocated foot, a broken head and bitten by
dogs, will do what is asked of him when over him hangs the cudgel
waved by the goodwill of the Reich."
- Alfred Wetzler, escaped Auschwitz in April 1944 after 2 years
imprisonment with a ground plan of the camp, construction details of
the gas chambers, crematoriums and a label from a canister of Zyklon
gas, irrefutably proving to allied officials that the holocaust was
indeed occurring, quoted here in 1963
******************************
"...I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely
disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the
regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his
stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku
Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order"
than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of
tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who
constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot
agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically
believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives
by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to
wait for a "more convenient season.""
- Martin Luther King jr, American pastor, and leader in the
African-American Civil Rights Movement, from "Letter from a Birmingham
Jail", 1963
******************************
"If you stick a knife in my back nine inches and pull it out six
inches, there's no progress. If you pull it all the way out that's not
progress. Progress is healing the wound that the blow made. And they
haven't even pulled the knife out much less heal the wound. They won't
even admit the knife is there."
- Malcolm X, American black nationalist leader, 1964
******************************
"The press is so powerful in its image-making role, it can make the
criminal look like he's a the victim and make the victim look like
he's the criminal. This is the press, an irresponsible press. It will
make the criminal look like he's the victim and make the victim look
like he's the criminal. If you aren't careful, the newspapers will
have you hating the people who are being oppressed and loving the
people who are doing the oppressing.
If you aren't careful, because I've seen some of you caught in that
bag, you run away hating yourself and loving the man -- while you're
catching hell from the man. You let the man maneuver you into thinking
that it's wrong to fight him when he's fighting you. He's fighting you
in the morning, fighting you in the noon, fighting you at night and
fighting you all in between, and you still think it's wrong to fight
him back. Why? The press. The newspapers make you look wrong."
- Malcolm X, American black nationalist leader, 1964
******************************
"At the risk of sounding ridiculous, let me say that the true
revolutionary is guided by feelings of great love."
- Che Guevara, true revolutionary, 1965
******************************
"Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink. I needn't argue with
that; I'm right and I will be proved right. We're more popular than
Jesus now; I don't know which will go first -- rock and roll or
Christianity. Jesus was all right, but his disciples were thick and
ordinary. It's them twisting it that ruins it for me."
- John Lennon, British musician, 1966
******************************
"People who talk about revolution and class struggle without referring
explicitly to everyday life, without understanding what is subversive
about love and what is positive in the refusal of constraints, such
people have a corpse in their mouth"
- Raoul Vaneigem, Situationist International, 1967
******************************
"The poet, the artist, the sleuth - whoever sharpens our internal
perception tends to be anti social; rarely "well-adjusted," he cannot
go along with currents and trends. A strange bond often exists among
anti-social types in their power to see environments as they really
are. This need to internal interface, to confront environments with a
certain anti-social power, is manifest in the famous story, "The
Emperor's New Clothes" "Well adjusted" courtiers, having vested
interests, saw the Emperor as beautifully appointed. The anti-social
brat, unaccustomed to the old environment, clearly saw that the
emperor "ain't got nothin' on." The new environment was clearly
visible to HIM"
- Marshall McLuhan, Canadian philosopher of communication theory, from
The Medium Is The Massage, 1967
******************************
"The huge vortices of energy created by our technologies present us
with unbreathable consequences. put a decent man in an airplane a few
hundred feet above a village and he will kill without compunction,
inflict appalling pain and injury on men women and children. that
bomber pilot is really much like the person introducing any new
technology. none of these people ever consider what will be the impact
or the effect of what they do when they pull that trigger. we cannot
trust our instincts or our natural physical responses to new things.
they will destroy us. how are we to get out of the maelstrom created
by our own ingenuity?"
- Marshall McLuhan, Canadian philosopher of communication theory, 196?
"I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world
revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of
values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a "thing-oriented"
society to a "person-oriented" society. When machines and computers,
profit motives and property rights are considered more important than
people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are
incapable of being conquered."
- Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., American pastor, and leader in the
African-American Civil Rights Movement, from his 'Beyond Vietnam: A
Time to Break Silence' speech, 1967
******************************
"The Black Panther breakfast for children program is a threat to the
internal security of America."
