©2008-2009 Roedy Green, Canadian Mind Products
What America has essentially done is transform Iraq from a very brutal, but highly functioning secular state into a very brutal, totally dysfunctional theocracy.
~ Jenan al-Ubaedy Full Cover Girl
Remember one thing about democracy. We can have anything we want and at the same time, we always end up with exactly what we deserve.
~ Edward Albee (born: 1928-03-12 age: 81)
I ain’t got no quarrel with those Vietcong.
~ Muhammad Ali (born: 1942-01-17 age: 67)Unlike most young men in 1966, Ali was brave enough to resist the draft into the Viet Nam war.
All men are prepared to accomplish the incredible if their ideals are threatened.
~ Maya Angelou (born: 1928-04-04 age: 81)
One of the biggest flaws in the common conception of the future is that the future is something that happens to us, not something we create.
~ Michael Anissimov 1995
The invasion and occupation of Iraq is illegal.
~ Kofi Annan (born: 1938-04-08 age: 71) Secretary General and Boutros Boutros-Ghali (born: 1922-11-14 age: 86) former Secretary General of the U.N.
If Americans and Jews are God’s chosen people, why did He hide all their oil under Muslim soil?
~ Anonymous
War does not determine who is right — only who is left.
~ Anonymous
What’s the difference between an American soldier and a sow? A sow kills and devours her neighbour’s young; an American soldier kills but doesn’t eat them.
~ Anonymous
When we approach the question of Iraq, we realize here is a country which has a resource. And it’s obvious, it’s oil. And it can bring in and does bring in a certain amount of revenue each year… $10, $15, even $18 billion… this is not a broke country.
~ Richard Armitage (born: 1945-04-26 age: 64) Deputy Secretary of State 2003-03, all but admitting the Republicans invaded Iraq as an in investment in oil, As of 2008-07 the cost of the Iraq war is about $3000 billion and climbing. It is a debt so large it can never be paid off. In that sense America is already bankrupt. Future generations will pay interest in perpetuity.
I love America more than any other country in this world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.
~ James Baldwin (born: 1924-08-02 died: 1987-11-30 at age: 63)
President George W. Bush’s speech on Iraq is significant mostly because it reveals that he long ago made a decision for war and has always viewed the inspection process as an impediment to war to be overcome rather than a means to avoid war.
~ Doug Bandow (born: 1957-04-15 age: 52) senior fellow with the Cato Institute, a conservative think tank.
The USA has more people in prison that any other country, including countries with much larger populations. 13% of the population is black but 80% of the people in prison are black, mostly for soft crimes.
~ Harry Belafonte (born: 1927-03-01 age: 82)
When I was born, I was colored. I soon became a Negro. Not long after that I was black. Most recently I was African-American. It seems we’re on a roll here. But I am still first and foremost in search of freedom.
~ Harry Belafonte (born: 1927-03-01 age: 82)
If you can find money to kill people, you can find money to help people.
~ Tony Benn (born: 1925-04-03 age: 84) Labour British Member of Parliament
Is it possible that a few rich men — a small class of men — have persuaded a million poor men to attack and attempt to destroy another million men as poor as they, so that the rich may be richer still?They told them that this brutal war was the destiny of the race. It was for the glory of the emperor; it was for the honour of the state; it was for their king and country. False - false as hell! They make war to capture markets by murder, raw materials by rape. They find it cheaper to steal than to exchange, easier to butcher than to buy. This is the secret of war. It is the secret of all wars: profit.
Business. Profit. Blood money.
Threaten a reduction on the profit of their money, and the beast in them awakens with a snarl. They become as ruthless as savages, brutal as madmen, remorseless as executioners.
~ Dr. Norman Bethune (born: 1890-03-04 died: 1939-11-12 at age: 49) 1939, from his essay Wounds
Muslims don’t hate our freedoms, but rather they hate our policies.
~ US Defense Science Board 2004-12
How many things apparently impossible have nevertheless been performed by resolute men who had no alternative but death.
~ Napoléon Bonaparte (born: 1769-08-15 died: 1821-05-05 at age: 51)
Never ascribe to malice, that which can be explained by incompetence.
~ Napoléon Bonaparte (born: 1769-08-15 died: 1821-05-05 at age: 51)
One should never forbid what one lacks the power to prevent.
~ Napoléon Bonaparte (born: 1769-08-15 died: 1821-05-05 at age: 51)
[Insurgents] pose no strategic threat to the United States or to the Coalition Forces.
~ L. Paul Bremer III (born: 1941-09-30 age: 68) Administrator of the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq, 2003-11-17
As we now know, Iraq had no tie to Osama, no role in 9/11, no nuclear program, no weapons of mass destruction, no plans to attack us. Its people did not threaten us and did not want war with us.
~ Pat Buchanan (born: 1938-11-02 age: 71) 2004-02-11
All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.
~ Edmund Burke (born: 1729-01-12 died: 1797-07-09 at age: 68)
The public interest requires doing today those things that men of intelligence and good will would wish, five or ten years hence, had been done.
~ Edmund Burke (born: 1729-01-12 died: 1797-07-09 at age: 68)
I will never apologise for the United States. I don’t care what the facts are.
~ George Herbert Walker Bush (born: 1924-06-12 age: 85) aka Bush-41, Bush Sr. after the US shot down a civilian airliner over Iran killing all 290 innocent passengers. The apple does not fall far from the tree.
I wouldn’t join the International Criminal Court. This is a body based in The Hague where unaccountable judges, prosecutors, could pull our troops, our diplomats up for trial. And I wouldn’t join. And I understand that in certain capitals of, around the world that that wasn’t a popular move. But it’s the right move not to join a foreign court that could, where our people could be prosecuted.
~ George W. Bush (born: 1946-07-06 age: 63), 2004-10-01 confessing he is a an international scofflaw during the first presidential debate with Kerry.
If you must break the law, do it to seize power: in all other cases, observe it.
~ Julius Gaius Caesar (born: 100-07-13 BC died: 44-03-15 BC at age: 55)
I found out why war is hell — army authority is absolute. You are defended and judged by the same kind of people who accuse and prosecute you.
~ Michael Caine (born: 1933-03-14 age: 76), Playboy, 1996
Good people can’t out-think evil, cause evil thinks of things good folks can’t think of.
~ Orson Scott Card (born: 1951-08-24 age: 58), Homebody
Once you duct-tape a Ziploc bag to a man’s chest, there’s no going back.
~ Orson Scott Card (born: 1951-08-24 age: 58), Treasure Box
Terrorism : killing civilians with the intent of changing their political affiliation.
~ Caleb Carr (born: 1955-08-02 age: 54), military historianBy that definition, who are the terrorists?
Those who perpetrated 9/11. Pro-lifers who bomb abortion clinics. Palestinians killing Israeli civilians occupying their lands. The Israeli soldiers killing Palestinians. American soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq killing civilians. American soldiers in the Gulf War killing Iraqi soldiers. P.O.W.s in Afghanistan and Iraq. Those killing occupying American soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq. Palestinians killing Israeli soldiers occupying their lands.
The definition of terrorism is killing civilians with the intent of changing their political affiliation.
~ Caleb Carr (born: 1955-08-02 age: 54), military historianSo, strange as it sounds to American ears, the American soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan are just as much terrorists as bin Laden.
How Bush and his junta succeeded in deflecting America’s anger from bin Laden to Saddam Hussein is one of the great public relations conjuring tricks of history. But they swung it. A recent poll tells us that one in two Americans now believe Saddam was responsible for the attack on the World Trade Centre.
~ John le Carré (born: 1931-10-19 age: 78)
Unless both sides win, no agreement can be permanent.
~ Jimmy Carter (born: 1924-10-24 age: 85) 39th president of the USA
War may sometimes be a necessary evil. But no matter how necessary, it is always an evil, never a good. We will not learn how to live together in peace by killing each other’s children.
~ Jimmy Carter (born: 1924-10-24 age: 85) 39th president of the USA
We must make it clear that a platform of ‘I hate gay men and women’ is not a way to become president of the United States.
~ Jimmy Carter (born: 1924-10-24 age: 85) 39th president of the USA
What has happened at Guantanamo Bay… does not represent the will of the American people. I’m embarrassed about it, I think its wrong. I think it does give terrorists an unwarranted excuse to use the despicable means to hurt innocent people.
~ Jimmy Carter (born: 1924-10-24 age: 85) 39th president of the USA
All over the place, from the popular culture to the propaganda system, there is constant pressure to make people feel that they are helpless, that the only role they can have is to ratify decisions and to consume.
~ Noam Chomsky (born: 1928-12-07 age: 80)
Any dictator would admire the uniformity and obedience of the U.S. media.
~ Noam Chomsky (born: 1928-12-07 age: 80)
Either you repeat the same conventional doctrines everybody is saying, or else you say something true, and it will sound like it’s from Neptune.
~ Noam Chomsky (born: 1928-12-07 age: 80)
Everybody’s worried about stopping terrorism. Well, there’s a really easy way: stop participating in it.
~ Noam Chomsky (born: 1928-12-07 age: 80)
If the Nuremberg laws were applied, then every post-war American president would have been hanged.
~ Noam Chomsky (born: 1928-12-07 age: 80)
If we don’t believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don’t believe in it at all.
~ Noam Chomsky (born: 1928-12-07 age: 80)
States are not moral agents, people are, and can impose moral standards on powerful institutions.
~ Noam Chomsky (born: 1928-12-07 age: 80)
The more you can increase fear of drugs and crime, welfare mothers, immigrants and aliens, the more you control all the people.
~ Noam Chomsky (born: 1928-12-07 age: 80)
To some degree it matters who’s in office, but it matters more how much pressure they’re under from the public.
~ Noam Chomsky (born: 1928-12-07 age: 80)
We can, for example, be fairly confident that either there will be a world without war or there won’t be a world — at least, a world inhabited by creatures other than bacteria and beetles, with some scattering of others.
