Quotations page 8

"In a media universe where you're likely to find right-wing conservatives on ABC, Fox, or NPR, the facts don't matter; only the framing. And in the hands of biased pundits posing as objective journalists, the framing is always going to be the same: promilitary, pro-government, and pro-war."

David Potorti, in book September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows

*****

"Once the war against Saddam begins, we expect every American to support our military, and if they can't do that, to shut Up."

Bill O'Reilly, Fox News

*****

"Expecting FOX News to report real news is about as silly as waiting for George Bush and Dick Cheney to tell the truth... Americans care, but it's tough to care when you don't know what's going on. That ignorance is what the warmakers count on and what the corporate media delivers."

Amy Goodman

*****

"One of the things that we don't want to do is to destroy the infrastructure of Iraq because in a few days we're going to own that country."

Tom Brokaw, NBC Nightly News, March 19, 2003

*****

*****

"Since felons are subsequently disfranchised, the US now has 1.75 million people disqualified from voting because of their criminality- 1.4 million black men have forfeited their right to vote, almost 15 per cent of the black male population."

Jeremy Seabrook

*****

"For the third time in the last hundred years, the U.S. has invaded and occupied Haiti. Working behind the scenes, the U.S. conducted a destabilization campaign aimed at toppling the government of Jean-Bertrand Aristide. This is a message to the rest of the region: If you don't obey, the U.S. will impose sanctions, overthrow your government, install a client regime, and support death squads to crush any resistance."

Ashley Smith

*****

"The share of income going to the rich today is roughly the same as it was between 1913 and l929. The share of income going to the rich was cut in half between l929 and 1959, with most of the decline coming between l929 and 1945. It stayed low during the 1960s and '70s. It has climbed steadily since 1980."

Christopher Jencks

*****

"Why does tax policy increasingly favor the rich? ... The most obvious explanation is that legislators were becoming ever more dependent on large campaign contributions. As the rich got richer in the 1980s and '90s, they were increasingly willing and able to provide such contributions. Candidates need money to run for office. If newcomers cannot appeal to donors who can write big checks, their chances of success are slim. If incumbents alienate big-money donors, their chances of facing a well-financed challenge increase. Legislators who catered to the interests of the rich therefore became more numerous. This logic applied to Democrats as well as Republicans."

Christopher Jencks

*****

"AARP ... was founded as an insurance business in 1958, and the organization, then called the American Association of Retired Persons, opposed the creation of Medicare. It never developed an activist orientation, and for many years its focus was on selling insurance. In 2002, about 24 percent of its operating revenue came from health-insurance-related activities."

Barbara T. Dreyfuss

*****

"The coup against Aristide ... must be understood not in isolation, but as the culmination of activities that really began the minute he was re-elected in 2000. Destabilization efforts by the U.S. government, active U.S. support for the creation of a so-called civil-society opposition, and eventually the invasion of Haiti by an armed band of criminals and murderers were all part of a process designed to ensure that Haiti would return fully to the fold of the U.S. empire and its minions in Haiti."

Bill Fletcher, Jr.

*****

"Europeans rationalized their empires as civilizing missions. Today the utopian rhetoric of American exceptionalism masks the primary intent of the United States to create, not actual colonies, but a global market subservient to transnational capital."

David Moberg

*****

"The trauma of 9/11 stimulated infinite possibilities for worry - some quite plausible, but most inspired by remote what-if fantasies. A society bingeing on fear makes itself vulnerable to far more profound forms of destruction than terror attacks. The "terrorism war", like a nostalgic echo of the cold war, is using these popular fears to advance a different agenda - the re-engineering of American life through permanent mobilization."

William Greider

*****

"The quest for homeland security is heading, in ad hoc fashion, toward the quasi militarization of everyday life ... If danger might lurk anywhere, maybe everything must be protected and policed."

William Greider

*****

"America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter, and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves."

Abraham Llincoln

*****

"The pursuit of truth, as a form of political action, is inherently disruptive, anti-authoritarian, and dangerous to those content with the way things are. "

Nancy Snow

*****

"The twentieth century has been characterized by three developments of great political importance: the growth of democracy, the growth of corporate power, and the growth of corporate propaganda as a means of protecting corporate power against democracy."

Alex Carey

*****

"I'm going to be bringing people into the public diplomacy function of the department who are going to change from just selling us in the old USIA way to really branding foreign policy, branding the department, marketing the department, marketing American values to the world and not just putting out pamphlets."

Secretary of State Colin Powell to House Budget Committee, March 2001

*****

"As long as we continue to allow the media to function as a manipulative mind manager without fear or disfavor, we'll continue to see the brain-numbing effects of a society underexposed to real information and analysis, rendered incapable of critical judgment and social resistance."