- J. Edgar Hoover, FBI Director, 1968
******************************
"When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why
the poor have no food, they call me a Communist."
- Hélder Câmara, Catholic Archbishop, Brazil, 1971
******************************
"My friends, surely this will be the last opportunity for me to
address you. The Air Force has bombed the antennas of Radio
Magallanes.
My words do not have bitterness but disappointment. May they be a
moral punishment for those who have betrayed their oath: soldiers of
Chile, titular commanders in chief, Admiral Merino, who has designated
himself Commander of the Navy, and Mr. Mendoza, the despicable general
who only yesterday pledged his fidelity and loyalty to the Government,
and who also has appointed himself Chief of the Carabineros
[paramilitary police].
Given these facts, the only thing left for me is to say to workers: I
am not going to resign! Placed in a historic transition, I will pay
for loyalty to the people with my life. And I say to them that I am
certain that the seeds which we have planted in the good conscience of
thousands and thousands of Chileans will not be shriveled forever.
They have force and will be able to dominate us, but social processes
can be arrested by neither crime nor force. History is ours, and
people make history.
Workers of my country: I want to thank you for the loyalty that you
always had, the confidence that you deposited in a man who was only an
interpreter of great yearnings for justice, who gave his word that he
would respect the Constitution and the law and did just that. At this
definitive moment, the last moment when I can address you, I wish you
to take advantage of the lesson: foreign capital, imperialism,
together with the reaction, created the climate in which the Armed
Forces broke their tradition, the tradition taught by General
Schneider and reaffirmed by Commander Araya, victims of the same
social sector who today are hoping, with foreign assistance, to
re-conquer the power to continue defending their profits and their
privileges.
I address you, above all, the modest woman of our land, the campesina
who believed in us, the mother who knew our concern for children. I
address professionals of Chile, patriotic professionals who continued
working against the sedition that was supported by professional
associations, classist associations that also defended the advantages
of capitalist society. I address the youth, those who sang and gave us
their joy and their spirit of struggle. I address the man of Chile,
the worker, the farmer, the intellectual, those who will be
persecuted, because in our country fascism has been already present
for many hours -- in terrorist attacks, blowing up the bridges,
cutting the railroad tracks, destroying the oil and gas pipelines, in
the face of the silence of those who had the obligation to act. They
were committed. History will judge them.
Surely Radio Magallanes will be silenced, and the calm metal
instrument of my voice will no longer reach you. It does not matter.
You will continue hearing it. I will always be next to you. At least
my memory will be that of a man of dignity who was loyal to his
country.
The people must defend themselves, but they must not sacrifice
themselves. The people must not let themselves be destroyed or riddled
with bullets, but they cannot be humiliated either.
Workers of my country, I have faith in Chile and its destiny. Other
men will overcome this dark and bitter moment when treason seeks to
prevail. Go forward knowing that, sooner rather than later, the great
avenues will open again and free men will walk through them to
construct a better society.
Long live Chile! Long live the people! Long live the workers!
These are my last words, and I am certain that my sacrifice will not
be in vain, I am certain that, at the very least, it will be a moral
lesson that will punish felony, cowardice, and treason."
- President Salvador Allende's last speech via radio before dying,
possibly by suicide, during a coup led by Commander-in-Chief of the
Chilean Army, Augusto Pinochet, Santiago de Chile, September 11, 1973
******************************
"I decided it is better to scream.... Silence is the real crime
against humanity"
- Nadezhda Mandelstam, Russian writer and educator, and the wife of
the poet Osip Mandelstam who died in 1938 in a transit camp to the
gulag of Siberia, circa 1973
******************************
"Religion has become superstition and image-worship, belief and
ritual. It has lost the beauty of truth; incense has taken the place
of reality. Instead of direct perception there is in its place the
image carved by the hand or the mind. The truth is not to be found in
any temple, church or mosque, however beautiful they are. Beauty of
truth and the beauty of stone are two different things. One opens the
door to the immeasurable and the other to the imprisonment of man; the
one to freedom and the other to the bondage of thought".
- Jiddu Krishnamurti, Indian Philosopher and writer, 1973
******************************
"Half-way through making 'The Great Dictator' I began receiving
alarming messages from United Artists. They had been advised by the
Hays Office that I would run into censorship trouble. Also the English
office was very concerned about an anti-Hitler picture and doubted
whether it could be shown in Britain. But I was determined to go
ahead, for Hitler must be laughed at."