~ Noam Chomsky (born: 1928-12-07 age: 80)
If U.S. foreign policy results in massive death and destruction abroad, we cannot feign innocence when some of that destruction is returned.
~ Ward Churchill (born: 1947-10-02 age: 62)
When you kill 500,000 children in order to impose your will on other countries, then you shouldn’t be surprised when somebody responds in kind.
~ Ward Churchill (born: 1947-10-02 age: 62)
Democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.
~ Winston Churchill (born: 1874-11-30 died: 1965-01-24 at age: 90)
The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.
~ Winston Churchill (born: 1874-11-30 died: 1965-01-24 at age: 90)Democracy works because consensus is wiser than the average individual.
We can always count on the Americans to do the right thing, after they have exhausted all the other possibilities.
~ Winston Churchill (born: 1874-11-30 died: 1965-01-24 at age: 90)Every other nation has discovered that single payer health care is by far the best solution to delivery the highest quality care for the lowest cost. Americans want to try a some other ineffective schemes to appease the insurance companies and pharamaceutical companies a little longer.
To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child.
~ Marcus Tullius Cicero (born: 106-01-03 BC died: 43-12-07 BC at age: 63)
What we’re saying today is that you’re either part of the solution or you’re part of the problem.
~ Eldridge Cleaver (born: 1935-08-31 died: 1998-05-01 at age: 62) U.S. African-American leader
Our mission is to go after Al Qaeda, not the Taliban. Right now, they are in Pakistan, not Afghanistan. We should go after them wherever they are.
~ Max Cleland (born: 1942-08-24 age: 67) Viet Nam Vet, and former US Senator, 2009-19-07
I’ve always wanted to go to Switzerland to see what the army does with those wee red knives.
~ Billy Connolly (born: 1942-11-24 age: 66)
America’s health care system is neither healthy, caring, nor a system.
~ Walter Cronkite (born: 1916-11-04 died: 2009-07-17 at age: 92)
The invasion of Iraq was illegal from the start.
~ Walter Cronkite (born: 1916-11-04 died: 2009-07-17 at age: 92) 2007-12-04, Common Dreams
The principal beneficiary of America’s foreign assistance programs has always been the United States.
~ US Agency for International Development
You don’t get a statue in the park for anything but going to war.
~ Phil Donahue (born: 1935-12-21 age: 73)
Restriction of free thought and free speech is the most dangerous of all subversions. It is the one un-American act that could most easily defeat us.
~ William O. Douglas (born: 1898-10-16 died: 1980-01-19 at age: 81)
The world will never have lasting peace so long as men reserve for war the finest human qualities. Peace, no less than war, requires idealism and self-sacrifice and a righteous and dynamic faith.
~ John Foster Dulles (born: 1888-02-25 died: 1959-05-24 at age: 71)
As a lifelong student of the world’s wisdom literature, it is my duty to inform students that ‘ridding the world of evil’ is a goal very different from any recommended by Jesus, Buddha or Muhammad, though not so different from some recommended by Joseph Stalin, Joseph McCarthy and Mao Tse Tung.
~ David James Duncan (born: 1952-02-03 age: 57) When Compassion Becomes Dissent, Orion Magazine, 2003-01
We find that when conquerors come, their first words are often “We are your friends”.
~ Chancellor Avel Durken , a character in Star Trek Next Generation, First Contact.
Take the year a country first reaches 50% literacy, and add one or two generations to allow the idea to sink in, and, democracy, more or less automatically, appears.
~ Gwynne Dyer (born: 1943-03-17 age: 66)
We must abolish war, or sooner or later it will abolish us.
~ Gwynne Dyer (born: 1943-03-17 age: 66)
I have felt it myself. The glitter of nuclear weapons. It is irresistible if you come to them as a scientist. To feel it’s there in your hands, to release this energy that fuels the stars, to let it do your bidding. To perform these miracles, to lift a million tons of rock into the sky. It is something that gives people an illusion of illimitable power, and it is, in some ways, responsible for all our troubles — this, what you might call technical arrogance, that overcomes people when they see what they can do with their minds.
~ Freeman Dyson (born: 1923-12-15 age: 85) The Day After Trinity
I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.
~ Albert Einstein (born: 1879-03-14 died: 1955-04-18 at age: 76)
If I had only known, I would have been a locksmith.
~ Albert Einstein (born: 1879-03-14 died: 1955-04-18 at age: 76)
The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking and we thus drift toward unparalleled catastrophe.
~ Albert Einstein (born: 1879-03-14 died: 1955-04-18 at age: 76) Telegram, 1946-04-25
The world is not dangerous because of those who do harm but because of those who look at it without doing anything.
~ Albert Einstein (born: 1879-03-14 died: 1955-04-18 at age: 76) Telegram, 1946-04-25
Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth.
~ Albert Einstein (born: 1879-03-14 died: 1955-04-18 at age: 76)
We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if mankind is to survive.
~ Albert Einstein (born: 1879-03-14 died: 1955-04-18 at age: 76)
You cannot prevent and prepare for war at the same time.
~ Albert Einstein (born: 1879-03-14 died: 1955-04-18 at age: 76)
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.
~ Dwight D. Eisenhower (born: 1890-10-14 died: 1969-03-28 at age: 78)
The best defense is no offense.
~ Dr. Ivan Eland (born: 1879-03-14 died: 1955-04-18 at age: 76)
Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
~ Thomas Stearns Eliot (born: 1888-09-26 died: 1965-01-04 at age: 76)
Freedom of speech and freedom of action are meaningless without freedom to think. And there is no freedom of thought without doubt.
~ Bergen Evans (born: 1904-09-19 died: 1978-02-04 at age: 73)
A prima facie case can be made that the United States is guilty of the supreme crime against humanity, that being an illegal war of aggression against a sovereign nation.
~ Benjamin Ferencz (born: 1920-03-01 age: 89) Chief Prosecutor for the United States in The Einsatzgruppen Case at the Nazi Nuremberg War Crimes Trials.
The International Military Tribunal (IMT) at Nuremberg held that aggression was ‘the supreme international crime’ for which leading planners and perpetrators could be held accountable in an international court of law. The legal recognition in 1946 that war-making was not a national right, but an international crime, was the greatest achievement of the trial and the proudest accomplishment of Robert M. Jackson, the highly esteemed United States Supreme Court judge who served as Chief Prosecutor for the United States.
~ Benjamin Ferencz (born: 1920-03-01 age: 89) Chief Prosecutor for the United States in The Einsatzgruppen Case at the Nazi Nuremberg War Crimes Trials.
What has happened here is not war in its traditional sense. This is clearly a crime against humanity. War crimes are crimes which happen in war time. There is a confusion there. This is a crime against humanity because it is deliberate and intentional killing of large numbers of civilians for political or other purposes. That is not tolerable under the international systems. And it should be prosecuted pursuant to the existing laws.
~ Benjamin Ferencz (born: 1920-03-01 age: 89) Chief Prosecutor for the United States in The Einsatzgruppen Case at the Nazi Nuremberg War Crimes Trials.
Estimates of civilians killed in the Iraq war reach as high as 600,000.
~ Charles Ferguson (born: 1955-03-24 age: 54), director of the documentary No End In Sight: Iraq’s Descent Into Chaos.And that does not include the 1 to 2 million killed in the 12 years of sanction bombings leading up to the Iraq war or those killed in the Gulf War.
Regimes that feel weak are the ones that start conflicts.
~ Niall Ferguson (born: 1964-04-18 age: 45), 2009-02-23, author of The War of the World: A New History of the 20th Century
Bush is not Hitler. Hitler’s father wasn’t an arms dealer.
~ Winnipeg Comedy Festival 2008
War is the only horseman of the apocalypse that gets government funding.
~ Winnipeg Comedy Festival 2008
How lovely to think that no one need wait a moment, we can start now, slowly changing the world.
~ Ann Frank (born: 1929-06-12 died: 1945 at age: 15)
They that give up liberty for safety deserve neither.
~ Benjamin Franklin (born: 1706-01-17 died: 1790-04-17 at age: 84)
The first human who hurled an insult instead of a stone was the founder of civilization.
~ Sigmund Freud (born: 1856-05-06 died: 1939-09-23 at age: 83)
The price of empire is America’s soul, and that price is too high.
~ J. William Fulbright (born: 1905-04-09 died: 1995-02-09 at age: 89)
An error does not become truth by reason of multiplied propagation, nor does truth become error because nobody sees it.
~ Mahatma Gandhi (born: 1869-10-02 died: 1948-01-30 at age: 78)
Be the change that you want to see in the world.
~ Mahatma Gandhi (born: 1869-10-02 died: 1948-01-30 at age: 78)
Before you do anything, stop and recall the face of the poorest most helpless destitute person you have seen and ask yourself, ‘Is what I am about to do going to help him?’
~ Mahatma Gandhi (born: 1869-10-02 died: 1948-01-30 at age: 78)
Even if you are a minority of one, the truth is the truth.
~ Mahatma Gandhi (born: 1869-10-02 died: 1948-01-30 at age: 78)
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.
~ Mahatma Gandhi (born: 1869-10-02 died: 1948-01-30 at age: 78)
I am prepared to die, but there is no cause for which I am prepared to kill.
~ Mahatma Gandhi (born: 1869-10-02 died: 1948-01-30 at age: 78)
I care so deeply about this matter that I’m willing to take on the legal penalties, to sit in this prison cell, to sacrifice my freedom, in order to show you how deeply I care. Because when you see the depth of my concern, and how ‘civil’ I am in going about this, you’re bound to change your mind about me, to abandon your rigid, unjust position, and to let me help you see the truth of my cause.
~ Mahatma Gandhi (born: 1869-10-02 died: 1948-01-30 at age: 78)
It’s the action, not the fruit of the action, that’s important. You have to do the right thing. It may not be in your power, may not be in your time, that there’ll be any fruit. But that doesn’t mean you stop doing the right thing. You may never know what results come from your action. But if you do nothing, there will be no result.
