El Avisporro

Fascism Then. Fascism Now?

2008-07-11T23:49:00.000-07:00

NEWS YOU WON'T FIND ON CNN

Fascism then. Fascism now?

When people think of fascism, they imagine Rows of goose-stepping storm troopers and puffy-chested dictators. What they don't see is the economic and political process that leads to the nightmare.

By Paul Bigioni

11/27/05 "Toronto Star" -- -- Observing political and economic discourse in North America since the 1970s leads to an inescapable conclusion: The vast bulk of legislative activity favours the interests of large commercial enterprises. Big business is very well off, and successive Canadian and U.S. governments, of whatever political stripe, have made this their primary objective for at least the past 25 years.

Digging deeper into 20th century history, one finds the exaltation of big business at the expense of the citizen was a central characteristic of government policy in Germany and Italy in the years before those countries were chewed to bits and spat out by fascism. Fascist dictatorships were borne to power in each of these countries by big business, and they served the interests of big business with remarkable ferocity.

These facts have been lost to the popular consciousness in North America. Fascism could therefore return to us, and we will not even recognize it. Indeed, Huey Long, one of America's most brilliant and most corrupt politicians, was once asked if America would ever see fascism. "Yes," he replied, "but we will call it anti-fascism."

By exploring the disturbing parallels between our own time and the era of overt fascism, we can avoid the same hideous mistakes. At present, we live in a constitutional democracy. The tools necessary to protect us from fascism remain in the hands of the citizen. All the same, North America is on a fascist trajectory. We must recognize this threat for what it is, and we must change course.

Consider the words of Thurman Arnold, head of the Antitrust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice in 1939:

"Germany, of course, has developed within 15 years from an industrial autocracy into a dictatorship. Most people are under the impression that the power of Hitler was the result of his demagogic blandishments and appeals to the mob... Actually, Hitler holds his power through the final and inevitable development of the uncontrolled tendency to combine in restraint of trade."

Arnold made his point even more clearly in a 1939 address to the American Bar Association:

"Germany presents the logical end of the process of cartelization. From 1923 to 1935, cartelization grew in Germany until finally that nation was so organized that everyone had to belong either to a squad, a regiment or a brigade in order to survive. The names given to these squads, regiments or brigades were cartels, trade associations, unions and trusts. Such a distribution system could not adjust its prices. It needed a general with quasi-military authority who could order the workers to work and the mills to produce. Hitler named himself that general. Had it not been Hitler it would have been someone else."

I suspect that to most readers, Arnold's words are bewildering. People today are quite certain that they know what fascism is. When I ask people to define it, they typically tell me what it was, the assumption being that it no longer exists. Most people associate fascism with concentration camps and rows of storm troopers, yet they know nothing of the political and economic processes that led to these horrible end results.

Before the rise of fascism, Germany and Italy were, on paper, liberal democracies. Fascism did not swoop down on these nations as if from another planet. To the contrary, fascist dictatorship was the result of political and economic changes these nations underwent while they were still democratic. In both these countries, economic power became so utterly concentrated that the bulk of all economic activity fell under the control of a handful of men. Economic power, when sufficiently vast, becomes by its very nature political power. The political power of big business supported fascism in Italy and Germany.

Business tightened its grip on the state in both Italy and Germany by means of intricate webs of cartels and business associations. These associations exercised a high degree of control over the businesses of their members. They frequently controlled pricing, supply and the licensing of patented technology. These associations were private but were entirely legal. Neither Germany nor Italy had effective antitrust laws, and the proliferation of business associations was generally encouraged by government.

This was an era eerily like our own, insofar as economists and businessmen constantly clamoured for self-regulation in business. By the mid 1920s, however, self-regulation had become self-imposed regimentation. By means of monopoly and cartel, the businessmen had wrought for themselves a "command and control" economy that replaced the free market. The business associations of Italy and Germany at this time are perhaps history's most perfect illustration of Adam Smith's famous dictum: "People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices."

How could the German government not be influenced by Fritz Thyssen, the man who controlled most of Germany's coal production? How could it ignore the demands of the great I.G. Farben industrial trust, controlling as it did most of that nation's chemical production? Indeed, the German nation was bent to the will of these powerful industrial interests. Hitler attended to the reduction of taxes applicable to large businesses while simultaneously increasing the same taxes as they related to small business. Previous decrees establishing price ceilings were repealed such that the cost of living for the average family was increased. Hitler's economic policies hastened the destruction of Germany's middle class by decimating small business.

Ironically, Hitler pandered to the middle class, and they provided some of his most enthusiastically violent supporters. The fact that he did this while simultaneously destroying them was a terrible achievement of Nazi propaganda.

Hitler also destroyed organized labour by making strikes illegal. Notwithstanding the socialist terms in which he appealed to the masses, Hitler's labour policy was the dream come true of the industrial cartels that supported him. Nazi law gave total control over wages and working conditions to the employer.

Compulsory (slave) labour was the crowning achievement of Nazi labour relations. Along with millions of people, organized labour died in the concentration camps. The camps were not only the most depraved of all human achievements, they were a part and parcel of Nazi economic policy. Hitler's Untermenschen, largely Jews, Poles and Russians, supplied slave labour to German industry. Surely this was a capitalist bonanza. In another bitter irony, the gates over many of the camps bore a sign that read Arbeit Macht Frei — "Work shall set you free." I do not know if this was black humour or propaganda, but it is emblematic of the deception that lies at the heart of fascism.

The same economic reality existed in Italy between the two world wars. In that country, nearly all industrial activity was owned or controlled by a few corporate giants, Fiat and the Ansaldo shipping concern being the chief examples of this.

Land ownership in Italy was also highly concentrated and jealously guarded. Vast tracts of farmland were owned by a few latifundisti. The actual farming was carried out by a landless peasantry who were locked into a role essentially the same as that of the sharecropper of the U.S. Deep South.

As in Germany, the few owners of the nation's capital assets had immense influence over government. As a young man, Mussolini had been a strident socialist, and he, like Hitler, used socialist language to lure the people to fascism. Mussolini spoke of a "corporate" society wherein the energy of the people would not be wasted on class struggle. The entire economy was to be divided into industry specific corporazioni, bodies composed of both labour and management representatives. The corporazioni would resolve all labour/management disputes; if they failed to do so, the fascist state would intervene.

Unfortunately, as in Germany, there laid at the heart of this plan a swindle. The corporazioni, to the extent that they were actually put in place, were controlled by the employers. Together with Mussolini's ban on strikes, these measures reduced the Italian labourer to the status of peasant.

Mussolini, the one-time socialist, went on to abolish the inheritance tax, a measure that favoured the wealthy. He decreed a series of massive subsidies to Italy's largest industrial businesses and repeatedly ordered wage reductions. Italy's poor were forced to subsidize the wealthy. In real terms, wages and living standards for the average Italian dropped precipitously under fascism.

Even this brief historical sketch shows how fascism did the bidding of big business. The fact that Hitler called his party the "National Socialist Party" did not change the reactionary nature of his policies. The connection between the fascist dictatorships and monopoly capital was obvious to the U.S. Department of Justice in 1939. As of 2005, however, it is all but forgotten.

It is always dangerous to forget the lessons of history. It is particularly perilous to forget about the economic origins of fascism in our modern era of deregulation. Most Western liberal democracies are currently in the thrall of what some call market fundamentalism. Few nowadays question the flawed assumption that state intervention in the marketplace is inherently bad.

As in Italy and Germany in the '20s and '30s, business associations clamour for more deregulation and deeper tax cuts. The gradual erosion of antitrust legislation, especially in the United States, has encouraged consolidation in many sectors of the economy by way of mergers and acquisitions. The North American economy has become more monopolistic than at any time in the post-WWII period.

U.S. census data from 1997 shows that the largest four companies in the food, motor vehicle and aerospace industries control 53.4, 87.3 and 55.6 per cent of their respective markets. Over 20 per cent of commercial banking in the U.S. is controlled by the four largest financial institutions, with the largest 50 controlling over 60 per cent. Even these numbers underestimate the scope of concentration, since they do not account for the myriad interconnections between firms by means of debt instruments and multiple directorships, which further reduce the extent of competition.