- Charlie Chaplin, American Actor, from 'My Autobiography', 1974 (in
1940 'The Great Dictator' garnered 4 Oscar nominations)
******************************
"Oil is much too important a commodity to be left in the hands of the Arabs."
- Henry Kissinger, US ecretary of State, 1974
******************************
"The study of money, above all other fields in economics, is one in
which complexity is used to disguise truth or to evade truth, not to
reveal it. The process by which banks create money is so simple the
mind is repelled. With something so important, a deeper mystery seems
only decent."
- John Kenneth Galbraith, Canadian-American economist, 1975
******************************
"When people put their ballots in the boxes, they are, by that act,
inoculated against the feeling that the government is not theirs. They
then accept, in some measure, that its errors are their errors, its
aberrations their aberrations, that any revolt will be against them.
It's a remarkably shrewd and rather conservative arrangement when one
thinks of it."
- John Kenneth Galbraith, Canadian-American economist, 1977
******************************
"Of all classes the rich are the most noticed and the least studied."
- John Kenneth Galbraith, Canadian-American economist, 1977
******************************
"One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we've been
bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the
bamboozle. We're no longer interested in finding out the truth. The
bamboozle has captured us. It is simply too painful to acknowledge -
even to ourselves - that we've been so credulous."
- Carl Sagan, American astronomer, astrophysicist, cosmologist, author
and atheist, 1987
******************************
"They wrote us off. They keep trying to write off our ailing truths
with their sanctimonious lies. But nothing will silence us! Even after
death, from our graves we will appeal to your conscience not to
transform the Earth into a sarcophagus!"
- Lyubov Sirota, Ukrainian poet, Chernobyl survivor, 1988
******************************
"We have a new type of rule now. Not one-man rule, or rule of
aristocracy or plutocracy, but of small groups elevated to positions
of absolute power by random pressures, and subject to political and
economic factors that leave little room for decision. They are
representatives of abstract forces who have reached power through
surrender of self. The iron-willed dictator is a thing of the past.
There will be no more Stalins, no more Hitlers. The rulers of this
most insecure of all worlds are rulers by accident, inept, frightened
pilots at the controls of a vast machine they cannot understand,
calling in experts to tell them which buttons to push."
- William S. Burroughs, Interzone, 1989
******************************
"The CIA owns everyone of any significance in the major media."
- William Colby, frequently plain spoken former CIA Director who died
in 1996 of a 'heart attack' in a 'boating accident' 'at night'
******************************
"I think that the proposition of going to Baghdad is also fallacious.
I think if we we're going to remove Saddam Hussein we would have had
to go all the way to Baghdad, we would have to commit a lot of force
because I do not believe he would wait in the Presidential Palace for
us to arrive. I think we'd have had to hunt him down. And once we'd
done that and we'd gotten rid of Saddam Hussein and his government,
then we'd have had to put another government in its place. What kind
of government? Should it be a Sunni government or Shi'i government or
a Kurdish government or Ba'athist regime? Or maybe we want to bring in
some of the Islamic fundamentalists? How long would we have had to
stay in Baghdad to keep that government in place? What would happen to
the government once U.S. forces withdrew? How many casualties should
the United States accept in that effort to try to create clarity and
stability in a situation that is inherently unstable? I think it is
vitally important for a President to know when to use military force.
I think it is also very important for him to know when not to commit
U.S. military force. And it's my view that the President got it right
both times, that it would have been a mistake for us to get bogged
down in the quagmire inside Iraq."
- Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense, 1991
******************************
"If the people knew what we had done, they would chase us down the
street and lynch us."
- George H.W. Bush, US President, when asked, "What will the people do
if they ever find out the truth about Iraq-gate and Iran contra?",
1992
******************************
"(it was) a very hard choice, but the price, we think, the price is worth it."
- Madeleine Albright, US Secretary of State, when asked about 500,000
Iraqi children being dead from US sanctions, 1996
******************************
"Trying to eliminate Saddam, extending the ground war into an
occupation of Iraq, would have violated our guideline about not
changing objectives in midstream, engaging in "mission creep," and
would have incurred incalculable human and political costs.