~ Mahatma Gandhi (born: 1869-10-02 died: 1948-01-30 at age: 78)
My notion of democracy is that under it the weakest shall have the same opportunities as the strongest… No country in the world today shows any but patronizing regard for the weak… Western democracy, as it functions today, is diluted fascism… True democracy cannot be worked by twenty men sitting at the center. It has to be worked from below, by the people of every village.
~ Mahatma Gandhi (born: 1869-10-02 died: 1948-01-30 at age: 78)
Non-cooperation with evil is as much a duty as is cooperation with good.
~ Mahatma Gandhi (born: 1869-10-02 died: 1948-01-30 at age: 78)
What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty or democracy?
~ Mahatma Gandhi (born: 1869-10-02 died: 1948-01-30 at age: 78)
Whatever you do will be insignificant, but it is very important that you do it.
~ Mahatma Gandhi (born: 1869-10-02 died: 1948-01-30 at age: 78)
When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love has always won. There have been tyrants and murderers and for a time they seem invincible but in the end, they always fall — think of it, always.
~ Mahatma Gandhi (born: 1869-10-02 died: 1948-01-30 at age: 78)
Somebody has to do something, and it’s just incredibly pathetic that it has to be us.
~ Jerry Garcia (born: 1942-08-01 died: 1995-08-09 at age: 53), The Grateful Dead
Liberalism is trust of the people, tempered by prudence; conservatism, distrust of people, tempered by fear.
~ William Gladstone (born: 1809-12-29 died: 1898-05-19 at age: 88)
Each of the great social achievements of recent decades has come about not because of government proclamations, but because people organised, made demands and made it good politics to respond. It is the political will of the people that makes and sustains the political will of governments.
~ James Grant (born: 1922-05-12 died: 1995-01-28 at age: 72), former executive director of UNICEF.
If I were an Arab leader, I would never sign an agreement with Israel. It is normal; we have taken their country. It is true God promised it to us, but how could that interest them? Our God is not theirs. There has been Anti-Semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They see but one thing: we have come and we have stolen their country. Why would they accept that?
~ David Ben Gurion (born: 1886-10-16 died: 1973-12-01 at age: 87) Prime Minister of Israel 1948— 1963
The moment you think only of yourself, the focus of your whole mind narrows, and because of this narrow focus uncomfortable things can appear huge and bring you fear and discomfort and a sense of feeling overwhelmed by misery. The moment you think of others with a sense of caring, however, your mind widens. Within that wider angle, your own problems appear to be of no significance, and this makes a big difference. If you have a sense of caring for others, you will manifest a kind of inner strength in spite of your own difficult situations and problems. With this strength, your problems will seem less significant and bothersome. By going beyond your own problems and taking care of others, you gain inner strength, self-confidence, courage, and a greater sense of calm.
~ Tenzin Gyatso (born: 1935-07-06 age: 74) the fourteenth Dalai Lama
When you hate someone intensely, 80% of what you think is delusion.
~ Tenzin Gyatso (born: 1935-07-06 age: 74) the fourteenth Dalai Lama
The recipe to get your letter to the editor published is:~ Geneva Hagen (born: 1948-05-09 age: 61)
- one part pandering.
- one part crank.
- one part facts.
- one part telling what you want.
Interestingly, while English was spoken by about 10% of the world’s population in 1900, and by about 11% in 1950, it is today spoken by about 8.5-9%. The corollary is that, for better than 90% of the world’s population, it is not the de facto means of international communication.
~ Don Harlow (born: 1942-07-08 died: 2008-01-27 at age: 65), former president of Esperanto-USA.
Treason doth never prosper. What’s the reason? Why, when it prospers, none dare call it treason.
~ Sir John Harrington (born: 1561 died: 1612 at age: 51)
We are witnesses to the decline of the largest empire since Rome [the American empire], perhaps the largest empire in the history of the world. If you are not taking notes, you should be. You have a ringside seat.
~ Len Hart echoing the sentiments of Gore Vidal.
Bin Laden does not have the capabilities for an operation of this magnitude. When I hear Bush talking about al-Qaeda as if it were Nazi Germany or the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, I laugh because I know what is there. Bin Laden has been under surveillance for years: every telephone call was monitored and al-Qaeda has been penetrated by US intelligence, Pakistani intelligence, Saudi intelligence, Egyptian intelligence. They could not have kept secret an operation that required such a degree of organisation and sophistication.
~ Mohamed Hassanein Heikal (born: 1923-09-03 age: 86), editor-in-chief of the Cairo newspaper Al-Ahram.
The US had, it appeared, manufactured new enemies to replace the Soviet Union. And it was using these new enemies to justify the invasion and occupation of nations in the Middle East and Central Asia and the building of large permanent military bases in those regions.
~ Richard Heinberg (born: 1950-10-21 age: 59) The Party’s Over: Oil, War and the Fate of Industrial Societies page 91.
The victor will never be asked if he told the truth.
~ Adolf Hitler (born: 1889-04-20 died: 1945-04-30 at age: 56)This is what Bush was counting on in Iraq. His tactics would make even Hitler blush, with banned weapons (napalm, white phosphorous, land minds and cluster bombs), torture and complete disregard for the Geneva conventions.
Who wants to get bogged down in a world war over Danzig?
~ Adolf Hitler (born: 1889-04-20 died: 1945-04-30 at age: 56)It turns out Hitler himself did. The west did not back down again. The USA may be making the a similar mistake by provoking the entire Muslim world with resource wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
The fact that Tasers are being used in situations that border on debt collection by the government is outrageous. The public has every right to be concerned that there is a lack of proper control over the use and application of these devices. A full investigation is required.
~ Rob Holmes , President BCCLA, British Columbia Civil Liberties Association, on the use of Tasers on people with expired bus transfers.
All the forces in the world are not so powerful as an idea whose time has come.
~ Victor Hugo (born: 1802-02-26 died: 1885-05-22 at age: 83)
There is nothing like a dream to create the future.
~ Victor Hugo (born: 1802-02-26 died: 1885-05-22 at age: 83)
American children under the age of fifteen are twelve times more likely to die from guns than children in twenty-five other industrialized nations combined.
~ Mel Hurtig (born: 1932-06-24 age: 77)
At least two thirds of our miseries spring from human stupidity, human malice and those great motivators and justifiers of malice and stupidity, idealism, dogmatism and proselytizing zeal on behalf of religious or political idols.
~ Aldous Huxley (born: 1894-07-26 died: 1963-11-22 at age: 69)
What is absurd and monstrous about war is that men who have no personal quarrel should be trained to murder one another in cold blood.
~ Aldous Huxley (born: 1894-07-26 died: 1963-11-22 at age: 69)
Nothing is personal in politics, because politics is theatre. It is part of the job to pretend to have emotions that you do not actually feel.
~ Michael Ignatieff (born: 1947-05-12 age: 62), Leader of the Liberal party in Canada.
To defeat evil, we may have to traffic in evils; indefinite detention of suspects, coercive interrogations, targeted assassinations, even pre-emptive war.
~ Michael Ignatieff (born: 1947-05-12 age: 62), Leader of the Liberal party in Canada.Somebody send a Star Wars DVD set to Michael. He needs to understand the dangers of dabbling in the dark side of the Force. If you become as evil as your enemy, he has already won. Michael has forgotten just what he is protecting with his evil — a tradition of justice, fair play and the rule of law.
We need to make sure that assassinations don’t do more harm than good.
~ Michael Ignatieff (born: 1947-05-12 age: 62), Leader of the Liberal party in Canada.If you become as evil as your enemy, he has already won.
Just because it’s in print doesn’t mean it’s the gospel.
~ Michael Jackson (born: 1958-08-29 died: 2009-06-25 at age: 50)
Iraq has lost 5 percent of its population, a number that in the U.S. would equal 14 million people.
~ Mick Jagger (born: 1943-07-26 age: 66)
Such is the moral construction of the world that no national crime passes unpunished in the long run… Were present oppressors to reflect on the same truth, they would spare to their own countries the penalties on their present wrongs which will be inflicted on them in future times. The seeds of hatred and revenge which they [sow] with a large hand will not fail to produce their fruits in time. Like their brother robbers on the highway, they suppose the escape of the moment a final escape and deem infamy and future risk countervailed by present gain.
~ Thomas Jefferson (born: 1743-04-13 died: 1826-07-04 at age: 83) American Founding Father and U.S. president (1743— 1826), letter to Francois de Marbois, 1817
The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive.
~ Thomas Jefferson (born: 1743-04-13 died: 1826-07-04 at age: 83)
The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots & tyrants. It is it’s natural manure.
~ Thomas Jefferson (born: 1743-04-13 died: 1826-07-04 at age: 83)
We’re fucked, so fucked, not in the good sense of the word.
~ Derrick Jensen (born: 1960-12-19 age: 48) Endgame
Since the Second World War, the US has bombed China, Korea, Guatemala, Indonesia, Cuba, Guatemala (again), Peru, Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia, Guatemala (third time lucky), Grenada, Lebanon, Libya, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Iran, Panama, Iraq, Kuwait, Somalia, Bosnia, Afghanistan and Yugoslavia — in that order — and in not a single case did the bombing produce a democratic government as a direct result.
~ Terry Jones (born: 1942-02-01 age: 67)
The US is a selfish, individualistic society devoted to commerce, and the despoliation of the planet. It is uncaring of the poor and sick and it is indifferent to the rest of humankind. The U.S. rides roughshod over international laws and treaties and threatens the moral, environmental, and physical future of humanity. It is inconsistent and hypocritical in its foreign dealings, and it wields unparalleled military clout. It is, in short, a bull in the global china shop.
~ Anthony Judt (born: 1948 age: 61)
Act that your principle of action might safely be made a law for the whole world.
~ Immanuel Kant (born: 1724-04-22 died: 1804-02-12 at age: 79)
150,000 American troops are bogged down in a quagmire in Iraq because the Bush administration misrepresented and distorted the intelligence to justify a war that America never should have fought.