Nancy Snow

*****

"[The Right] lie with impunity. Let's face it. They're liars. They lied about the reason they took our sons and daughters to war. They spend millions of dollars in campaign ads saying they are for a prescription drug benefit under Medicare while they work to destroy Medicare and replace it with private plans and HMOs. They call their dirty air legislation "Clear Skies" and their plan to give the timber companies our trees, "Healthy Forests." They call their job-killing economic program a "jobs program." They say they are for peace when they are for war. Millions of children are left behind under their miserly "No Child Left Behind" education bill. They tout a child tax credit for working families and then silently drop it in favor of more tax cuts for millionaires."

Rep. Jan Schakowsky

*****

"It's time for our business and political leaders to help redefine morality beyond sex, drugs, and rock and roll to include lying, hypocrisy, and callous indifference to those in need."

Arianna Huffington

*****

"There can be no clearer indication of how undemocratic the way we finance campaigns is than the fact that only one-quarter of 1% donate $200 or more, and only one-tenth of 1% gives $1,000 or more."

Arianna Huffington

*****

"The American government has been harvesting the Middle Eastern grapes of wrath for a generation and not making a secret of it, either. As lousy as the mass media may be, there was enough news about what was transpiring, year after year, to get the gist of what was happening... No American can truthfully say that they could not find out what was going on ..."

Nicholas Von Hoffman

*****

"Taken as a whole the mass media seldom rises to the level of deplorable trash, but it is also true that there is no mass audience in America for anything better ..."

Nicholas Von Hoffman

*****

"Americans will quarrel over how, who, or what to rescue or save, but the idea that the nation ought to be off doing it is challenged only by a few."

Nicholas Von Hoffman

*****

"Foreign aid has been perfected so that it subsidizes corporate U.S. agriculture while preventing poor countries from developing profitable agriculture or feeding themselves."

Nicholas Von Hoffman

*****

"Some flag waving is good, a lot of flag waving is tolerable, incessant flag waving is crazy and dangerous and easily manipulated by the war party to get people bubbling at the mouth in fear and rage."

Nicholas Von Hoffman

*****

"Defense becomes offense, the protection of your children becomes the murder of another's, his threat becomes your preemption. You kill to stop the killing. Then you wonder, Are you the victim, or the slayer? But you are both."

James Carroll

*****

"The United States must and will maintain the capability to defeat any attempt by an enemy-whether state or non-state actor-to impose its will on the United States, our allies, or our friends. We will maintain the forces sufficient to support our obligations, and to defend freedom. Our forces will be strong enough to dissuade potential adversaries from pursuing a military buildup in hopes of surpassing, or equaling, the power of the United States."

National Security Strategy

*****

"God told me to strike at al-Qaeda and I struck them, and then he instructed me to strike at Saddam, which I did, and now I am determined to solve the problem in the Middle East."

George W. Bush

*****

"At some point, we may be the only ones left. That's okay with me. We are Americans."

George W. Bush

*****

"The Carlyle Group is the most politically connected investment firm in the world. The company has mastered the art of influence peddling on a global scale, hiring executives and consultants ranging from Republican power broker James Baker and former president George Herbert Walker Bush to foreign leaders like former British prime minister John Major and former Philippine president Fidel Ramos."

William Hartung

*****

"It is simply not possible to have a multi-billion-dollar, multi-year tax cut, a Pentagon budget that will top $500 billion by the end of this decade, a seemingly endless string of wars for "regime change" that are paid for through emergency appropriations over and above the Pentagon's massive annual spending, plus massive new expenditures for intelligence and homeland security, and still expect the government to meet its traditional responsibilities in the areas of education, income security, transportation, health care, housing, environmental protection, and energy development."

William Hartung

*****

"In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex... Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together."

President Dwight D. Eisenhower, in a televised Farewell Address to the Nation, January 17, 1961

*****

"The United States government was proud that, although perhaps 100,000 Iraqis had died in the Gulf War of 1991, there were only 48 American battle casualties. What it has concealed from the public is that 206,000 veterans of that war filed claims with the VA for injuries and illnesses. In the years since that war, 8,300 veterans have died, and 160,000 claims for disability have been recognized by the VA."

Haward Zinn

*****

"The U.S. continues to rank last among developed nations in official development assistance, giving only 0.12% of GNP."

Friends Committee on National Legislation

*****

"By the accusation of liberal bias ... the institutions that conservatives revere - the military, corporate America, organized religion, and the powerful conservative groups themselves - will be able to escape scrutiny and increase their influence."

Eric Alterman

*****

"To become informed and hold government accountable, the general public needs to obtain news that is comprehensive yet interesting and understandable, that conveys facts and outcomes, not cosmetic images and airy promises. But that is not what the public demands."

Eric Alterman

*****

"The White House and the media need one another in order to be successful in their jobs. The White House depends on the media to make its case to the public; the media need the White House to fill their airtime and news columns."

Eric Alterman

*****

"[The ruling elites] know who their enemies are, and their enemies are the people, the people at home and the people abroad. Their enemies are anybody who wants more social justice, anybody who wants to use the surplus value of society for social needs rather than for individual class greed, that's their enemy."