Apprehending him was probably impossible. We had been unable to find
Noriega in Panama, which we knew intimately. We would have been forced
to occupy Baghdad and, in effect, rule Iraq. The coalition would
instantly have collapsed, the Arabs deserting it in anger and other
allies pulling out as well. Under those circumstances, furthermore, we
had been self-consciously trying to set a pattern for handling
aggression in the post-cold war world. Going in and occupying Iraq,
thus unilaterally exceeding the U.N.'s mandate, would have destroyed
the precedent of international response to aggression we hoped to
establish. Had we gone the invasion route, the U.S. could conceivably
still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land. It would have
been a dramatically different -- and perhaps barren -- outcome."
- George H.W. Bush, former US President, 1998
******************************
"Few of us can easily surrender our belief that society must somehow
make sense. The thought that the state has lost its mind and is
punishing so many innocent people is intolerable. And so the evidence
has to be internally denied.
- Arthur Miller, on why he wrote 1953's 'The Crucible', 1996
******************************
"The great unmentionable evil at the center of our culture is
monotheism. From a barbaric Bronze Age text known as the Old
Testament, three anti-human religions have evolved--Judaism,
Christianity, and Islam. These are sky-god religions. They are,
literally, patriarchal--God is the Omnipotent Father--hence the
loathing of women for 2,000 years in those countries afflicted by the
sky-god and his earthly male delegates. The sky-god is a jealous god,
of course. He requires total obedience from everyone on earth, as he
is not just in place for one tribe, but for all creation. Those who
would reject him must be converted or killed for their own good.
Ultimately, totalitarianism is the only sort of politics that can
truly serve the sky-god's purpose. Any movement of a liberal nature
endangers his authority and those of his delegates on earth. One God,
one King, one Pope, one master in the factory, one father-leader in
the family at home."
- Gore Vidal, American writer of essays, novels, screenplays, and
Broadway plays, 1998
******************************
"Religion is an insult to human dignity. Without it you would have
good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But
for good people to do evil things, that takes religion."
- Steven Weinberg, Nobel Prize winning physicist and, sadly, a secular
defender of Zionism, 1999
******************************
"I have learned over the years that when one's mind is made up, this
diminishes fear; knowing what must be done does away with fear."
- Rosa Parks, African-American civil rights activist and public
transit enthusiast, 1999
******************************
"There outta be limits to freedom."
- George W. Bush, Texas Governor and Presidential candidate, 2000
******************************
"My goal is to cut government in half in twenty-five years, to get it
down to the size where we can drown it in a bathtub."
- Grover Norquist, conservative activist and Tea Party patriarch, 2004
******************************
"'Politics is the art of controlling your environment.' That is one of
the key things I learned in these years, and I learned it the hard
way. Anybody who thinks that 'it doesn't matter who's President' has
never been Drafted and sent off to fight and die in a vicious, stupid
War on the other side of the World -- or been beaten and gassed by
Police for trespassing on public property -- or been hounded by the
IRS for purely political reasons -- or locked up in the Cook County
Jail with a broken nose and no phone access and twelve perverts
wanting to stomp your ass in the shower. That is when it matters who
is President or Governor or Police Chief. That is when you will wish
you had voted."
- Hunter S. Thompson, Gonzo Journalist, 2004
******************************
"If I were a Palestinian, I would have rejected Camp David as well."
- Shlomo Ben-Ami, former Israeli Foreign Minister and chief negotiator, 2006
******************************
"If we were to strike Iran, it should be accompanied by an effort at
regime change...The US once had the capability to engineer the
clandestine overthrow of governments. I wish we could get it back."
- John Bolton, most recent former US ambassador to the United Nations,
October 2007
******************************
"The risk of further proliferation is imminent and, with it, the
danger that nuclear war fighting, albeit limited in scope, might
become possible. The first use of nuclear weapons must remain in the
quiver of escalation as the ultimate instrument to prevent the use of
weapons of mass destruction."