~ Edward (Ted) Kennedy (born: 1932-02-22 died: 2009-08-25 at age: 77) 1994
Despite protestations to the contrary, the President and his senior aides began the march to war in Iraq in the earliest days of the Administration, long before the terrorists struck this nation on 9/11.
~ Edward (Ted) Kennedy (born: 1932-02-22 died: 2009-08-25 at age: 77) 2001-04-14
Health care is a right, not a privilege.
~ Edward (Ted) Kennedy (born: 1932-02-22 died: 2009-08-25 at age: 77)
I won’t yield to anyone about guns in our society. I know enough about it.
~ Edward (Ted) Kennedy (born: 1932-02-22 died: 2009-08-25 at age: 77) senate debate with Mitt Romney, 1994.
This administration manipulated and misused intelligence information that rushed us to war.
~ Edward (Ted) Kennedy (born: 1932-02-22 died: 2009-08-25 at age: 77) 2001-04-14
What we have in the United States is not so much a health-care system as a disease-care system.
~ Edward (Ted) Kennedy (born: 1932-02-22 died: 2009-08-25 at age: 77) 1994
It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.
~ Robert F. Kennedy (born: 1925-11-20 died: 1968-06-06 at age: 42)
There are those who look at things the way they are, and ask why… I dream of things that never were, and ask why not?
~ Robert F. Kennedy (born: 1925-11-20 died: 1968-06-06 at age: 42)
Freedom and justice cannot be parceled out in pieces to suit political convenience. I don’t believe you can stand for freedom for one group of people and deny it to others.
~ Coretta Scott King (born: 1927-04-27 died: 2006-01-30 at age: 78)
I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.
~ Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (born: 1929-01-15 died: 1968-04-04 at age: 39) I Have A Dream, 1963-08-23
Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.
~ Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (born: 1929-01-15 died: 1968-04-04 at age: 39)
Depopulation should be the highest priority of foreign policy towards the third world, because the US economy will require large and increasing amounts of minerals from abroad, especially from less developed countries.
~ Henry Kissinger (born: 1923-05-27 age: 86)
I can think of no faster way to unite the American people behind George W. Bush than a terrorist attack on an American target overseas. And I believe George W. Bush will quickly unite the American people through his foreign policy.
~ Henry Kissinger (born: 1923-05-27 age: 86)
I don’t see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist due to the irresponsibility of its people. The issues are much too important for the Chilean voters to be left to decide for themselves.
~ Henry Kissinger (born: 1923-05-27 age: 86)
Military men are dumb, stupid animals to be used as pawns for foreign policy.
~ Henry Kissinger (born: 1923-05-27 age: 86)
Oil is much too important a commodity to be left in the hands of the Arabs.
~ Henry Kissinger (born: 1923-05-27 age: 86)
There are ten times as many sex slaves transported around the globe today as agrarian slaves were transported in the 1790s.
~ Nicholas Donabet Kristof (born: 1959-04-27 age: 50), double Pulitzer Prize winner
Humans feel deeply the suffering of their friends and allies, and easily discount/dismiss the comparable experience of their enemies.
~ Ray Kurzweil (born: 1948-02-12 age: 61)
Loud peace propaganda makes war seem imminent.
~ David Herbert Lawrence (born: 1885-09-11 died: 1930-03-02 at age: 44)
People always make war when they say they love peace.
~ David Herbert Lawrence (born: 1885-09-11 died: 1930-03-02 at age: 44)
When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag, carrying a cross.
~ Sinclair Lewis (born: 1885-02-07 died: 1951-01-10 at age: 65)
establish whether the particular spot of soil which the blood of our citizens was so shed was, or was not, our own soil.
~ Abraham Lincoln (born: 1809-02-12 died: 1865-04-15 at age: 56), Lincoln’s Spot Resolution, 1847-12-22.Few people know that Congressman, later President, Abraham Lincoln was an anti-war activist. He introduced the Spot Resolution in congress to challenge President Polk’s lies that Mexico had attacked America, rather than the reverse. His opposition to the Mexican-American war made him very unpopular, and he lost his seat. Plus ça change…
Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.
~ Abraham Lincoln (born: 1809-02-12 died: 1865-04-15 at age: 56)
The probability that we may fail in the struggle ought not to deter us from the support of a cause we believe to be just.
~ Abraham Lincoln (born: 1809-02-12 died: 1865-04-15 at age: 56)
Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves.
~ Abraham Lincoln (born: 1809-02-12 died: 1865-04-15 at age: 56)
The cost of the Iraq war will be a maximum of 1-2% of GNP (about $100-$200 billion US dollars).
~ Lawrence Lindsay (born: 1954-07-18 age: 55) White House economic advisor, 2002-09. MD Director Mitch Daniels subsequently discounted this estimate as “very, very high” and stated that the costs would be $50-$60 billion. As of 2008-08 is it about $3000 billion and climbing. It is a debt so large it can never be paid off. Future generations will pay interest in perpetuity.
If they turn on the radars we’re going to blow up their goddamn SAMs (surface-to-air missiles). They know we own their country. We own their airspace… We dictate the way they live and talk. And that’s what’s great about America right now. It’s a Good Thing™, especially when there’s a lot of oil out there we need.
~ General William R. Looney III U.S. Brigadier General, Washington Post, 1999-08-30; referring, in reality, to the mass-murder of hundreds of civilian Iraqi men, women and children during 10,000 sanction bombing sorties in the first eight months of 1999.
We had better dispense with the personification of evil, because it leads, all too easily, to the most dangerous kind of war: religious war.
Konrad Zacharias Lorenz (born: 1903-11-07 died: 1989-02-27 at age: 85)
Of all the enemies to the public liberty war is, perhaps, the most me be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes. And armies, and debt, and taxes are known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few.
~ James Madison (born: 1751-03-16 died: 1836-06-28 at age: 85) 1795-04-20
Whenever the people are for gay marriage or medical marijuana or assisted suicide, suddenly the ‘will of the people’ goes out the window.
~ Bill Maher (born: 1956-01-20 age: 53)
In my country we go to prison first and then become President.
~ Nelson Mandela (born: 1918-07-18 age: 91)
This [the Iraq war] is just an excuse to get Iraq’s oil.
~ Nelson Mandela (born: 1918-07-18 age: 91)
Why is the United States behaving so arrogantly? All that (Mr. Bush) wants is Iraqi oil.
~ Nelson Mandela (born: 1918-07-18 age: 91), 2003-91-30
War is only a cowardly escape from the problems of peace.
~ Thomas Mann (born: 1875-06-06 died: 1955-08-12 at age: 80)
Anguish of suspense made men even desire the arrival of enemies.
~ Guy de Maupassant (born: 1850-08-05 died: 1893-07-06 at age: 42), Boule de Suif
Every government has as much of a duty to avoid war as a ship’s captain has to avoid a shipwreck.
~ Guy de Maupassant (born: 1850-08-05 died: 1893-07-06 at age: 42)
Military men are the scourges of the world.
~ Guy de Maupassant (born: 1850-08-05 died: 1893-07-06 at age: 42)
Since governments take the right of death over their people, it is not astonishing if the people should sometimes take the right of death over governments.
~ Guy de Maupassant (born: 1850-08-05 died: 1893-07-06 at age: 42), Sur l’eau 1888.
We live always under the weight of the old and odious customs… of our barbarous ancestors.
~ Guy de Maupassant (born: 1850-08-05 died: 1893-07-06 at age: 42), Sur l’eau 1888.
Since 1947, American has been the chief perpetrator of ‘preemptive’ state terror… These ‘rogue’ actions worsened local political and economic conditions and were of a piece with equally unscrupulous blockades, embargoes, military interventions, punitive air (missile) strikes and kidnappings, always in the name of democracy, liberty and justice.
~ Arno Mayer (born: 1926-06-19 age: 83), historian
I am sick and tired of old men dreaming up wars for young men to die in.
~ George McGovern (born: 1922-07-19 age: 87)
I want to say, and this is very important: at the end we lucked out. It was luck that prevented nuclear war.
~ Robert S. McNamara (born: 1916-06-09 died: 2009-07-06 at age: 93) Secretary of War from 1961 to 1968, during the Vietnam War, speaking about the Cuban missile crisis.
In that single night, we burned to death 100,000 Japanese civilians in Tokyo: men, women, and children.
~ Robert S. McNamara (born: 1916-06-09 died: 2009-07-06 at age: 93) Secretary of War from 1961 to 1968, during the Vietnam War.
The USA dropped two to three times as many bombs on Viet Nam than were dropped by both sides on all of Europe.
~ Robert S. McNamara (born: 1916-06-09 died: 2009-07-06 at age: 93) Secretary of War from 1961 to 1968, during the Vietnam War
We all make mistakes.
~ Robert S. McNamara (born: 1916-06-09 died: 2009-07-06 at age: 93) Secretary of War from 1961 to 1968, during the Vietnam War, on the pointless Viet Nam war that killed 58,000 Americans and 1,500,000 Vietnamese.
Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed citizens can change the world; indeed it is the only thing that ever has.
~ Margaret Mead (born: 1901-12-16 died: 1978-11-15 at age: 76)
This country exists as the fulfillment of a promise made by God Himself. It would be ridiculous to ask it to account for its legitimacy.
~ Golda Meir (born: 1898-05-03 died: 1978-12-03 at age: 80) Prime Minister of Israel 1969- 1974, Le Monde, 1971-10-15God had nothing to do with it, Golda. You used God to legitimise your land theft. Your arrogance is nauseating, expecting non-Jews to bow before your master race crap.
The advent of the ‘Keyhole’ satellite program nearly 30 years ago provided the United States with the capability to digitally observe events on Earth in near ‘real time’. Exponential advances in computer processing power have subsequently provided refinements that allow these ‘spies in the sky’ to observe the Earth regardless of cloud cover, inclement weather and darkness. Using infrared cameras, radar and advanced sensing lenses, they can resolve images approaching a single inch in diameter.