Actual levels of U.S. commercial concentration have been difficult to measure since the 1970s, when strong corporate opposition put an end to the Federal Trade Commission's efforts to collect the necessary information.

Fewer, larger competitors dominate all economic activity, and their political will is expressed with the millions of dollars they spend lobbying politicians and funding policy formulation in the many right-wing institutes that now limit public discourse to the question of how best to serve the interests of business.

The consolidation of the economy and the resulting perversion of public policy are themselves fascistic. I am certain, however, that former president Bill Clinton was not worried about fascism when he repealed federal antitrust laws that had been enacted in the 1930s.

The Canadian Council of Chief Executives is similarly unworried about fascism as it lobbies the Canadian government to water down proposed amendments to our federal Competition Act. (The Competition Act, last amended in 1986, regulates monopolies, among other things, and itself represents a watering down of Canada's previous antitrust laws. It was essentially rewritten by industry and handed to the Mulroney government to be enacted.)

At present, monopolies are regulated on purely economic grounds to ensure the efficient allocation of goods.

If we are to protect ourselves from the growing political influence of big business, then our antitrust laws must be reconceived in a way that recognizes the political danger of monopolistic conditions.

Antitrust laws do not just protect the market place, they protect democracy.

It might be argued that North America's democratic political systems are so entrenched that we needn't fear fascism's return. The democracies of Italy and Germany in the 1920s were in many respects fledgling and weak. Our systems will surely react at the first whiff of dictatorship.

Or will they? This argument denies the reality that the fascist dictatorships were preceded by years of reactionary politics, the kind of politics that are playing out today. Further, it is based on the conceit that whatever our own governments do is democracy. Canada still clings to a quaint, 19th-century "first past the post" electoral system in which a minority of the popular vote can and has resulted in majority control of Parliament.

In the U.S., millions still question the legality of the sitting president's first election victory, and the power to declare war has effectively become his personal prerogative. Assuming that we have enough democracy to protect us is exactly the kind of complacency that allows our systems to be quietly and slowly perverted. On paper, Italy and Germany had constitutional, democratic systems. What they lacked was the eternal vigilance necessary to sustain them. That vigilance is also lacking today.

Our collective forgetfulness about the economic nature of fascism is also dangerous at a philosophical level. As contradictory as it may seem, fascist dictatorship was made possible because of the flawed notion of freedom that held sway during the era of laissez-faire capitalism in the early 20th century.

It was the liberals of that era who clamoured for unfettered personal and economic freedom, no matter what the cost to society. Such untrammelled freedom is not suitable to civilized humans. It is the freedom of the jungle. In other words, the strong have more of it than the weak. It is a notion of freedom that is inherently violent, because it is enjoyed at the expense of others. Such a notion of freedom legitimizes each and every increase in the wealth and power of those who are already powerful, regardless of the misery that will be suffered by others as a result. The use of the state to limit such "freedom" was denounced by the laissez-faire liberals of the early 20th century. The use of the state to protect such "freedom" was fascism. Just as monopoly is the ruin of the free market, fascism is the ultimate degradation of liberal capitalism.

In the post-war period, this flawed notion of freedom has been perpetuated by the neo-liberal school of thought. The neo-liberals denounce any regulation of the marketplace. In so doing, they mimic the posture of big business in the pre-fascist period. Under the sway of neo-liberalism, Thatcher, Reagan, Mulroney and George W. Bush have decimated labour and exalted capital. (At present, only 7.8 per cent of workers in the U.S. private sector are unionized — about the same percentage as in the early 1900s.)

Neo-liberals call relentlessly for tax cuts, which, in a previously progressive system, disproportionately favour the wealthy. Regarding the distribution of wealth, the neo-liberals have nothing to say. In the end, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. As in Weimar Germany, the function of the state is being reduced to that of a steward for the interests of the moneyed elite. All that would be required now for a more rapid descent into fascism are a few reasons for the average person to forget he is being ripped off. Hatred of Arabs, fundamentalist Christianity or an illusory sense of perpetual war may well be taking the place of Hitler's hatred for communists and Jews.

Neo-liberal intellectuals often recognize the need for violence to protect what they regard as freedom. Thomas Friedman of The New York Times has written enthusiastically that "the hidden hand of the market will never work without a hidden fist," and that "McDonald's cannot flourish without McDonnell Douglas, the designer of the U.S. Air Force F-15." As in pre-fascist Germany and Italy, the laissez-faire businessmen call for the state to do their bidding even as they insist that the state should stay out of the marketplace. Put plainly, neo-liberals advocate the use of the state's military force for the sake of private gain. Their view of the state's role in society is identical to that of the businessmen and intellectuals who supported Hitler and Mussolini. There is no fear of the big state here. There is only the desire to wield its power. Neo-liberalism is thus fertile soil for fascism to grow again into an outright threat to our democracy.

Having said that fascism is the result of a flawed notion of freedom, we need to re-examine what we mean when we throw around the word. We must conceive of freedom in a more enlightened way.

Indeed, it was the thinkers of the Enlightenment who imagined a balanced and civilized freedom that did not impinge upon the freedom of one's neighbour. Put in the simplest terms, my right to life means that you must give up your freedom to kill me. This may seem terribly obvious to decent people. Unfortunately, in our neo-liberal era, this civilized sense of freedom has, like the dangers of fascism, been all but forgotten.

Paul Bigioni is a lawyer practising in Markham. This article is drawn from his work on a book about the persistence of fascism.

Copyright Toronto Star Newspapers Limited

Compendium of Quotations

2008-07-08T21:09:00.001-07:00

“The splendid blond beast” What Friedrich Nietzsche called the aristocratic predators who write society’s laws. Precisely because they so often behave as though they are beyond the reach of elementary morality.
As he (Nietzsche) saw things, these elites have cut a path toward a certain sort of excellence consisting mainly of the exercise of power at the expense of others.
When dealing with ordinary people, he said, they “revert to the innocence of wild animals…We can imagine them returning from an orgy of murder, arson, rape and torture, jubilant and at peace with themselves as though they had committed a fraternity prank, convinced, moreover, that the poets for a long time to come will have something to sing about and to praise.”Their brutality was true courage, Nietzsche thought, and the foundation of social order. -Christopher Simpson,The Splendid Blond Beast. p-3.
"History is the memory of the states" - Henry Kissinger
"Who contrlols the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past" -George Orwell
“If you form the habit of taking what someone else says about a thing without checking it out yourself, you’ll find that other people will have you hating your friends and loving your enemy.” - Malcolm X

“One of the best ways to safeguard yourself from being deceived is always to form the habit of looking at things for yourself, before you try and come to any judgment.” - Malcolm X

“It is not a president who can help or hurt; it is the system.
And this system is not only ruling us in America, it is ruling the world.” –Malcolm X
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.” - Upton Sinclair

“In the United States, political power flows from economic power, not the other way around.” – Tom Wicker, The Nation. 17m June 1996.

There is at the head of this great continent a very powerful country, very rich, very warlike, and capable of anything. Simon Bolivar
...the United States seemed destined to plague and torment the continent in the name of freedom. Simon Bolivar
Economic nationalism is the common denominator of the new aspirations for industrialization.Latin Americans are convinced that the first beneficiaries of the development of a country's resources should be the people of that country. -D.MacMichael, former CIA analyst, testifying at World Court.

I think that it’s not asking too much to have our little region over here (namely, Latin America) which never has bothered anybody. Henry Stimson, U, S. Secretary of War, 1945.

The truth that makes men free is for the most part the truth which men prefer not to hear: Herbert Sebastien Agar

Without seeking, truth cannot be known at all. It can neither be declared from pulpits, nor set down in articles, nor in any wise prepared and sold in packages ready for use. Truth must be ground for every man by itself out of it such, with such help as he can get, indeed, but not without stern labor of his own: John Ruskin
"The people are the ultimate guardians of their own liberties. In every government on earth there is some trace of human weakness, some germ of corruption and degeneracy. Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone." - Thomas Jefferson

If there is one principle more deeply rooted in the mind of every American, it is that we should have nothing to do with conquest: -Thomas Jefferson

The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only object of good government. The mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few to ride them. Thomas Jefferson

I am persuaded no constitution was ever before so well calculated as ours for extensive empire and self government. Thomas Jefferson.