- NATO Commanders' manifesto titled "Towards a Grand Strategy for an
Uncertain World - Renewing Transatlantic Partnership", January 2008
******************************
"Every day in the United States, between four and six people die
because they encounter police. That's through beatings, shootings,
high speed chases, and medical neglect in prisons and jails. Yet every
time a cop dies, there's this big state funeral, bumper stickers that
say, "Some gave all; all gave some." You know what the most dangerous
civil service profession is? Garbage collection. It's way, way more
dangerous because you're hanging out with these big, big trucks. They
get run over. But when was the last time you saw a state funeral for a
garbage collector? Or when was the last time you saw a Tom Cruise
movie where he was the intrepid garbageman who was cleaning up the
mean streets of LA? That ain't going to happen, because it's not
bowdlerized, because the violence flows down the hierarchy."
- Derrick Jensen, American author and environmental activist, 2008
******************************
"We're in a giant car heading towards a brick wall and everyone's
arguing over where they're going to sit."
- David Suzuki, Canadian science broadcaster and environmental
activist, speaking on humanity's response to climate change, 2008
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"Humanity is drunk on trinkets and coins and and can no longer focus
on or interpret the sheer power, generosity and our dependence on the
living world that gave birth to us.
Is this a fatal code embedded in our DNA to limit us, an auto kill
switch, to allow the rest of life on earth a chance against us? Nature
does have nasty ways of dealing with out of control species, and we
must be top of her list right now."
- Alexandra Morton, Canadian-American marine biologist, Wild Salmon
activist, 2009
******************************
"We on the left have forgotten that the question is not how do you get
good people to rule, most people who rule are mediocre at best and
usually venal. The question is how do we make those in power
frightened of us and not be seduced by formal political processes."
- Chris Hedges, American journalist, war correspondent, and Master of
Divinity, 2009
******************************
"Conspiracy theorists are exhausting. The facts mean nothing to them;
their pursuit of a villain trumps all. Any response only brings ire."
- Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia founder, Tweeted in 2009
******************************
(03:10:32 PM) bradass87: at first glance... it was just a bunch of guys
getting shot up by a helicopter... no big deal... about two dozen more
where that came from right... but something struck me as odd with the
van thing... and also the fact it was being stored in a JAG officer's
directory... so i looked into it... eventually tracked down the date, and
then the exact GPS co-ord... and i was like... ok, so thats what happened...
cool... then i went to the regular internet... and it was still on my
mind... so i typed into goog... the date, and the location... and then i see
this http://www.nytimes.com/2007/
NYT headline: "2 Iraqi Journalists Killed as U.S. Forces Clash With
Militias", the video Manning saw and would later release showed no
"militias" but US pilots murdering reporters and those who came to
their aid http://www.collateralmurder.
(03:11:07 PM) bradass87: i kept that in my mind for weeks... probably a
month and a half... before i forwarded it to them
(03:11:54 PM) bradass87: then there was the Finkel book
(03:12:16 PM) bradass87: im almost certain he had a copy
(03:12:16 PM) info@adrianlamo.com <AUTO-REPLY>: I'm not here right now
(03:13:31 PM) bradass87: it was unreal... i mean, i've identified bodies
before... its rare to do so, but usually its just some nobody
(03:13:48 PM) bradass87: it humanized the whole thing... re-sensitized me
(03:15:38 PM) bradass87: i dont know... im just, weird i guess
(03:15:49 PM) bradass87: i cant separate myself from others
(03:16:12 PM) bradass87: i feel connected to everybody... like they were
distant family
(03:16:24 PM) bradass87: i... care?
(03:17:27 PM) bradass87:
http://www.kxol.com.au/images/
(03:18:17 PM) bradass87: i probably shouldn't have read sagan,
feynman, and so many intellectual authors last summer...
(03:21:11 PM) bradass87: >sigh<
- Bradley Manning, US soldier and whistle blower, excerpted from
instant messenger chats with Adrian Lamo, an ex-hacker in whom he
confided and who later reported him to the FBI, 2010
******************************
"The glitz and propaganda, the ridiculous obsessions imparted by our
electronic hallucinations, and the spectacles that pass for political
participation mask the deadly ecological assault by the corporate
state. The worse it gets, the more we retreat into self-delusion. We
convince ourselves that global warming does not exist. Or we concede
that it exists but insist that we can adapt. Both responses satisfy
our mania for eternal optimism and our reckless pursuit of personal
comfort. In America, when reality is distasteful we ignore it. But
reality will soon descend like the Furies to shatter our complacency
and finally our lives. We, as a species, may be doomed. And this is a
bitter, bitter fact for a father to digest."