~ Keith Melton Spies in the Digital Age CNNYet despite this astounding technology, Bush claimed he had no idea where Osama bin Laden was, and Americans believe it is impossible to intercept illegal immigrants or to track the perpetrators of drive by shootings, or hunt down kidnappers.
As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.
~ Henry Louis Mencken (born: 1880-09-12 died: 1956-01-29 at age: 75)
The most common of all follies is to believe passionately in the palpably not true.
~ Henry Louis Mencken (born: 1880-09-12 died: 1956-01-29 at age: 75)
The notion that a radical is one who hates his country is naïve and usually idiotic. He is, more likely, one who likes his country more than the rest of us, and is thus more disturbed than the rest of us when he sees it debauched. He is not a bad citizen turning to crime; he is a good citizen driven to despair.
~ Henry Louis Mencken (born: 1880-09-12 died: 1956-01-29 at age: 75)
Whenever you hear a man speak of his love for his country, it is a sign that he expects to be paid for it.
~ Henry Louis Mencken (born: 1880-09-12 died: 1956-01-29 at age: 75)
The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community against his will is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant. He cannot rightfully be compelled to do or to forbear because it will be better for him to do so, because it will make him happier, because in the opinions of others to do so would be wise or even right. These are good reasons for remonstrating with him, or reasoning with him, or persuading him, or entreating him, but not for compelling him, or visiting him with any evil in case he do otherwise. To justify that, the conduct from which it is desired to deter him must be calculated to produce evil to someone else.
~ John Stuart Mill (born: 1806-05-20 died: 1873-05-08 at age: 66)
Few of us can easily surrender our belief that society must somehow make sense. The thought that the state has lost its mind and is punishing so many innocent people is intolerable. And so the evidence has to be internally denied.
~ Arthur Miller (born: 1915-10-17 died: 2005-02-10 at age: 89)
It’s not a matter of whether the war is not real, or if it is, Victory is not possible. The war is not meant to be won, it is meant to be continuous. Hierarchical society is only possible on the basis of poverty and ignorance. This new version is the past and no different past can ever have existed. In principle the war effort is always planned to keep society on the brink of starvation. The war is waged by the ruling group against its own subjects and its object is not the victory over either Eurasia or Eastasia but to keep the very structure of society intact.
~ Michael Moore (born: 1954-04-23 age: 55) paraphrasing George Orwell’s 1984 chapter 9.
The Iraqis who have risen up against the occupation are not ‘insurgents’ or ‘terrorists’ or ‘The Enemy’. They are the revolution, the Minutemen, and their numbers will grow — and they will win.
~ Michael Moore (born: 1954-04-23 age: 55)
The motivation for war is simple. The U.S. government started the war with Iraq in order to make it easy for U.S. corporations to do business in other countries. They intend to use cheap labor in those countries, which will make Americans rich.
~ Michael Moore (born: 1954-04-23 age: 55)
We are the richest country in the world. We spend more on health care than any other country. Yet we have the worst health care in the Western world. Come on. We can do better than this.
~ Michael Moore (born: 1954-04-23 age: 55)
We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. When the loyal opposition dies, I think the soul of America dies with it.
~ Edward R. Murrow (born: 1908-04-25 died: 1965-04-27 at age: 57)
I will continue the tradition established by Menachem Begin, who did not allow Iraq to develop such a nuclear threat against Israel, and by a daring and courageous act gave us two decades of tranquility, I believe that this is what Israel has to do in the face of the growing Iranian threat.
~ Binyamin Netanyahu (born: 1949-10-21 age: 60) former Prime Minister of Israel, reported in Maariv Daily 2005-12-05Israel is threatening a preemptive nuclear war against Iran. That makes them the most dangerous nation on earth. They likely could get away with it since Iran has no nuclear retaliation. Why are we encouraging them to start a nuclear war?
My fear was not of death itself, but a death without meaning.
~ Huey P. Newton (born: 1942-02-17 died: 1989-09-22 at age: 47)
Rationalism belongs to the cool observer. But because of the stupidity of the average person, they follow not reason, but faith. This naive faith, requires necessary illusions and emotionally potent oversimplifications, which are provided by the myth maker to keep the ordinary person on course.
~ Reinhold Niebuhr (born: 1892-06-21 died: 1971-06-01 at age: 78)
First they came for the Jews
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for the Communists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for me
and there was no one left
to speak out for me.
~ Pastor Martin Niemöller (born: 1892-01-14 died: 1984-03-06 at age: 92)
When the President does it, that means that it’s not illegal.
~ Richard Milhous Nixon (born: 1913-01-09 died: 1994-04-22 at age: 81) denying the rule of law in the USA.
Al Qaeda killed nearly 3,000 people on that day.
~ Barack Obama (born: 1961-08-04 age: 48) speech in Egypt, 2009-06-04The head of German intelligence announced that Al Qaeda had nowhere near the capability to perpetrate 9-11. There is plenty of evidence it was an least partially an inside job. But those reservations aside, how does 9-11 justify attacking the Afghanistan and Iraq? They are not Al-Qaeda. The Americans I have debated with justify the wars on the ground all three are Muslims. This is like kicking the dog because the cat peed on the sofa, justifying the punishment because the both have fur. This is bald racism, justifying hanging one nigger for another’s crime.
Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.
~ Barack Obama (born: 1961-08-04 age: 48)
Democracy cannot be imposed on any nation from the outside. Each society must search for its own path, and no path is perfect. Each country will pursue a path rooted in the culture of its people, and — in the past — America has too often been selective in its promotion of democracy.
~ Barack Obama (born: 1961-08-04 age: 48) speech to the UN General Assembly, 2009-09-23Obama claims he wants a US-friendly democracy in Afghanistan, yet he is using the same failed technique the USSR used, namely a brutal decade-long occupation. Obama’s so-called democracy excludes the most popular and powerful political group in the Afghanistan — the Taliban. Obama’s choice for Afghanistan’s leader is the American puppet (and traitor to his country), Hamid Karzai. Karzai is the planet’s biggest heroin lord controlling the flow of $1 trillion dollars a year of heroin, dwarfing all other countries combined. Obama is forcing this utterly corrupt heroin and war lord down the unwilling throats of the Afghans. The election in Afghanistan was so crooked that it made Chicago politicians look like Boy Scouts. Talk about giving democracy a bad name! And finally the US allowed its contractors and soldiers run amok, with drinking shots from each others butts, homosexual orgies, raping, pillaging… The pious Muslim Afghans understandably believe they under seige by the Great Satan. In their view, surrender would guarantee eternal torture in the afterlife.
I have no patience with people who go around blowing up innocent people.
~ Barack Obama (born: 1961-08-04 age: 48) 2009-04-07St. Obama is apparently unaware the biggest killer of innocent civilians is the US military, which he commands. This is a necessary side effect of the way the USA fights wars with high technology from a safe distance.
I opposed the Defense of Marriage Act in 1996. It should be repealed and I will vote for its repeal on the Senate floor. I will also oppose any proposal to amend the U.S. Constitution to ban gays and lesbians from marrying.
~ Barack Obama (born: 1961-08-04 age: 48)
On the other hand, it is also undeniable that the Palestinian people — Muslims and Christians — have suffered in pursuit of a homeland.
~ Barack Obama (born: 1961-08-04 age: 48) speech in Egypt, 2009-06-04Get serious! The Palestinians have had a homeland for centuries before the USA was founded. The problem is Zionists invaded, occupied and subjected them to apartheid.
Our destiny is not written for us, but by us.
~ Barack Obama (born: 1961-08-04 age: 48)
Poorly secured nuclear material in the former Soviet Union, or secrets from a scientist in Pakistan could help build a bomb that detonates in Paris. The poppies in Afghanistan become the heroin in Berlin. The poverty and violence in Somalia breeds the terror of tomorrow.
~ Barack Obama (born: 1961-08-04 age: 48)
The fact that my 15 minutes of fame has extended a little longer than 15 minutes is somewhat surprising to me and completely baffling to my wife.
~ Barack Obama (born: 1961-08-04 age: 48)
The Holy Koran teaches that whoever kills an innocent is as — it is as if he has killed all mankind.
~ Barack Obama (born: 1961-08-04 age: 48) speech in Egypt, 2009-06-04How odd! The USA has killed more innocent civilians than any other country in the last decade.
We do not want to keep our troops in Afghanistan. We see no military — we seek no military bases there. It is agonizing for America to lose our young men and women. It is costly and politically difficult to continue this conflict. We would gladly bring every single one of our troops home if we could be confident that there were not violent extremists in Afghanistan and now Pakistan determined to kill as many Americans as they possibly can.
~ Barack Obama (born: 1961-08-04 age: 48) speech in Egypt, 2009-06-04This is nonsense. According to both the US military and the Afghan puppet dictator Hamid Karzai, bin Laden is not in Afghanistan and neither are Al Qaeda. American soldiers are putting themselves in harm’s way by occupying Afghanistan. The Afghans fight the occupation with primitive home made bombs. They have no means to kill Americans once they go home, and the Taliban would be insane to attempt to resume the fight. The situation is similar to Viet Nam. Obama fails to acknowledge the original motivation for the invasion was the Taliban refused to give Unocal a free right of way for their oil pipeline. He is becoming more like Bush every day in his denials.
We have real enemies in the world. These enemies must be found. They must be pursued and they must be defeated.
~ Barack Obama (born: 1961-08-04 age: 48) speech in Egypt, 2009-06-04Obama’s paranoid attitude will get the USA in deep trouble. Attempting to kill all the people who hate you will just create ten times as many new enemies. America made most of its enemies as a direct result of its illegal aggression and egregious behaviour such as torture, banned weapons and butchering civilians. If Obama cleaned up America’s act, most of its enemies would evaporate.
We will not apologise for our way of life.
~ Barack Obama (born: 1961-08-04 age: 48) defending America’s conspicous consumption and conspicuous waste.
