Words of Wisdom - v - Deaf Ears

Hey Folks -

Do you think anyone could read all the quotations below and still support George Bush, be a conservative or Libertarian, think we actually have a democracy (in its dictionary meaning) or a "free" media or an "informed electorate" or free speech? Could anyone doubt the danger of militarism or the military-industrial complex or American foreign policy? Could anyone believe that our government tells us the truth?

If anyone does, they have a difficult position - at least if they want to defend it rationally.

- Uke Man

"One of the intentions of corporate-controlled media is to instill in people a sense of disempowerment, of immobilization and paralysis. Its outcome is to turn you into good consumers. It is to keep people isolated, to feel that there is no possibility for social change."

-----------David Barsamian, journalist and publisher



"Patriotism, like religion, meets people's need for something greater to which their individual lives can be anchored ... America's state religion,[is] patriotism, a phenomenon which has convinced many of the citizenry that"treason" is morally worse than murder or rape "

-----------William Blum, author of Killing Hope



"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 and author



" The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises inmoral philosophy: that is the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness."

-----------John Kenneth Galbraith , economist and author


"History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people. "

-----------Martin Luther King, Jr.



"The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum - even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there's free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate. "

-----------Noam Chomsky, American linguist, author, US media and foreign policy critic



"The great masses of people. . .will more easily fall victims to a big lie than to a small one."

-----------Adolph Hitler



"Anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself silenced with surprising effectiveness. "

-----------George Orwell, author "1984"



"If an American is concerned only about his nation, he will not beconcerned about the peoples of Asia, Africa, or South America. Is this not why nations engage in the madness of war without the slightest sense of penitence? Is this not why the murder of a citizen of your own nation is a crime, but the murder of citizens of another nation in war is an act of heroic virtue? "

-----------Martin Luther King, Jr.



"To provide its happy people with perpetual fun is now the deepest purpose of Western civilization."

-----------Jeremy Seabrook, Third World Network



" ... the airwaves belong to the people. "

-----------from the 1934 Communications Act



" The only way to abolish war is to make peace heroic."

----------John Dewey , Americanphilosopher and educator, 1859-1952



"Americans have been taught that their nation is civilized and humane. But, too often, U.S. actions have been uncivilized and inhumane."

----------Howard Zinn, historian and author



"Every man of humane convictions must decide on the protest that best suits his convictions, but we must all protest. "

----------Martin Luther King, Jr.



" When I visited Auschwitz I was horrified. And when I visited Iraq, I thought to myself, 'What will we tell our children in fifty years when they ask what we did when the people in Iraq were dying.'"

----------Mairead McGuire , 1976Nobel Peace Prize Winner, Northern Ireland



"One of the great attractions of patriotism -- it fulfills our worst wishes. In the person of our nation we are able, vicariously, to bully and cheat. Bully and cheat, what's more, with a feeling that we are profoundly virtuous."

----------Aldous Huxley , English author, 1894-1963



"Does it sound outrageous to you that military spending for fiscal year 2000 will be almost $290 billion and all other domestic discretionary spending, such as education, job training, housing, Amtrak, medical research, environment, Head Start and many other worthwhile programs will total $246 billion, thebiggest disparity in modern times ? "

----------Dale Bumpers , former US Senator and present Director of the Center for Defense Information



" It is no longer a question of controlling a military-industrial complex, but rather, of keeping the United States from becoming a totally military culture. "

----------Jerome Wiesner, president emeritus of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology



" In the councils of government, we must guard against unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist."

----------President Dwight D. Eisenhower in his Farewell Address, 1961



" Americans cannot teach democracy to the world until they restore their own."

----------William Greider ,journalist and author



"The crimes of the U.S. throughout the world have been systematic, constant, clinical, remorseless, and fully documented but nobody talks about them."

----------Harold Pinter, English dramatist, Nobel Prize winner



"I believe that if we had and would keep our dirty, bloody,dollar-soaked fingers out of the business of these [Third World] nations so full of depressed, exploited people, they will arrive at a solution of their own....And if unfortunately their revolution must be of the violent type because the"haves" refuse to share with the "have-nots" by any peaceful method, at least what they get will be their own, and not the American style, which they don't want and above all don't want crammed down their throats by Americans."

----------General David Sharp, former US Marine Commandant,1966



" In the United States today, the Declaration of Independence hangs on schoolroom walls, but foreign policy follows Machiavelli."

----------Howard Zinn , historian and author



" Enemies are necessary for the wheels of the U.S. military machine to turn. "

----------John Stockwell , former CIA official and author



"Our government has kept us in a perpetual state of fear - kept us in a continuous stampede of patriotic fervor - 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, 1957



" Never forget that everything Hitler did in Germany was legal. "

----------Martin Luther King, Jr.



"My country is the world and my religion is to do good."

----------Thomas Paine



"I never would believe that Providence has sent a few rich men into theworld, ready booted and spurred to ride, and millions ready saddled and bridled to be ridden."

----------Richard Rumbold: Statement on scaffold before being hanged for rebellion, 1685



"We have too many men of science, too few men of God. We have grasped the mystery of the atom and rejected the Sermon on the Mount . . . . The world has achieved brilliance without wisdom, power without conscience. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants. We know more about war than we know about peace, more about killing than we know about living."

----------General Omar N. Bradley, Chief of Staff, United States Army, Boston,November 10th, 1948



"Every single day, every single one of us needs to step outside and takesome action to help stop this war. Raise some hell."

----------Molly Ivins