Micahel Parenti

*****

"The first premise of propaganda in the United States today is at doesn't exist, that there is no propaganda from the established media and from the government and that we have only "information." Propaganda is something that other people do. That's the first premise: the denial that there is propaganda.

The second quality of propaganda in the United States is that it operates all the time and its major dedication is to avoid any kind of confrontation regarding class struggle in the United States. It denies any recognition that there is exploitation of labor, that the rich exploit the poor, that we exploit the third world, etc. We've now reached the point where you can talk about racism and sexism, but you cannot really talk about class power in America, and if you do, you are said to be engaging in propaganda."

Michael Parenti

*****

"The media want to maintain their intimate relation to state power. They want to get leaks, they want to get invited to the press conferences. They want to rub shoulders with the Secretary of State, all that kind of business. To do that, you've got to play the game, and playing the game means telling their lies, serving as their disinformation apparatus."

Noam Chomsky

*****

"Real schools ought to provide people with techniques of self-defense, but that would mean teaching the truth about the world and about the society, and schools couldn't survive very long if they did that."

Noam Chomsky

*****

"From 1945 to 2003, the United States attempted to overthrow more than 40 foreign governments, and to crush more than 30 populist-nationalist movements fighting against intolerable regimes. In the process, the US bombed some 25 countries, caused the end of life for several million people, and condemned many millions more to a life of agony and despair."

William Blum

*****

"The leaders of the empire, the imperial mafia-George W. Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, Richard Cheney, Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, et al. ... are as fanatic and as fundamentalist as Osama bin Laden."

William Blum

*****

"[American leaders] are perhaps not so much immoral as they are amoral. It's not that they take pleasure in causing so much death and suffering. It's that they just don't care ... the same that could be said about a sociopath. As long as the death and suffering advance the agenda of the empire, as long as the right people and the right corporations gain wealth and power and privilege and prestige, as long as the death and suffering aren't happening to them or people close to them ... then they just don't care about it happening to other people, including the American soldiers whom they throw into wars and who come home-the ones who make it back alive-with Agent Orange or Gulf War Syndrome eating away at their bodies. American leaders would not be in the positions they hold if they were bothered by such things."

William Blum. Killing Hope

*****

"The Soviet Union and something called communism per se had not been the object of Washington's global attacks. There had never been an International Communist Conspiracy. The enemy was, and remains, any government or movement, or even individual, that stands in the way of the expansion of the American Empire; by whatever name the US gives to the enemy - communist, rogue state, drug trafficker, terrorist."

William Blum, Killing Hope

*****

"America's punitive and reactive response to crime is an integral part of the new social Darwinism, the criminal justice counterpart of an increasingly harsh attack on living standards and social supports, especially for the poor, often justified in the name of "personal responsibility" and the "free market"

... a society that incarcerates such a vast and rapidly growing part of its population - but still suffers the worst violent crime in the industrial world - is a society in trouble, one that, in a profound sense, has lost its bearings.

The prison has become our first line of defense against the consequences of social policies that have brought increasing deprivation and demoralization to growing numbers of children, families, and communities.

America [is] a society in which a permanent state of social disintegration is held in check only by the creation of a swollen apparatus of confinement and control that has no counterpart in our own history or in any other industrial democracy."

Elliott Currie, Crime and Punishment in America

*****

"The increase in the number of prisoners in the state of Texas from 1991 to 1996 alone-about 80,000-is far larger than the total prison population of France or the United Kingdom, and roughly equal to the total prison population of Germany, a nation of over 80 million people (Texas has about 18 million)."

Elliott Currie, Crime and Punishment in America

*****

"In 1995, the most recent year we can use for comparative purposes, the overall incarceration rate for the United States was 600 per 100,000 population, including local jails (but not juvenile institutions). Around the world, the only country with a higher rate was Russia, at 690 per 100,000. Several other countries of the former Soviet bloc also had high rates-270 per 100,000 in Estonia, for example, and 200 in Romania-as did, among others, Singapore (229) and South Africa (368). But most industrial democracies clustered far below us, at around 55 to 120 per 100,000, with a few-notably Japan, at 36-lower still. Spain and the United Kingdom, our closest "competitors among the major nations of western Europe, imprison their citizens at a rate roughly one-sixth of ours; Holland and Scandinavia, about one-tenth."

Elliott Currie, Crime and Punishment in America

*****

"Countries that have made a long-standing commitment to provide at least a modest floor of income and social inclusion for all their citizens have less youth violence than those in which children and families are routinely left to fall through the holes of an already threadbare "safety net"."

Elliott Currie, Crime and Punishment in America

*****

"Those countries with the most developed welfare states have far less violence than the United States, the industrial nation with the least developed welfare state."

Elliott Currie, Crime and Punishment in America

*****

"The state of California has opened only one college since 1984 -- and twenty-one prisons."

Elliott Currie, Crime and Punishment in America

Quotations page

Home Page