All the war-propaganda, all the screaming and lies and hatred, comes invariably from people who are not fighting.
~ George Orwell (born: 1903-06-25 died: 1950-01-21 at age: 46)
As I write, highly civilized human beings are flying overhead, trying to kill me.
~ George Orwell (born: 1903-06-25 died: 1950-01-21 at age: 46)
During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.
~ George Orwell (born: 1903-06-25 died: 1950-01-21 at age: 46)
Early in life I had noticed that no event is ever correctly reported in a newspaper.
~ George Orwell (born: 1903-06-25 died: 1950-01-21 at age: 46)
Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book has been rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And that process is continuing day be day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except the endless present in which the party is always right.
~ George Orwell (born: 1903-06-25 died: 1950-01-21 at age: 46) 1984
Every war when it comes, or before it comes, is represented not as a war but as an act of self-defense against a homicidal maniac.
~ George Orwell (born: 1903-06-25 died: 1950-01-21 at age: 46)
Freedom is the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.
~ George Orwell (born: 1903-06-25 died: 1950-01-21 at age: 46)
If large numbers of people are interested in freedom of speech, there will be freedom of speech, even if the law forbids it; if public opinion is sluggish, inconvenient minorities will be persecuted, even if laws exist to protect them.
~ George Orwell (born: 1903-06-25 died: 1950-01-21 at age: 46)
In our time political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible.
~ George Orwell (born: 1903-06-25 died: 1950-01-21 at age: 46)
It was with the last revolution and the coming of INGSOC (English Socialism) that the latest High learnt how to keep their position permanently — by cultivating ignorance among the other classes and by constantly surveying them through the Thought Police. Part of this strategy included the maintenance of a state of continual warfare, which Goldstein discussed in the third chapter. The three major powers were not fighting this perpetual war for victory; they were fighting to keep a state of emergency always present as the surest guarantee of authoritarianism.
~ George Orwell (born: 1903-06-25 died: 1950-01-21 at age: 46) 1984 chapter 9.
Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.
~ George Orwell (born: 1903-06-25 died: 1950-01-21 at age: 46)
Sometimes the first duty of intelligent men is the restatement of the obvious.
~ George Orwell (born: 1903-06-25 died: 1950-01-21 at age: 46)
The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one’s real and one’s declared aims, one turns, as it were, instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish squirting out ink.
~ George Orwell (born: 1903-06-25 died: 1950-01-21 at age: 46)
War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.
~ George Orwell (born: 1903-06-25 died: 1950-01-21 at age: 46) (Ari Fleischer’s mentor)
Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.
~ George Orwell (born: 1903-06-25 died: 1950-01-21 at age: 46)
Military action will not last more than a week.
~ Bill O’Reilly (born: 1949-10-10 age: 60) The O’Reilly Factor, 2003-01-23, on the Iraq war
The object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other bastard die for his.
~ George S. Patton (born: 1885-11-11 died: 1945-12-21 at age: 60), General
I think in this case international law stood in the way of doing the right thing.
~ Richard Perle (born: 1941-09-16 age: 68), 2003-11-20, Pentagon hawk, cat-stroking, Ernst Stavro Blofeld, James Bond villain pasty lookalike, admitting the Iraq war is illegal.
The Defense Department claims 12 nations with nuclear weapons programs, 13 with biological weapons, 16 with chemical weapons, and 28 with ballistic missiles as existing and emerging threats to the United States. But only one of those countries sits atop the second largest oil reserves in the world. [Iraq]
~ Charles Peña , Senior Defense Policy Fellow of the Cato Institute, a conservative think tank, for The Chicago Tribune
As many political writers have pointed out, commitment to political equality is not an empirical claim that people are clones.
~ Steven Pinker (born: 1954-09-18 age: 55)
The price of apathy towards public affairs is to be ruled by evil men.
~ Plato (born: 428 BC died: 348 BC at age: 80)
When war is declared, truth is the first casualty.
~ Arthur Ponsonby (born: 1871-02-16 died: 1946-03-23 at age: 75)
He [Saddam Hussein] has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction. He is unable to project conventional power against his neighbors.
~ Colin Powell (born: 1937-04-05 age: 72) 2001-02-02
When elephants fight it is the grass that suffers.
~ Kikuyu Proverb
If a man is slain unjustly, his heirs shall be entitled to satisfaction, but let him not carry his vengeance to excess, or his victim is sure to be assisted and avenged.
~ The Qur’an Al Isra 17:33
What does it say about our society and culture that since 1991, a “World-Trade-Center’s worth of Iraqi children continue to die every month” as a direct result of the crimes against humanity perpetrated under the direction of the last three Presidents of the United States? What does this fact mean to each and every person in this nation-state who pays annual taxes, the largest portion of which goes to the ongoing expansion of the United States military? As tax-paying members of the United States, can we reconcile our culpability for these Iraqi deaths with the deaths of people one year ago in New York, Washington D.C., and Pennsylvania?
~ David Ratcliffe
Fundamentalist groups like Christian Embassy have infiltrated the very top of the U.S. military and gained positions of influence in the Pentagon.
~ Darrel Ray in The God Virus.
War consists of killing people and destroying property. That’s all there is to war.That’s all there is to war. Any honest soldier will tell you the same thing: His job is to kill people and destroy property. That’s true of all branches of the service.
~ Charley Reese (born: 1937-01-29 age: 72) Consequences of a War State
It is more dangerous to be a woman than a soldier in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
~ CARE staff report 2008-11-24, speaking about public gang rapes being used an a weapon of war in the DRC.
The United States has no credible evidence that Iraq moved weapons of mass destruction into Syria early last year before the U.S.-led war that drove Saddam Hussein from power.
~ Condoleezza Rice (born: 1954-11-14 age: 54), National Security Adviser, 2004-09-04.
How awful for them [Hitler’s victims] to see those swastikas, the SS men and the SA — people we’d never thought of as criminals.
~ Leni Riefenstahl (born: 1902-08-22 died: 2003-09-08 at age: 101) The Wonderful, Horrible Life of Leni RiefenstahlI hope some day Americans similarly allow themselves to face the reality of what they did in Viet Nam, Afghanistan and Iraq. So far they have behaved like holocaust deniers, pretending nothing happened.
Iraq has not been disarmed 100 percent [but] in terms of what they [Iraqis] have accomplished there are no meaningful weapons or weapons production capability in Iraq today.
~ Scott Ritter (born: 1961-07-15 age: 48) Former U.N. weapons inspector, who was right.
It has been estimated that 80 percent of the oil illegally smuggled out of Iraq under ‘oil for food’ ended up in the United States.
~ Scott Ritter (born: 1961-07-15 age: 48)
There has been no case made — based on anything other than speculation — that Iraq poses a threat.
~ Scott Ritter (born: 1961-07-15 age: 48)
If man is to survive, he will have learned to take a delight in the essential differences between men and between cultures. He will learn that difference in ideas and attitudes are a delight, part of life’s exciting variety, not something to fear.
~ Gene Roddenberry (born: 1921-08-19 died: 1991-10-24 at age: 70)
2400 years ago in his book The Art Of War, Sun Tsu explained ‘All war is deception’. Despite this ancient warning and despite militaries down the ages repeatedly getting caught deceiving both their enemies and their own people, Americans are still shocked when they catch the military lying yet again. Further, Americans are openly hostile to anyone who suggests the military may be deceiving the public on some particular issue. The business of militaries is bloody, violent and brutal. The public would never approve if they know what was really going on. So naturally the military lies. They believe these are necessary lies because they believe the lay public are too squeamish to permit hideous but necessary deeds.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
95% of Canada’s budget in Afghanistan is for killing Muslims and destroying buildings. 5% is for clinics and schools. Guess which part gets 95% of the TV coverage. If you are cynical, you might think even that 5% is purely for P.R. to sell the war.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
A Christian Republican is a contradiction in terms. For a Christian, war is supposed to be a last resort. For a Republican, it is the first priority.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
A greedy scoundrel like Bernie Madow can financially ruin thousands of people, but it takes someone unusually vain who loves power purely for the sake of power like George F. Will, Glenn Beck or Rush Limbaugh to take down an entire planet by spreading crank theories about the planet’s life support systems.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
A historian can be thrown in jail for challenging the orthodox estimate of casualties for but one event in human history — the holocaust.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
A man who has killed, raped or tortured children, or who has aided and abetted such crimes, no matter what the excuse, including being ordered to in the military, should never again be allowed near children, including his own.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
A sadistic pedophile has three basic options:~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
- White knuckle his urges. Content himself with pornography.
- Attack children in his home town and have a police team track him down and jail him where he will be tortured and killed.
- Join the army and head off to combat where he becomes a god with power of life and death over his victims and their families. He can rape, torture and murder to his heart’s content. If he is lucky, the president will give him a distinguished service medal. There is almost no chance he will face consequences for his crimes.
A sold-ier is someone who temporarily sells themselves into slavery. They sell their conscience and even their soul. They are sold propaganda to make it easier for them to kill those who were no threat to themselves or their families. I have noticed soldiers who write me often spell their profession solid-er, an unconscious denial of the shame of their chosen profession.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
A tiny country, Afghanistan, was able to defeat the Russians and later the Americans partly because Russians and Americans behaved so brutally that they convinced the Afghans that they had no choice but to defeat the invaders or be tortured to death.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
A tiny impoverished country, Afghanistan, was able to defeat the Russians and later the Americans partly because the bigotry of the invaders lead them to underestimate the Afghans.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
According to Bill Moyers, if you keep a gun in your home or office, it is 22 times more likely to kill a family member than an intruder. How then can you possibly justify owning a gun to protect your family. It sounds more like an unconscious intent to bump them off.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
According to NOVA, the NSA, by tapping all phone calls and all emails, collect the equivalent of 12 filing cabinets of information on every American citizen every year.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
According to the National Geographic channel, all those who work on megaprojects are mythic heroes; the Christian God is actively involved in human affairs; God gave the Jews a divine eviction notice to serve on the Palestinians and any Palestinians who refused to leave quietly are terrorists; Bush did a bang up job managing Katrina; American soldiers fight for holy purpose; the ideal dog lies quietly without moving or expressing its opinions… I think it should be renamed the RF channel (Republican Fantasy channel).