"The world is a dangerous place to live, not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don't do anything about it." - Albert Einstein

Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe. Frederick Douglass

We thought we were dying for the fatherland. We realized quickly it was for the bank vaults. Anatole France

"We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light." - Plato

"I know you won't believe me, but the highest form of Human Excellence is to question oneself and others."- Socrates

"The unexamined life is not worth living." - Socrates

"Justice is like a snake, it bites the barefooted only"- Liberation Theology Archbishop Oscar Romero

"The law is like a spider web, where the little flies get caught and the big flies fall through"-Aristarchus,Greek philologist and critic. circa 150 bc.

"The differences between the Republican and Democratic Parties involve no issue, no principle in which the working class have any interest." -Eugene Debs

"It seems that 'we have never gone to war for conquest, for exploitation, nor for territory'; we have the word of a president [McKinley] for that. Observe, now, how Providence overrules the intentions of the truly good for their advantage. We went to war with Mexico for peace, humanity and honor, yet emerged from the contest with an extension of territory beyond the dreams of political avarice. We went to war with Spain for relief of an oppressed people [the Cubans], and at the close found ourselves in possession of vast and rich insular dependencies [primarily the Philippines] and with a pretty tight grasp upon the country for relief of whose oppressed people we took up arms. We could hardly have profited more had 'territorial aggrandizement' been the spirit of our purpose and heart of our hope. The slightest acquaintance with history shows that powerful republics are the most warlike and unscrupulous of nations." Ambrose Bierce, Warlike America

Oh ye Egyptians, they may say to you that I have not made an expedition hither for any other object than that of abolishing your religion...But tell the slanderers that I have not come to you except for the purpose of restoring your rights from the hands of the opressors._ Napoleon Bonaparte, Alexandria, July 2, 1798

Our armies do not come into your cities and lands as conquerors or enemies, but as liberators...It is the hope and desire of the British people and the nations in alliance with them that the Arab race may rise once more to greatness and renown among the peoples of the earth._ General F.S Maude, commander of British forces, Bagdad, March 19, 1917.

Unlike many armies in the world, you come not to conquer, not to occupy, but to liberate, and the Iraqi people knows this._ Donald Rumsfeld, U S. Secretary of Defense, Bagdad, April 29, 2003.

They make slaughter and they call it peace. _Tacitus

"Cuba has ... been condemned for not allowing its people to flee the island. That so many want to leave Cuba is treated as proof that Cuban socialism is a harshly repressive system, rather than that the U.S. embargo has made life difficult in Cuba. That so many millions more want to leave capitalist countries like Mexico, Nigeria, Poland, El Salvador, Philippines, South Korea, Macedonia, and others too numerous to list is never treated as grounds for questioning the free-market system that inflicts such misery on the Third World." Michael Parenti

"[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." Michael Parenti

(Guatemala) has become an increasing threat to the stability of Honduras and El Salvador its agrarian reform is a powerful propaganda weapon; its broad social program for aiding the workers and peasants in a victorious straggle against the upper classes and large foreign enterprises has a strong appeal to the populations of Central American neighbors where similar conditions prevail. -U. S. State Department official, 1954.

"[U.S.] domestic policy ... has focused on creating a massive welfare state for corporations even as the minimal welfare state benefiting the majority of the people was dismantled."Lawrence Shoup

All men having power ought to be mistrusted: -James Madison

The evils of government are directly proportional to the tolerance of the people: Frank Kent

My kind of loyalty was to one's country, not to its institutions or its officeholders. The country is the real thing, the substantial thing, the eternal thing; it is the thing to watch over, and care for, and be loyal to; institutions are extraneous, they are its mere clothing, and clothing can wear out, become ragged, cease to be comfortable, cease to protect the body from winter, disease, and death: Mark Twain

As I watch government at all levels daily eat away at our freedom, I keep thinking how prosperity and government largesse have combined to make most of us fat and lazy and indifferent to, or actually in favor of, the limits being placed on that freedom: Lyn Nofziger

But why should we hear about body bags, and deaths, and how many, what day it's gonna happen, and how many this or what do you suppose? Or, I mean, it's, it's not relevant. So, why should I waste my beautiful mind on something like that?" : Barbara Bush on ABC - Good Morning America, March 18, 2003

We know that dictators are quick to choose aggression, while free nations strive to resolve differences in peace." George W. Bush UN Speech Sept 2004

Morality is the best of all devices for leading mankind by the nose: Friedrich Nietzsche, The Antichrist

So long as the people do not care to exercise their freedom, those who wish to tyrannize will do so; for tyrants are active and ardent, and will devote themselves in the name of any number of gods, religious and otherwise, to put shackles upon sleeping men: Voltaire.François Marie Arouet (1694-1778

How you can win the population for war: At first, the statesman will invent cheap lying, that impute the guilt of the attacked nation, and each person will be happy over this deceit, that calm the conscience. It will study it detailed and refuse to test arguments of the other opinion. So he will convince step for step even therefrom that the war is just and thank God, that he, after this process of grotesque even deceit, can sleep better: Mark Twain

Justice is conscience, not a personal conscience but the conscience of the whole of humanity. Those who clearly recognize the voice of their own conscience usually recognize also the voice of justice: Alexander Solzhenitsyn

Those in possession of absolute power can not only prophesy and make their prophecies come true, but they can also lie and make their lies come true: Eric Hoffer

"With each newly minted crisis, US leaders roll out the same time-tested scenario. They start demonizing a foreign leader ... charging them with being communistic or otherwise dictatorial, dangerously aggressive, power hungry, genocidal, given to terrorism or drug trafficking, ready to deny us access to vital resources, harboring weapons of mass destruction, or just inexplicably "anti-American" and "anti-West." Lacking any information to the contrary, the frightened public ... are swept along." Michael Parenti

Since trade ignores national boundaries and the manufacturer insists on having the world as a market,the flag of this nation must follow him,and the doors of the nations which are closed against him must be battered down. Concessions obtained by financiers must be safeguarded by ministers of state,even if the soveregnty of unwilling nations be outraged in the process. Colonies must be obtained or planted,in order that no useful corner of the world may be overlooked or left unused.- Woodrow Wilson, President of United States of America,1919

The government is the potent omnipresent teacher. For good or ill it teaches the whole people by its example. Crime is contagious. If the government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy. To declare that the end justifies the means -- to declare that the government may commit crimes -- would bring terrible retribution: Justice Louis D. Brandeis

Our government has kept us in a perpetual state of fear - kept us in a continuous stampede of patriotic fervour - with the cry of grave national emergency. Always, there has been some terrible evil at home, or some monstrous foreign power that was going to gobble us up if we did not blindly rally behind it: General Douglas MacArthur

"The evil that is in the world almost always comes of ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence if they lack understanding." (Albert Camus)

"I swore never to be silent whenever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented." - Elie Weisel

"The love of liberty is the love of others; the love of power is the love of ourselves." (William Hazlitt)

Only when the last tree has died and the last river has been poisoned and the last fish has been caught will we realize that we can't eat money." Cree proverb

"The people who cast the votes decide nothing. The people who count the votes decide everything." Josef Stalin

It's not the voting that's democracy, it's the counting. : Alfred Emanuel Smith - Source: in a speech in Albany

"We are the ruling race of the world. . . . We will not renounce our part in the mission of our race, trustee, under God, of the civilization of the world. . . . He has marked us as his chosen people. . . . He has made us adept in government that we may administer government among savage and senile peoples." : Sen. Alfred Beveridge

"I firmly believe that when any territory outside the present territorial limits of the United States becomes necessary for our defense or essential for our commercial development, we ought to lose no time in acquiring it." : Sen. Orville Platt of Connecticut 1894.

"Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people. To destroy this invisible government, to befoul the unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics is the first task of the statesmanship of the day": Theodore Roosevelt, April 19, 1906

I hope our wisdom will grow with our power, and teach us, that the less we use our power the greater it will be: Thomas Jefferson
JeffersonWe thought, because we had power, we had wisdom: Stephen Vincent Benét

The jaws of power are always open to devour, and her arm is always stretched out, if possible, to destroy the freedom of thinking, speaking, and writing: John Adams
" ... No "terrorist" gene is known to exist or is likely to be found... Surely the(y), and their supporters were afflicted by something that caused their metamorphosis from normal human beings capable of gentleness and affection into desperate, maddened, fiends with nothing but murder in their hearts and minds. What was that? Simple logic says that we must go to the roots of terror. Only a fool can believe that the services of a suicidal terrorist can be purchased, or that they can be bred at will anywhere: Ouch Borith: Permanent Representative Of The Kingdom Of Cambodia To The UN: 10/03/2001
The death of one man is a tragedy. The death of millions is a statistic: Joe Stalin, comment to Churchill at Potsdam, 1945

"Between 1898 and 1934, the Marines invaded Cuba 4 times, Nicaragua 5 times, Honduras 7 times, the Dominican Republic 4 times, Haiti twice, Guatemala once, Panama twice, Mexico 3 times and Columbia 4 times," Washington has intervened militarily in foreign countries more than 200 times." If the people are not convinced (that the Free World is in mortal danger) it would be impossible for Congress to vote the vast sums now being spent to avert danger. With the support of public opinion, as marshalled by the press, we are off to a good start. It is our Job - yours and mine -- to keep our people convinced that the only way to keep disaster away from our shores is to build up America's might."- Charles Wilson, Chairman of the Board of General Electric and Truman appointee to head the Office of Defence Mobilization, in a speech to the Newspaper Publishers Association, 1950

It is a tragic mix-up when the United States spends $500,000 for every enemy soldier killed, and only $53 annually on the victims of poverty: Martin Luther King, Jr: 1929-1968

"Youth is the first victim of war; the first fruit of peace. It takes 20 years or more of peace to make a man; it takes only 20 seconds of war to destroy him." -King Baudouin I: King of Belgium

If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy: James Madison: US fourth president, 1751-1836

America is not doing very well, but its corporations are doing just fine. New York Times business article: Paradox of ’92: Weak Economy, Strong Profits

The means of defense against foreign danger historically have become the instruments of tyranny at home: James Madison: US fourth president, 1751-1836

This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when he first appears he is a protector: Plato: Ancient Greek philosopher (428/427-348/347 B.C.)

Fear is not in the habit of speaking truth: Publius Cornelius Tacitus

"Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience. Our problem is that numbers of people all over the world have obeyed the dictates of the leaders of their government and have gone to war, and millions have been killed because of this obedience. Our problem is that people are obedient all over the world in the face of poverty and starvation and stupidity, and war, and cruelty. Our problem is that people are obedient while the jails are full of petty thieves, and all the while the grand thieves are running and robbing the country. That's our problem.": Howard Zinn, from 'Failure to Quit

Dignity consists not in possessing honors, but in the consciousness that we deserve them: Aristotle

It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world and moral courage so rare: Mark Twain

Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master: George Washington

The genius of our ruling class is that it has kept a majority of the people from ever questioning the inequity of a system where most people drudge along, paying heavy taxes for which they get nothing in return: Gore Vidal

The darkest places in hell are reserved for those who maintain their neutrality in times of moral crisis: Dante Alighieri

Why is this man in the White House? The majority of Americans did not vote for him. Why is he there? And I tell you this morning that he's in the White House because God put him there for a time such as this: Lt Gen William Boykin, speaking of G. W. Bush, New York Times, 17 October 2003

God gave the savior to the German people. We have faith, deep and unshakeable faith, that he was sent to us by God to save Germany. Hermann Goering, speaking of Hitler

International law? I better call my lawyer; he didn't bring that up to me; George W. Bush, 12 December 2003

Liberty and democracy become unholy when their hands are dyed red with innocent blood: Gandhi, Non-violence in Peace and War, 1948

"The so-called Christian virtues of humility, love, charity, personal freedom, the strong prohibitions against violence, murder, stealing, lying, cruelty—all these are washed away by war. The greatest hero is the one who kills the most people. Glamorous exploits in successful lying and mass stealing and heroic vengeance are rewarded with decorations and public acclaim." : John T. Flynn, As We Go Marching

After every ''victory'' you have more enemies: Jeanette Winterson

"The industrial way of life leads to the industrial way of death. From Shiloh to Dachau, from Antietam to Stalingrad, from Hiroshima to Vietnam and Afghanistan, the great specialty of industry and technology has been the mass production of human corpses." -Edward Abbey

"Sure, there were lots of bodies we never identified. You know what a direct hit by a shell does to a guy. Or a mine, or a solid hit with a grenade, even. Sometimes all we have is a leg or a hunk of arm. The ones that stink the worst are the guys who got internal wounds and are dead about three weeks with the blood staying inside and rotting, and when you move the body the blood comes out of the nose and mouth. Then some of them bloat up in the sun, they bloat up so big that they bust the buttons and then they get blue and the skin peels. They don't all get blue, some of them get black. But they all stunk. There's only one stink and that's it. You never get used to it, either. As long as you live, you never get used to it. And after a while, the stink gets in your clothes and you can taste it in your mouth. You know what I think? I think maybe if every civilian in the world could smell this stink, then maybe we wouldn't have any more wars." : —Technical Sergeant Donald Hagua! ll, 48th Quartermaster Graves Registration (quoted in Purnell's History of the Second World War)

No one can terrorize a whole nation, unless we are all his accomplices. (about Senator Joseph McCarthy's accusations about Communism in the American government) Edward R. Murrow:

All those who seek to destroy the liberties of a democratic nation ought to know that war is the surest and shortest means to accomplish it: Alexis de Tocqueville

Throughout the history of the United States, war has been the primary impetus behind the growth and development of the central state. It has been the lever by which presidents and other national officials have bolstered the power of the state in the face of tenacious popular resistance: Bruce D. Porter

The things that will destroy us are: politics without principle; pleasure without conscience; wealth without work; knowledge without character; business without morality; science without humanity; and worship without sacrifice: Mahatma Mohandas K. Gandhi

During war, the laws are silent: Cicero Quintus Tullius

The peace and welfare of this and coming generations of Americans will be secure only as we cling to the watchword of true patriotism: "Our country -- when right to be kept right; when wrong to be put right.": Carl Schurz:

A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense: than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual doom: Martin Luther King Jr., "The Trumpet of Conscience", 1967

"Modern fascism should be properly called corporatism, since it is the merger of state, military and corporate power.": Benito Mussolini

"Nothing doth more hurt in a state than that cunning men pass for wise.": Sir Francis Bacon

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: Archbishop Helder Camara, Brazilian liberation theologist

Peace we want because there is another war to fight against poverty, disease and ignorance: Indira Gandhi, 1966

"a terrorist, massive, casualty-producing event [will occur] somewhere in the Western world - it may be in the United States of America - that causes our population to question our own Constitution and to begin to militarize our country in order to avoid a repeat of another mass, casualty-producing event." General Tommy Franks calls for Repeal of US Constitution, November 2003

"We could blow up a U.S. ship in Guantanamo Bay and blame Cuba," "We could develop a Communist Cuban terror campaign in the Miami area, in other Florida cities and even in Washington" "casualty lists in U.S. newspapers would cause a helpful wave of national indignation." (See the declassified Top Secret 1962 document titled "Justification for U.S. Military Intervention in Cuba

"Evil is no faceless stranger living in a distant neighborhood. Evil has a wholesome, hometown face, with merry eyes and an open smile. Evil walks among us, wearing a mask which looks like all our faces. (The Book of Counted Sorrows)

"There's a lot of people who still don't get it. They don't get it that these guys are playing for keeps; that they are going after you; that they are not going to leave any little bit left for you...there's only one thing the ruling circles throughout history have ever wanted and that's everything." (Michael Parenti, "Fascism: The False Revolution" Speech 9/23/95)

The German invasion of Czechoslovakia is necessary to safeguard the human rights of its Sudetengermans [Goebbels 1938].

The invasion of Russia is to save Western civilization [Hitler 1941].