- Chris Hedges, American journalist, war correspondent, and Master of
Divinity, 2012
******************************
"As a species that's why we're all still here: we have spent our
entire existence adapting. So we will adapt to this. It's an
engineering problem, and it has engineering solutions."
- Rex Tillerson, Chief executive officer of ExxonMobil Corporation,
telling the Council on Foreign Relations in New York that the problem
of climate change could be solved by adapting to risks such as higher
sea levels and changing conditions for agriculture, 2012
******************************
"We've got to leave the corporate sector out of [saving the
environment]. It's already driving us in the wrong direction"
- David Suzuki, Canadian science broadcaster and environmental activist, 2012
******************************
"What good is it to save the planet if humanity suffers? [...] We do not
see a viable pathway with any known technology today to achieve the
350 [parts per million carbon in the atmosphere] outcome that is not
devastating to economies, societies and peoples' health and well-being
around the world. So the real question is, do you want to keep arguing
about that and pursuing something that cannot be achieved at costs
that will be detrimental? Or do you want to talk about what's the path
we should be on and how do we mitigate and prepare for the
consequences as they present themselves?"
- Rex Tillerson, Chief executive officer of ExxonMobil Corporation,
2013 (A 2011 study found that "9 out of 10 top climate change deniers
were linked with ExxonMobil")
******************************
"They dehumanized the individuals they were engaging and seemed to not
value human life by referring to them as quote "dead bastards" unquote
and congratulating each other on the ability to kill in large numbers.
At one point in the video there is an individual on the ground
attempting to crawl to safety. The individual is seriously wounded.
Instead of calling for medical attention to the location, one of the
aerial weapons team crew members verbally asks for the wounded person
to pick up a weapon so that he can have a reason to engage. For me,
this seems similar to a child torturing ants with a magnifying glass."
- Bradley Manning, US soldier and whistle blower, at his court martial
hearing, speaking on the video he'd released of US pilots gunning down
unarmed reporters and those who came to their aid, 2013 (Manning was
afterwards sentenced to 35 years in prison and dishonorably discharged
from the Army)
******************************
"...let me take this opportunity to outline what has been U.S. policy
towards the Middle East and North Africa, and what will be my policy
during the remainder of my presidency. The United States of America is
prepared to use all elements of our power, including military force,
to secure our core interests in the region. We will confront external
aggression against our allies and partners, as we did in the Gulf War.
We will ensure the free flow of energy from the region to the world."
- Barack Hussein Obama II, US President, to the United Nations General
Assembly, Sept. 24, 2013
******************************
******************************
******************************
"During these past ten years more than 150,000 indigenous have died of
curable diseases. The federal, state, and municipal governments and
their economic and social programs do not take into account any real
solution to our problems; they limit themselves to giving us charity
every time elections role around. Charity resolves nothing but for the
moment, and again death visits our homes. That is why we think no, no
more; enough dying this useless death; it is better to fight for
change. If we die now, it will not be with shame but with dignity,
like our ancestors. We are ready to die, 150,000 more if necessary, SO
THAT OUR PEOPLE AWAKEN FROM THIS DREAM OF DECEIT THAT HOLDS US
HOSTAGE."
- Subcomandante Marcos, Mexico, ahora
"There was an old lady, from the "Cree" tribe, named "Eyes of Fire",
who prophesied that one day, because of the white mans' or Yo-ne-gis'
greed, there would come a time, when the fish would die in the
streams, the birds would fall from the air, the waters would be
blackened, and the trees would no longer be, mankind as we would know
it would all but cease to exist. There would come a time when the
"keepers of the legend, stories, culture rituals, and myths, and all
the Ancient Tribal Customs" would be needed to restore us to health.
They would be mankinds' key to survival, they were the "Warriors of
the Rainbow"."
- Lelanie Fuller Stone
"You have been telling the people that this is the Eleventh Hour. Now
you must go back and tell the people that this is the Hour and there
are things to be considered: Where are you living? What are you doing?
What are your relationships? Are you in right relation? Where is your
water? Know your garden. It is time to speak your Truth. Create your
community. Be good to each other. And do not look outside yourself for
the leader. This could be a good time!"
- Hopi Elder, Oraibi, Az.