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
According to the Ralph Benmergui miniseries, God Bless America, the USA in its wars on Iraq and Afghanistan use logos involving the crucifix and heraldry from the Christian crusaders who invaded the middle east in the 1100s and killed everyone who had even known a Muslim. So much for separation of church and state.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
Aficionados of murder mysteries will recognise the archetype America. She contrives flimsy excuses of self defence. She milks the role of victim with melodramatic zeal. She endeavours to make her kills look like natural causes.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
After a certain point, it works to your advantage if your political opponents are crazy.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
After the way Christians have treated gays, it is wonder that gangs of gays don’t go beating up priests and nuns and torching churches with the congregations still inside. It is clear who actually stands on the moral high ground.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
After the way Christians have treated people who believe in freedom of choice in reproduction, it is a wonder than women don’t drag them from their homes and burn them alive, especially those who fund and promote the assassination of doctors. It is clear who actually stands on the moral high ground.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
Al Qaeda has a presence in dozens of countries. They move from country to country. Where is the safest place for us for them to base? — as far away as possible, say on the other side of the earth in Afghanistan or Pakistan.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
America claims its goal is to spread democracy to the world. Yet what do they actually do? They overthrew democracies in Iran, Brazil, Guatemala, Argentina, Chile, Nicaragua, Haiti, Venezuela… and installed brutal dictatorships. They propped up dictators in Iraq, Indonesia, the Philippines, Saudi Arabia… So excuse me if I splutter when you tell me Bush wants democracy in Iraq. He wants what America always wants — puppet control of Iraq’s resources through a dictatorship.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
America contains a representative sample of all the world’s populations. So it is not some fundamental flaw in the American character that accounts for the country’s abominable behaviour — invading and exploiting smaller countries in the manner of ancient Rome. It is the result of too much concentrated privilege and power. Power corrupts.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
America is turning democracy into a joke by forcing a war lord and drug lord as crooked as Hamid Karzai down the throats of the Afghan people, even after he was caught stuffing 20% of the ballots. It is not democracy unless the people governed make the decisions about who will lead them. The Taliban have won the hearts and minds of the majority of the Afghan people. It is not democracy when you exclude those you don’t like from the political process.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
America spend over $1 trillion dollars killing people in Iraq, mostly civilians, and of them, mostly children. They spent $20 million dollars (1/50,000 as much) to compensate the families of the civilians they killed. It appears to me the compensation is just window dressing for the folks back home.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
American politics are simple. Corporations and rich individuals give money to politicians to pass laws that help them become still richer at the expense of the middle class. Politicians need the money to pay for ads to trick the middle class into voting for them, despite their anti-middle class policies. The way out is for middle class people to explain to the politicians, that no matter how many ads they see, they will no longer vote for politicians with anti-middle class policies.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
American politics is so dishonest that Democratic presidential candidate Dukakis was kicked out of the running when Republicans blamed Dukakis for letting rapist Willy Horton out on parole as required by a law enacted by the previous Republican governor and repealed by Dukakis.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
American vets of the Vietnam War, the Afghan war and the Iraq war did not serve their country, they shamed it, just as did the German vets of WW II.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
Americans are fond of Orwellian language, for example:
Orwellian Language Examples Example Meaning Defence of Marriage Act Prevents people from getting married. Clear Skies Initiative allows greater air pollution. Homeland Security Aggressive foreign wars to control oil supplies. Healthy Forests Initiative hands stewardship of the forests over to the logging industry and allows renewed cutting of old growth forests. Beyond Petroleum Off shore oil and natural gas drilling and drilling in the national parks. New Freedom Initiative mass forced drugging of school children. Patriot Act Abrogating all the freedoms in the constitution.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
Americans are furious with me when I point out that aggressive war (attacking first unprovoked) is a capital war crime, in particular the unprovoked invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. They respond “But what about 9/11?” Even President Bush said that bin Laden, and his Saudi Al Qaeda henchmen, were responsible, not Afghans or Iraqis. On 2003-09-17, Bush and his administration explicitly stated Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. Attacking Iraq is like attacking the USA for something Colombian criminals allegedly did, on the grounds both nations are nominally Christian. Americans have justified their carnage with a racist belief that the only good Muslim is a dead Muslim, blaming a billion people, including the children, for the 9/11 crimes of a handful.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
Americans are naive to think they can attack two nations unprovoked, torture and butcher civilians all without any counter attacks. Americans are in such denial they insist on calling any counter attacks “terrorism” (even attacks on occupying American soldiers) and any calling any POWs captured “terrorists.” A terrorist is someone who kills or threatens civilians hoping to change their political opinions. By definitition, killing a soldier is not terrorism. Americans are the main terrorists given how many civilians they have killed, mostly children, and how many soldiers and mercenaries they have hired to terrorise civilians.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
Americans are only 4% of the world’s population, but they believe they have the right to unilaterally make all the major decisions for the planet.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
Americans are only 4% of the world’s population, but their chauvinism convinces them they are the planetary ruling class, much as Nazis believed Germans were the master race, deserving of special privilege solely by right of birth.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
Americans are plumb crazy. They are panic striken by flu shots and affordable health care, but have no concern at all about environmental collapse, global warming or nuclear war.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
Americans are shocked when I compare their unprovoked invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq with Hitler’s invasion of Poland, even though by some measures, Americans behaved even worse:~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
- Routine torture of P.O.W.s.
- Use of banned weapons, e.g. napalm, white phosphorus, cluster bombs…
- Higher ratio of civilians to combatants killed.
- Total tonnage of explosives.
- Ignoring the Geneva conventions.
Americans are so fixated by the metaphor of war as football game that they imagine they can win the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq by offering a better pay contract to the other side’s “players’ to get them to switch “teams”. That is insane. If Nazis invaded your country and made such an offer what would you do? Take the money, infiltrate them and defeat the invaders from the inside!
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
Americans are so in denial of their dark side, that they pretend they are desperately fighting to defend America from enslavement both by Iraq and Afghanistan, even though the USA attacked both tiny countries unprovoked and illegally because they were not sufficiently compliant in handing over their oil and oil pipeline corridors.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
Americans are terrified of terrorists, yet they insist terrorists be permitted to buy any weapons they please, anywhere in the USA they please, no questions asked.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
Americans assure me that American soldiers are perfect gentlemen, and would never dream of abusing their power. Yet everyone knows how young Americans behave in fraternities when given even a tiny bit of power over the new pledges. Sadism boils up in even the most sanguine young man.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
Americans believe Iranians have an irrational hatred for Americans. Americans have conveniently forgotten two things they did to Iran:
- In 1953, during the Eisenhower administration, the USA deposed the government of popular Prime Minister, Mohammed Massadegh and imposed one of the most brutal dictators in history, Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi.
- On 1988-07-03, during the Reagan administration, the USS Vincennes entered Iranian water without permission then shot down Iranian Air Flight 655 killing all 290 passengers and crew aboard, including 66 children.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
Americans believe that a politician lies whenever his lips move, however, for the politician of all politicians, the one who won the brass ring of the presidency, they hold a completely different belief. They believe his word should be taken on unquestioning faith, even on important matters like 9/11 and war, and even when he has a history of lying.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
Americans claim they are dedicated to non-proliferation of nuclear weapons. What they mean is they want a world where no one has nukes but them. This is not going to fly.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
Americans claiming self defence as the motivation for occupying Iraq is like Shaq O’Neal claiming self defence for mugging Gary Coleman.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
Americans have no shame about the atrocious way their country treated the citizen of Iran, Cuba, Viet Nam, Chile, Nicaragua, Afghanistan, Haiti, Venezuela, Iraq, Mexico… because they have one set of ethics about how they should treat Americans and another how they should treat non-Americans. How is that different from South Africa’s old apartheid system, India’s cast system or Europe’s class system?
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
Americans have such an inflated opinion of themselves, that nothing can shake it. They imagine they have the best health care in the world, yet their outcomes are lower than any developed country, on par with Cuba. They imagine they are at the forefront of energy technology research and development, yet China outspends them 14 to 1. The Europeans are far ahead in green energy and electric cars. They imagine they have a juggernaught of a military, yet two tiny impoverished countries, Afghanistan and Iraq have fought them to a stalemate.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
Americans make no distinction between the honour of soldiers who fought to defend the USA in WW II and those who attacked other nations unprovoked in the Afghanistan and Iraq wars to gain control of oil supplies.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
Americans often phone or email me to angrily complain that I am unfairly anti-American. I wonder on what grounds I could justify looking the other way when America illegally attacks small third world countries, unprovoked, to steal their natural resources, uses banned weapons (such as napalm, land mines, white phosphorus, depleted uranium and cluster bombs), kills mainly civilians and children with their high tech war by remote control and routinely tortures P.O.W.s. Why should it be OK for Americans to commit these war crimes, but for no one else? What is the matter with Americans that they are so cowed or so corrupt or so deeply in denial that they permit their government to behave worse than Nazis?