Alexander the Great [356-323 BC] admonished a pirate who responded that because he uses only a small ship he is called a robber [terrorist?] while Alexander commands a fleet and so is called emperor [of civilization!]Those who exercise power always arrange matters so as to give their tyranny the appearance of justice - La Fontaine AD 1668

The Government will regard as its first and foremost duty to revive the spirit of unity and cooperation in the nation and to preserve and defend its basic principles of Christianity as the foundation of our national morality, and the family as the basis of national life -Adolph Hitler, My New World Order Proclamation, Berlin,February 1, 1933

To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public. - Theodore Roosevelt: (1918

Naturally the common people don't want war; neither in Russia, nor in England, nor in America, nor in Germany. That is understood. But after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country. - Hermann Goering:

"Hitler's concept of concentration camps as well as the practicality of genocide owed much, so he claimed, to his studies of English and United States history. He admired the camps for Boer prisoners in South Africa and for the Indians in the Wild West; and often praised to his inner circle the efficiency of America's extermination--by starvation and uneven combat--of the 'Red Savages' who could not be tamed by captivity." ("Adolf Hitler" by John Toland, p. 702)

We Americans have no commission from God to police the world: Benjamin Harrison, address to Congress, 1888

War ... should only be declared by the authority of the people, whose toils and treasures are to support its burdens, instead of the government which is to reap its fruits. : James Madison 1751–1836

Throughout history, it has been the inaction of those who could have acted; the indifference of those who should have known better; the silence of the voice of justice when it mattered most; that has made it possible for evil to triumph: Haile Selassie

"In order to rally people, governments need enemies. They want us to be afraid, to hate, so we will rally behind them. And if they do not have a real enemy, they will invent one in order to mobilize us.": Thich Nhat Hanh - Vietnamese monk, activist and writer

The men the American people admire most extravagantly are the most daring liars; the men they detest most violently are those who try to tell them the truth: Henry Louis Mencken: American humorous journalist, 1880-1956

A single lie destroys a whole reputation for integrity: Baltasar Gracian: Spanish philosopher and writer, 1601-1658

The price of apathy towards public affairs is to be ruled by evil men: Plato

In the country of the blind the one-eyed man is king: Erasmus c.1469 – 1536

Give me the money that has been spent in war and I will clothe every man, woman, and child in an attire of which kings and queens will be proud. I will build a schoolhouse in every valley over the whole earth. I will crown every hillside with a place of worship consecrated to peace: Charles Sumner

Nothing is more despicable than respect based on fear: Albert Camus

If we let people see that kind of thing, there would never again be any war: Pentagon official explaining why the U.S. military censored graphic footage from the Gulf War

"Most of the greatest evils that man has inflicted upon man have come through people feeling quite certain about something which, in fact, was false." : Bertrand Russell

The first step in a fascist movement is the combination under an energetic leader of a number of men who possess more than the average share of leisure, brutality, and stupidity. The next step is to fascinate fools and muzzle the intelligent, by emotional excitement on the one hand and terrorism on the other. (Bertrand Russell: Freedom, Harcourt Brace, 1940)

"And now the liberals want to stop President Reagan from selling chemical warfare agents and military equipment to Saddam Hussein and why? Because Saddam 'allegedly' gassed a few Kurds in his own country. Mark my words. All of this talk of Saddam Hussein being a 'war criminal' or 'committing crimes against humanity' is the same old thing. LIBERAL HATE SPEECH! and speaking of poison gas... I SAY WE ROUND UP ALL THE DRUG ADDICTS AND GAS THEM TOO!......."Rush (Oxycontin) Limbaugh, November 3, 1988

" ... the United States, for generations, has sustained two parallel but opposed states of mind about military atrocities and human rights: one of U.S. benevolence, generally held by the public, and the other of ends-justify-the-means brutality sponsored by counterinsurgency specialists. Normally the specialists carry out their actions in remote locations with little notice in the national press. That allows the public to sustain its faith in a just America, while hard-nosed security and economic interests are still protected in secret. ": Robert Parry, investigative reporter and author

"The essence of oligarchical rule is not father-to-son inheritance, but the persistence of a certain world-view and a certain way of life ... A ruling group is a ruling group so long as it can nominate its successors... Who wields power is not important, provided that the hierarchical structure remains always the same.": George Orwell, 1984

When even one American-who has done nothing wrong-is forced by fear to shut his mind and close his mouth-then all Americans are in peril: Harry S. Truman

Conquered states that have been accustomed to liberty and the government of their own laws can be held by the conqueror in three different ways. The first is to ruin them; the second, for the conqueror to go and reside there in person; and the third is to allow them to continue to live under their own laws, subject to a regular tribute, and to create in them a government of a few, who will keep the country friendly to the conqueror: Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince

We’re not a democracy. It’s a terrible misunderstanding and a slander to the idea of democracy to call us that. In reality, we’re a plutocracy: a government by the wealthy." : Ramsey Clark, former U.S. Attorney General

"Of all forms of tyranny the least attractive and the most vulgar is the tyranny of mere wealth, the tyranny of plutocracy" : John Pierpont Morgan

"The real truth of the matter is, as you and I know, that a financial element in the large centers has owned the government of the U.S. since the days of Andrew Jackson." : Franklin D. Roosevelt

Q. "Mr. President, have you approved of covert activity to destablise the present government of Nicaragua?"A. "Well, no, we're supporting them, the - oh, wait a minute, wait a minute, I'm sorry, I was thinking of El Salvador, because of the previous, when you said Nicaragua. Here again, this is something upon which the national security interests, I just - I will not comment.": Ronald Reagan, former US President, Washington press conference, February 13th 1983, as quoted by John Pilger in 'Heroes'

"The enemy aggressor is always pursuing a course of larceny, murder, rapine and barbarism. We are always moving forward with high mission, a destiny imposed by the Deity to regenerate our victims while incidentally capturing their markets, to civilise savage and senile and paranoid peoples while blundering accidentally into their oil wells.": John Flynn, 1944

"The American system is the most ingenious system of control in world history. With a country so rich in natural resources, talent and labour power the system can afford to distribute just enough wealth to just enough people to limit discontent to a troublesome minority. It is a country so powerful, so big, so pleasing to so many of its’ citizens that it can afford to give freedom of dissent to the small number who are not pleased. There is no system of control with more openings, apertures, flexibilities, rewards for the chosen.[…] There is none that disperses its’ control more complexly through the voting system, the work situation, the church, the family, the school, the mass media – none more successful in mollifying opposition with reforms, isolating people from one another, creating patriotic loyalty.": Howard Zinn, from ‘A People’s History of the United States,’ first published 1981

"In an age of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act." (George Orwell)

"...we are all capable to believing things which we know to be untrue, and then, when we are finally proved wrong, impudently twisting the facts so as to show that we were right. Intellectually, it is possible to carry on this process for an indefinite time: the only check on it is that sooner or later a false belief bumps up against solid reality, usually on a battlefield." (George Orwell, "In Front of Your Nose")

"Did we shoot it down or did it crash?" (George W. Bush, Sept 11, 2001)

"Tell the truth an run." (Yugoslav Proverb)

"As long as the economic system provides an acceptable degree of security, growing material wealth and opportunity for further increase of the next generation, the average American does not ask who is running things or what goals are being pursued." (Daniel Fusfeld, "The Corporate State in America", in Journal of Economic Issues, March, 1972)

"What's the point of having this superb military that you're always talking about if we can't use it?": Madeleine Albright, to General Colin Powell, as quoted in Powell's book 'My American Journey', 1995.

"The business of America is business": President Calvin Coolidge

"The most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind constantly...it must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over.": Joseph Goebbels, Nazi Propaganda Minister

"War: a massacre of people who don't know each other for the profit of people who know each other but don't massacre each other" Paul Valery quotes (French poet, essayist and critic, 1871-1945)

We first fought the heathens in the name of religion, then Communism, and now in the name of drugs and terrorism. Our excuses for global domination always change: Serj Tankian

What our leaders and pundits never let slip is that the terrorists -- whatever else they might be -- might also be rational human beings ; which is to say that in their own minds they have a rational justification for their actions. Most terrorists are people deeply concerned by what they see as social, political, or religious injustice and hypocrisy, and the immediate grounds for their terrorism is often retaliation for an action of the United States . . .: William Blum

I find war detestable but those who praise it without participating in it even more so: Romain Rolland

Only the winners decide what were war crimes.: Gary Wills – Author

A tyrant must put on the appearance of uncommon devotion to religion. Subjects are less apprehensive of illegal treatment from a ruler whom they consider god-fearing and pious. On the other hand, they do less easily move against him, believing that he has the gods on his side: Aristotle

"The US and other Western governments turned a blind eye to Amnesty International reports of widespread human rights violations in Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war, and ignored Amnesty International's campaign on behalf of the thousands of unarmed Kurdish civilians killed in the 1988 attacks on Halabja. Once again, the human rights record of a country is used selectively to legitimize military actions." Amnesty International

"The only place you and I disagree . . . is with regard to the bombing. You're so goddamned concerned about the civilians, and I (in contrast) don't give a damn. I don't care.". . . "I'd rather use the nuclear bomb. . . Does that bother you? I just want you to think big." : Richard Nixon to Secretary of State Henry Kissinger on the Watergate tapes

"I sat there in agony thinking about all that had led me to this private hell. My idealism, my patriotism, my ambition, my plans to be a good intelligence officer to help my country fight the communist scourge — what in the hell had happened? Why did we have to bomb the people we were trying to save? Why were we napalming young children? Why did the CIA, my employer for 16 years, report lies instead of the truth?"I hated my part in the charade of murder and horror. My efforts were contributing to the deaths, to the burning alive of children — especially the children. The photographs of young Vietnamese children burned by napalm destroyed me." : Ralph McGehee former CIA intelligence analyst

"I suspected I was just part of a racket at the time. Now I am sure of it. Like all members of the military profession I never had an original thought until I left the service. My mental faculties remained in suspended animation while I obeyed the orders of the higher- ups. This is typical with everyone in the military service." : General Smedley Butler. USMC (Ret.)

"Until we go through it ourselves, until our people cower in the shelters of New York, Washington, Chicago, Los Angeles and elsewhere while the buildings collapse overhead and burst into flames, and dead bodies hurtle about and, when it is over for the day or the night, emerge in the rubble to find some of their dear ones mangled, their homes gone, their hospitals, churches, schools demolished — only after that gruesome experience will we realize what we are inflicting on the people of Indochina..." : William Shirer author 1973

"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." Martin Luther King, Jr. Speech given at Riverside Church : April 4, 1967

"They tell us that we live in a great free republic; that our institutions are democratic; that we are a free and self-governing people. That is too much, even for a joke. ... Wars throughout history have been waged for conquest and plunder... And that is war in a nutshell. The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles." : Eugene Victor Debs

"For most Americans the Constitution had become a hazy document, cited like the Bible on ceremonial occasions but forgotten in the daily transactions of life." : Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. - (1888-1965)

"Can we truly expect that those who aim to exploit us can be trusted to educate us?" : Eric Schaub - Individualist, activist, speaker, author

"Our only political party has two right wings, one called Republican, the other Democratic. But Henry Adams figured all that out back in the 1890s. ‘We have a single system,’ he wrote, and ‘in that system the only question is the price at which the proletariat is to be bought and sold, the bread and circuses.’" Gore Vidal - The Decline and Fall of the American Empire

" The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to the point where it becomes stronger than the democratic state itself. That in its essence is fascism - ownership of government by an individual, by a group or any controlling private power. " : President Franklin Delano Roosevelt

"We stand for the maintenance of private property... We shall protect free enterprise as the most expedient, or rather the sole possible economic order.": Adolph Hitler

"To plunder, to slaughter, to steal, these things they misname empire, and where they make a wilderness, they call it peace." : Tacitus - Roman historian - c. 55-120 A.D.

"If a baseball player slides into home plate and, right before the umpire rules if he is safe or out, the player says to the umpire — ‘Here is $1,000.’ What would we call that? We would call that a bribe. If a lawyer was arguing a case before a judge and said, ‘Your honor before you decide on the guilt or innocence of my client, here is $1,000.’ What would we call that? We would call that a bribe. But if an industry lobbyist walks into the office of a key legislator and hands her or him a check for $1,000, we call that a campaign contribution. We should call it a bribe." : Janice Fine - Dollars and Sense magazine

"We never see the smoke and the fire, we never smell the blood, we never see the terror in the eyes of the children, whose nightmares will now feature screaming missiles from unseen terrorists, will be known only as Americans." : Martin Kelly

A terrorist is someone who has a bomb but doesn't have an air force: Unknown

"The enormous gap between what US leaders do in the world and what Americans think their leaders are doing is one of the great propaganda accomplishments of the dominant political mythology." : Michael Parenti political scientist, author

"The modern susceptibility to conformity and obedience to authority indicates that the truth endorsed by authority is likely to be accepted as such by a majority of the people." David Edwards - British columnist - Source: Burning All Illusions, 1996

"A slave is he who cannot speak his thoughts.": Euripides

A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murder is less to fear.: Marcus Tullius Cicero - (106-43 B.C.) Roman Statesman, Philosopher and Orator Date: 42 BC. - Source: Speech in the Roman Senate

"...free enterprise, [is] a term that refers, in practice, to a system of public subsidy and private profit, with massive government intervention in the economy to maintain a welfare state for the rich." : Noam Chomsky

"This so-called ill treatment and torture in detention centers, stories of which were spread everywhere among the people, and later by the prisoners who were freed … were not, as some assumed, inflicted methodically, but were excesses committed by individual prison guards, their deputies, and men who laid violent hands on the detainees.": Rudolf Hoess, the SS commandant at Auschwitz.

"COWARDICE, n. A charge often levelled by all-American types against those who stand up for their beliefs by refusing to fight in wars they find unconscionable, and who willingly go to prison or into exile in order to avoid violating their own consciences. These 'cowards' are to be contrasted with red-blooded, 'patriotic' youths who literally bend over, grab their ankles, submit to the government, fight in wars they do not understand (or disapprove of), and blindly obey orders to maim and to kill simply because they are ordered to do so all to the howling approval of the all-American mob. This type of behavior is commonly termed 'courageous.'"

: Chaz Bufe

How many does it take to metamorphose wickedness into righteousness? One man must not kill. If he does, it is murder.... But a state or nation may kill as many as they please, and it is not murder. It is just, necessary, commendable, and right. Only get people enough to agree to it, and the butchery of myriads of human beings is perfectly innocent. But how many does it take?: Adin Ballou, The Non-Resistant, 5 February 1845

People have not been horrified by war to a sufficient extent ... War will exist until that distant day when the conscientious objector enjoys the same reputation and prestige as the warrior does today: John Fitzgerald Kennedy

I was a bombadier in WW 2. When you are up 30,000 feet you do not hear the screams or smell the blood or see those without limbs or eyes. It was not til I read Hersey's Hiroshima that I realized what bomber pilots do: Howard Zinn

"Banking was conceived in iniquity and was born in sin. The Bankers own the earth. Take it away from them, but leave them the power to create deposits, and with the flick of the pen they will create enough deposits to buy it back again. However, take it away from them, and all the great fortunes like mine will disappear and they ought to disappear, for this would be a happier and better world to live in. But, if you wish to remain the slaves of Bankers and pay the cost of your own slavery, let them continue to create deposits." : Sir Josiah Stamp (1880-1941) President of the Bank of England in the 1920's, the second richest man in Britain

They (corporations) cannot commit treason, nor be outlawed, nor excommunicated, for they have no souls: Lord Edward Coke

criminal, n. A person with predatory instincts who has not sufficient capital to form a corporation: Howard Scot

First they came for the Communists but I was not a Communist so I did not speak out. Then they came for the Socialists and the Trade Unionists but I was not one of them, so I did not speak out. Then they came for the Jews but I was not Jewish so I did not speak out. And when they came for me, there was no one left to speak out for me. : Martin Niemoeller

The victor will never be asked if he told the truth: Adolf Hitler

"I BELIEVE that God wants me to be president." George W. Bush

"I would like to thank Providence and the Almighty for choosing me of all people to be allowed to wage this battle for Germany," Hitler - Berlin March, 1936

If we pursue this way, if we are decent, industrious, and honest, if we so loyally and truly fulfill our duty, then it is my conviction that in the future as in the past the Lord God will always help us: Adolf Hitler, at the Harvest Thanksgiving Festival on the Buckeburg held on 3 Oct. 1937

"Never in these long years have we offered any other prayer but this: Lord, grant to our people peace at home, and grant and preserve to them peace from the foreign foe!" : Hitler - Nuremberg Sept. 13, 1936.

"In any First World country of advanced capitalism, the new fascism will be colored by national and cultural heritage, ethnic and religious composition, formal political structure, and geographical environment...In America, it would be supermodern and multi-ethnic--as American as Madison Avenue, executive luncheons, credit cards and apple pie. It would be fascism with a smile. As a warning against its cosmetic facade, subtle manipulation and velvet gloves, I call it friendly fascism. What scares me most is its subtle appeal." Bertram Gross, "Friendly Fascism: The New Face of Power in America, South End Press, Boston, 1980, p.3

"In the realities of the capitalist system...'inter-imperialist or ultra-imperialist' alliances are inevitably nothing more than a truce between wars." V.I. Lenin, Intro to "Imperialism and World Economy" by Nicolai Bukharin, 1915, Monthly Review Press, 1973

"A great empire and little minds go ill together." Edmund Burke

"For any imperial policy to work effectively...it needs moral and intellectual guidance...It is much to be doubted that the United States can continue to play an imperial role without the endorsement of its intellectual class...It is always possible to hope that this intellectual class will...help formulate a new set of more specific principles that will relate the ideals which sustain American democracy to the harsh and nasty imperatives of imperial power." Irving Kristol, "American Intellectuals and Foreign Policy" in "Foreign Affairs", July 1967

"Through clever and constant application of propaganda, people can be made to see paradise as hell, and also the other way around to consider the most wretched sort of life as paradise." Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf

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

Like the effect of advertising upon the customer, the methods of political propaganda tend to increase the feeling of insignificance of the individual voter: Erich Fromm, psychoanalyst and social philosopher, 1900-1980

The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts. Bertrand Russell, philosopher, mathematician, author, Nobel laureate (1872-1970)

"That's not really a number I'm terribly interested in.": General Colin Powell, Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, on being asked his assessment of Iraqi military and civilian casualties, April 1991

Lesley Stahl: "I mean, that's more children than died in Hiroshima. & — and you know, is the price worth it?"Madeline Albright: "I think this is a very hard choice, but the price — we think the price is worth it."Former U.N. Ambassador Madeline Albright, responding to reporter Lesley Stahl as to whether the over half a million Iraqi children killed by the UN sanctions against Iraq were "worth it." CBS May 11, 1996

In the eyes of empire builders men are not men but instruments : Napoleon Bonaparte : French Emperor (1769-1821)

The government, which was designed for the people, has got into the hands of the bosses and their employers, the special interests. An invisible empire has been set up above the forms of democracy: Woodrow T. Wilson : 28th president of the United States 1856-1924

Conquerors always call themselves liberators: Sami Abdul-Rahman - Kurdish leaders enraged by 'undemocratic' American plan to occupy Iraq, Independent, 2/18/03

We used to have a War Office, but now we have a Ministry of Defence, nuclear bombs are now described as deterrents, innocent civilians killed in war are now described as collateral damage and military incompetence leading to US bombers killing British soldiers is cosily described as friendly fire. Those who are in favour of peace are described as mavericks and troublemakers, whereas the real militants are those who want the war: Tony Benn

"Herein lies a riddle: How can a people so gifted by God become so seduced by naked power, so greedy for money, so addicted to violence, so slavish before mediocre and treacherous leadership, so paranoid, deluded, lunatic?" : Philip Berrigan - Source: Hell, Healing and Resistance Veterans Speak

"To initiate a war of aggression ... is not only an international crime, it is the supreme international crime, differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole."International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg, Germany – 1946

"Look, if you think any American official is going to tell you the truth, then you're stupid. Did you hear that? - stupid."Arthur Sylvester, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs, 1965

"This [the U.S. Constitution] is likely to be administered for a course of years and then end in despotism... when the people shall become so corrupted as to need despotic government, being incapable of any other." Benjamin Franklin

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

"If fascism ever came to the United States, it would be wrapped in an American flag."Huey Long

"fascism - A system of government that exercises a dictatorship of the extreme right, typically through the merging of state and business leadership, together with belligerent nationalism."The American Heritage Dictionary, 1983

"Fascism is on the march today in America. Millionaires are marching to the tune. It will come in this country unless a strong defense is set up by all liberal and progressive forces... A clique of U.S. industrialists is hell-bent to bring a fascist state to supplant our democratic government, and is working closely with the fascist regime in Germany and Italy. Aboard ship a prominent executive of one of America's largest financial corporations told me point blank that if the progressive trend of the Roosevelt administration continued, he would be ready to take definite action to bring fascism to America."former ambassador to Germany William Dodd in 1938

"We live in a nation hated abroad and frightened at home. A place in which we can reasonably refer to the American Republic in the past tense. A country that has moved into a post-constitutional era, no longer a nation of laws but an autotocracy run by law breakers, law evaders and law ignorers. A nation governed by a culture of impunity ... a culture in which corruption is no longer a form of deviance but the norm. We all live in a Mafia neighborhood now." Sam Smith

"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

"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

" The crisis of modern democracy is a profound one. Free elections, a free press and an independent judiciary mean little when the free market has reduced them to commodities available on sale to the highest bidder." Arundhati Roy

"24.9 percent of American children live in poverty, while the proportions in Germany, France and Italy are 8.6, 7.4 and 10.5 percent. And once born on the wrong side of the tracks, Americans are more likely to stay there than their counterparts in Europe. Those born to better-off families are more likely to stay better off. America is developing an aristocracy of the rich and a serfdom of the poor - the inevitable result of a twenty-year erosion of its social contract." Will Hutton

"To oppose the policies of a government does not mean you are against the country or the people that the government supposedly represents. Such opposition should be called what it really is: democracy, or democratic dissent, or having a critical perspective about what your leaders are doing. Either we have the right to democratic dissent and criticism of these policies or we all lie down and let the leader, the Fuhrer, do what is best, while we follow uncritically, and obey whatever he commands. That's just what the Germans did with Hitler, and look where it got them." Michael Parenti

"Only the grand scale and technocratic impersonality of the crimes conceived and directed by the [U.S.] ruling elite acting under cover of state authority distinguish them from garden variety killers." Darrell Hamamoto

"Americans cannot escape a certain responsibility for what is done in our name around the world. In a democracy, even one as corrupted as ours, ultimate authority rests with the people. We empower the government with our votes, finance it with our taxes, bolster it with our silent acquiescence. If we are passive in the face of America's official actions overseas, we in effect endorse them." Mark Hertzgaard

"The United States is a society in which people not only can get by without knowing much about the wider world but are systematically encouraged not to think independently or critically and instead to accept the mythology of the United States as a benevolent, misunderstood giant as it lumbers around the world trying to do good." Robert Jensen, Citizens of Empire

"If the U.S. really believes that supporting terrorists makes you as guilty as the terrorists themselves, then it would have to put on trial most of its military and political leadership over the last handful of administrations, and more." Peter McClaren

An evil exists that threatens every man, woman, and child of this great nation. We must take steps to ensure our domestic security and protect our homeland: Adolph Hitler : In 1933, Hitler used the burning of the Reichstag as a pretext to push through emergency decrees suspending the basic civil liberties of German citizens. The "emergency" decrees remained in effect until the fall of the Third Reich in 1945

Not as tyrants have we come, but as liberators: Adolf Hitler, 1938

A people living under the perpetual menace of war and invasion is very easy to govern. It demands no social reforms. It does not haggle over expenditures for armaments and military equipment. It pays without discussion, it ruins itself, and that is an excellent thing for the syndicates of financiers and manufacturers for whom patriotic terrors are an abundant source of gain: Anatole France, pseudonym for Jacques Anatole Thibault (1844-1924)

The minority, the ruling class at present, has the schools and press, usually the Church as well, under its thumb. This enables it to organize and sway the emotions of the masses, and make its tool of them: Albert Einstein - Source: letter to Sigmund Freud, 30 July 1932

A highwayman is as much a robber when he plunders in a gang as when single; and a nation that makes an unjust war is only a great gang: Benjamin Franklin - Letter to Benjamin Vaughan, 14 March 1785 (B 11:16-7)

When a whole nation is roaring Patriotism at the top of its voice, I am fain to explore the cleanness of its hands and the purity of its heart: Ralph Waldo Emerson

Wars throughout history have been waged for conquest and plunder.... the working class who fight all the battles, the working class who make the supreme sacrifices, the working class who freely shed their blood and furnish their corpses, have never yet had a voice in either declaring war or making peace. It is the ruling class that invariably does both. They alone declare war and they alone make peace....They are continually talking about their patriotic duty. It is not their but your patriotic duty that they are concerned about. There is a decided difference. Their patriotic duty never takes them to the firing line or chucks them into the trenches. Eugene V. Debs

There are no boundaries in this struggle to the death. We cannot be indifferent to what happens anywhere in the world, for a victory by any country over imperialism is our victory: Ernesto Che Guevara

I am strongly in favour of using poisoned gas against uncivilised tribes: Winston Churchill, 1919, at the time secretary of defense

Our crimes, for which we are responsible: as taxpayers, for failing to provide massive reparations, for granting refuge and immunity to the perpetrators, and for allowing the terrible facts to be sunk deep in the memory hole. All of this is of great significance, as it has been in the past: Noam Chomsky - 9-11, p. 46

If the Nuremberg laws were applied, then every post-war American president would have been hanged : Noam Chomsky –

" What would have happened if millions of American and British people, struggling with coupons and lines at the gas stations, had learned that in 1942 Standard Oil of New Jersey [part of the Rockefeller empire] managers shipped the enemy's fuel through neutral Switzerland and that the enemy was shipping Allied fuel? Suppose the public had discovered that the Chase Bank in Nazi-occupied Paris after Pearl Harbor was doing millions of dollars' worth of business with the enemy with the full knowledge of the head office in Manhattan [the Rockefeller family among others?] Or that Ford trucks were being built for the German occupation troops in France with authorization from Dearborn, Michigan? Or that Colonel Sosthenes Behn, the head of the international American telephone conglomerate ITT, flew from New York to Madrid to Berne during the war to help improve Hitler's communications systems and improve the robot bombs that devastated London? Or that ITT built the FockeWulfs that dropped bombs on British and American troops? Or that crucial balI bearings were shipped to Nazi-associated customers in Latin America with the collusion of the vice-chairman of the U.S. War Production Board in partnership with Goering's cousin in Philadelphia when American forces were desperately short of them? Or that such arrangements were known about in Washington and either sanctioned or deliberately ignored?"Charles Higham, researcher, about U.S.-Nazi collaboration during WWII ("Trading With the Enemy")

"To provide its happy people with perpetual fun is now the deepest purpose of Western civilization." Jeremy Seabrook, Third World Network

"There is no reason to accept the doctrines crafted to sustain power and privilege, or to believe that we are constrained by mysterious and unknown social laws. These are simply decisions made within institutions that are subject to human will and that must face the test of legitimacy. And if they do not meet the test, they can be replaced by other institutions that are more free and more just, as has happened often in the past."Noam Chomsky, American linguist and US media and foreign policy critic

" With unfailing consistancy, U.S. intervention has been on the side of the rich and powerful of various nations at the expense of the poor and needy. Rather than strengthening democracies, U.S. leaders have overthrown numerous democratically elected governments or other populist regimes in dozens of countries ... whenever these nations give evidence of putting the interests of their people ahead of the interests of multinational corporate interests."Michael Parenti, political scientist and author

" I am astonished each time I come to the U.S. by the ignorance of a high percentage of the population, which knows almost nothing about Latin America or about the world. It's quite blind and deaf to anything that may happen outside the frontiers of the U.S..Eduardo Galeano, Latin American writer and historian

"For the last fifty years we've been supporting right-wing governments, and that is a puzzlement to me...I don't understand what there is in the American character... that almost automatically, even when we have a liberal President, we support fascist dictatorships or are tolerant towards them." William Shirer, author

"The only thing worth globalizing is dissent."Arundhati Roy, author

"The goal of conservative rulers around the world, led by those who occupy the seats of power in Washington, is the systematic rollback of democratic gains, public services, and common living standards around the world." Michael Parenti

"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." Benjamin Franklin, 1759

"Those in power are blind devotees to private enterprise. They accept that degree of socialism implicit in the vast subsidies to the military-industrial-complex, but not that type of socialism which maintains public projects for the disemployed and the unemployed alike." William O. Douglas, former U.S. Supreme Court Justice, 1969

"The U.S. is a signatory to nine multilateral treaties that it has either blatantly violated or gradually subverted. The Bush Administration is now outright rejecting a number of those treaties, and in doing so, places global security in jeopardy, as other nations feel entitled to do the same. The rejected treaties include: The Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), the Treaty Banning Antipersonnel Mines, the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC), a protocol to create a compliance regime for the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC), the Kyoto Protocol on global warming, and the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (ABM). The U.S. is also not complying with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), the Chemical Weapons Commission (CWC), the BWC, and the U.N. framework Convention on Climate Change."Project Censored 2005

"Four sorrows ... are certain to be visited on the United States. Their cumulative effect guarantees that the U.S. will cease to resemble the country outlined in the Constitution of 1787. First, there will be a state of perpetual war, leading to more terrorism against Americans wherever they may be and a spreading reliance on nuclear weapons among smaller nations as they try to ward off the imperial juggernaut. Second is a loss of democracy and Constitutional rights as the presidency eclipses Congress and is itself transformed from a co-equal 'executive branch' of government into a military junta. Third is the replacement of truth by propaganda, disinformation, and the glorification of war, power, and the military legions. Lastly, there is bankruptcy, as the United States pours its economic resources into ever more grandiose military projects and shortchanges the education, health, and safety of its citizens."Chalmers Johnson, Sorrows of Empire

"Cheap labor has always been at the heart of U.S.-Haitian relations, ever since the Haitian Revolution in 1804. It was actually a slave rebellion, the first and still the only successful one in modern history. The U.S. sided with French colonialism as the U.S. economy was based on slavery at the time and Haiti represented the first "dangerous example." Ricky Bald

"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 ... 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

"Somebody's paying the corporations that destroyed Iraq and the corporations that are rebuilding it. They're getting paid by the American taxpayer in both cases. So we pay them to destroy the country, and then we pay them to rebuild it. Those are gifts from U.S. taxpayer to U.S. corporations..." Noam Chomsky

"Where did this idea come from that everybody deserves free education, free medical care, free whatever? It comes from Moscow, from Russia. It comes straight out of the pit of hell."Texas State Representative Debbie Riddle of Houston

"If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State."Joseph Goebbels, German Minister of Propaganda, 1933-1945

"A tiny portion of the population controls the lion's share of the wealth and most of the command positions of state, manufacturing, banking, investment, publishing, higher education, philanthropy, and media... these individuals exercise a preponderant influence over what is passed off as public information and democratic discourse." Michael Parenti

"War, we have come to believe, is a spectator sport. The military and the press ... have turned war into a vast video arcade game. Its very essence - death - is hidden from public view."Chris Hedges

"The men and women who enlist in this country's military [should] be told the truth that they are not protecting the United States, they are and always have been protecting corporate interests." Chante Wolf, Veterans for Peace activist

"The corporations don't have to lobby the government any more. They are the government."Jim Hightower

"The United States is the greatest threat to world peace, and has been for a long time, and not merely because it is the world's only superpower. Equally important, the United States is also far more disposed to use its power than any other powerful nation currently is. Though Americans are culturally and emotionally blind to the fact, the mere intrusion of US power is, in and of itself, destabilizing." T.D. Allman

"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 fact that we've been a great democracy doesn't mean we will automatically keep being one if we keep waving the flag." Norman Mailer

And from John Toland, preeminent biographer of Adolf Hitler:Hitler’s concept of concentration camps as well as the practicality of genocide owed much, so he claimed, to his studies of English and United States history. He admired the camps for Boer prisoners in South Africa And for the Indians in the Wild West; and often praised to his inner circle the efficiency of America’s extermination—by starvation and uneven combat—of the ‘Red Savages’ who could not be tamed by captivity.” (John Toland, “Adolf Hitler” Vol II, p 802, Doubleday & Co, 1976)