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
Americans oppose universal health care because they don’t want to spend even a penny to save the lives of the “deadbeats” who can’t afford health insurance or whom the insurance industry refuses to cover. What they refuse to understand is they don’t even have to spend a penny extra to cover everyone. The health care industry is so obscenely profitable, all you need to fund universal health care is a small slice of that fat, and savings from computerising and simplifying the paperwork, leaving the health care industry as merely incredibly profitable. Americans pay twice what any other developed nation does for health care, and in return get the worst outcomes — on par with Cuba. If everyone else can do it, Americans too could cover everyone and still pay half what they are paying now, and start getting first class outcomes. The battered Americans have been ripped off so long, it sounds too good to be true.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
Americans passionately believe in owning guns for ‘protection’ even though they are fully aware those guns are more likely to kill a family member than an intruder. This creates an arms race where criminals pack ever more lethal weapons. In most other countries, burglars don’t need or use guns. In a standoff between a grandmother and a criminal, it is no contest. The criminal is trained, practiced, better armed, and primed for confrontation. Grandma is more likely to survive or avoid a confrontation if there are no guns involved.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
Americans succumbed to the temptation to mass torture out of four motives:
fear
the motive of the naive person in the street, as if Iraqi peasants had any conceivable means to harm them.sadism
Bush and Cheney’s motive.racism
the anaesthetic for conscience and common sense. Americans would never have tortured Caucasian Christians so casually. American Christians tortured brown-skinned Iraqi and Afghan Muslims with the same religious fervour that the Catholic Inquisition tortured the Albigensian heretics.conceit
Americans are in a position much like the waning days of the British Empire. Their insecurity makes them wish to punish anyone who tacitly refuses to acknowledge American privilege and superiority.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
Americans think the Taliban are evil for wanting control of their country back, for fighting to evict the American occupation, and for wanting America to fail all over the planet. Would you not want invaders of your country thrown out and to fall on their faces? What’s so terrible about that?
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
Americans treat war the same way they treat professional sports. They just want to know what the score is. No other details are of interest. Why the war started is irrelevant. The cost of fighting the war is no object. What winning the war would accomplish has no relevance. Team spirit is sufficient justification for torture, child rape and genocide. As coach Henry Russell Sanders put it, ‘Winning isn’t everything; it’s the only thing.’
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
Americans use the term the enemy differently from the rest of the world. Others use it to refer to a country attempting to invade or destroy their own, one with at least some chance of succeeding. Americans use the term more broadly to mean anyone who resists American will. It can refer to a rival, a victim who resists exploitation or even someone who hurls impotent insults.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
Americans who go livid at the abortion of an 8-cell embryo would be a lot more convincing if they did not stand up and patriotically cheer the torture and murder of 10 year olds in Iraq.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
Americans will defend to the death their ‘constitutional’ right to own assault weapons, even though no such right is mentioned in the constitution. But they will let slide America’s treaty obligations, which trump the constitution, namely the software lumber agreement with Canada, the Geneva conventions (banning torture, cruel weapons and targeting civilians) the UN Charter which forbids aggressive war — precisely what the USA did in Afghanistan and Iraq, attack first unprovoked — the only war crime charge used to hang all the Nazis at the end of WW II.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
Americans will never live down the shame that most of them went along with Bush killing and torturing kids to browbeat their parents into handing over their oil.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
America’s war against Viet Nam was its longest war, lasting from the Gulf of Tonkin incident on 1964-08-02 to the truce on 1973-01-27, a total of 8 years, 5 months and 25 days. The war against Afghanistan started on 2001-10-07 and has been waging 8 years, 1 month and 1 day. Will it beat Viet Nam in the Guiness Book of Records of pointless wars?
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
An impoverished country, Afghanistan, was able to defeat the Russians and later the Americans partly because Russians and Americans were so contemptuous of Islam that the Afghans considered defeating them as necessary as defeating Satan. Eternal souls were at stake, not just lives.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
Apologists for torture argue the there should be no investigations and no prosecutions because the criminals felt justified in breaking the law. We should let bygones be bygones, ‘look forward’, and focus on the present. Their argument applies equally well to disbanding the entire criminal justice system. We prosecute, not just to punish past crimes, but to deter future crimes.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
Are you a democrat or a plutocrat? Do you believe that the view held by the greatest number should prevail, or the view supported by the wealthiest? Do you believe in democracies or autocracies? Corporations are autocratic run much like medieval monarchies. You have no say in how they behave; they exist for only one purpose, profit. Yet they have so enchanted Americans, that the majority of Americans trust corporations to look after their interests better than elected governments, even after corporations like Philip Morris/Altria/Kraft conspired to kill their customers in pursuit of profit. The way it works now, corporations run the government through their wealth for influencing, threatening and bribery. The resulting unresponsiveness of government to the public’s needs won’t be fixed by less government and more corporate power. That’s is the problem! The flow of corporate money to corrupt officials and representatives must be stopped if government is to serve the people instead of the corporations.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
At the end of WW II Americans laughed derisively at Nazi War criminals who pleaded, “I was just following orders. I would have been shot if I disobeyed.” The Americans hanged them anyway. Nuremberg settled the matter that soldiers are personally responsible for the crimes they commit, period. How different the attitude to the American war criminals in Afghanistan and Iraq. No matter what atrocities or war crimes they openly committed, to modern day Americans, they are still heroes, with zero personal responsibility for their crimes. To my eyes, the American soldiers have far less excuse than the hanged Nazis. American soldiers were not drafted, they chose to kill. American soldiers would not be shot for refusing to commit war crimes, merely jailed. They were far better informed that what they were doing was illegal than were the Nazis. Germany had not yet even signed a treaty outlawing aggressive (first strike) war back then.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
Attempting to combat violent crime with prisons is like trying to put out a fire with gasoline. Why? Prisons teach non-violent criminals to become violent since violence is the only way to survive in a prison. In prison, there are plenty of hardened criminals to teach violence to the younger generation. For a start, we should segregate violent and non-violent prisoners.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
Back in the 1950s, the majority of Americans voted against equal rights for blacks. They voted for segregation. They smugly discriminated against blacks quoting the bible for justification. Today most of those people are embarrassed about what they did. In this decade, the majority of Americans are doing the exact same thing, equally smugly, to gays.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
Because the USA has sunk so many dollars and so many lives into the Afghan and Iraq wars, they are having trouble ending the occupation. They feel an overwhelming need to save face. They keep throwing bodies on the fire simply to postpone the wound to the pride when they eventually withdraw. But consider the Afghans and Iraqi who have hundreds of times as many casualties, mostly children. Surrendering to the infidels who did this would be impossible.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)Americans are worse than bullies. Not only does pride drive them to defeat their victims (accomplished long ago in the first days of each war), they torture them and they demand abject surrender. They even drive them to abandon their religious beliefs.
Boeing advertises its military aircraft ‘make our forces safer and stronger’ What does that mean, really? It means they enable the military to bomb more civilians per dollar with fewer lost planes.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
Both Britain and America set out to create an empire, based not on military conquest and plunder, but on spreading freedom and enlightenment. Both failed for the same reason — when humans have absolute power over others, they always abuse that power.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
Both humans and chimps make war on other groups. It would be instructive if somebody made a movie, cutting back and forth between scenes of human and chimp warfare, but playing the chip sound track to accompany the human warfare and vice versa to show how primitive, brutal and idiotic the whole business is.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
Both the USA and Israel are bullies. Both believe that might makes right. Both are arrogant. Both thumb their noses at international law. Both are unbelievably conceited claiming to be God’s chosen people/master race. The difference is the Israelis are brazen about their perfect selfishness where the Americans pretend their actions are motivated by pure beneficence.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
Bullies who attack other kids unprovoked, or steal their lunch money, should not be surprised if their victims resort to sneaky revenge. The same is true of nations.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
Bush and Cheney ordered torture, not to get information, but because they received pleasure from watching the videos. Nearly everyone has forgotten that Bush stonewalled Judge Hellerstein when he subpoenaed Bush’s child rape and torture videos. Nearly everyone has forgotten Bush’s history of personal sadism.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
Bush promised to annihilate North Korea and Iran in his axis of evil speech. What else but nukes could deter the USA?
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
Caral is the oldest city in Americas, built in 2627 BC. It enjoyed 1000 years of peace. If these early Peruvians could accomplish that, so can we. Warfare is not an inevitable part of the human experience.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
Cesar Millan, the Dog Whisperer, points out the cruelest thing you can do to an abused or crippled dog is to offer pity. The same is true of people. The holocaust is long over. It is time to move on. We should not encourage those indirectly harmed by it to wallow in self-pity.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
Cheney is an admitted war criminal, a capital crime. His goal is to persuade the people he had the right to violate the law because he thought it was a good idea. It one thing to lobby to change the law, and quite another to demand to be excused from it.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
Chimpanzees have a primitive morality based on loyalty to the tribe. If their tribe did something to a chimp in another tribe, it is ok. Most humans use it too. This allows them to applaud an illegal act like the unprovoked invasion of Poland, Afghanistan or Iraq based simply on which team did it.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, North Korea, United States, Iraq, Vietnam. Why is the USA on this list of disreputable countries? The USA is #5 in executions, just behind North Korea. Executing this many people may satisfy a desire for revenge, but it clearly does not work to reduce murders.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
Clifford Olson, serial killer, the beast of BC, murdered 11 children. 9 child kills would be unremarkable for a Canadian or American soldier, and yet they are still celebrated as heroes.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
Consider the major wars the USA has participated in during the last 70 years: World War II, the Korean War, the Viet Nam War, Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq. Even though the USA spends more on the military than any other nation, it still managed to lose four of those six wars. Why? Because most of the time, it was in the wrong. It attacked other nations unprovoked. Defending the homeland inspires soldiers to fight. Thus the ‘enemies’ were inspired and the Americans were not.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
Consider the possibility that some wise North American shaman convinced his fellows that the only legitimate way to smoke tobacco was in a peace pipe. He literally made warriors long for peace.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
Consolidating schools is a monumentally stupid idea. Why?~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
- It costs the parents far more to transport the kids than the school district saves.
- The long commute is tiring, boring and sometimes dangerous.
- It wastes parents’ time delivering and picking up kids.
- All that extra traffic creates needless greenhouse gases.
- As the oil runs out and energy prices rise, all the schools will have to be decentralised again to be within walking or cycling distance.
Could you imagine a situation where you would sign up for a suicide mission? Would you do it to save your family? To oust an invader plundering your country? To avenge the death of your first love? To pay back people who had anally raped you as a child? To destroy those who had tortured you? You would not do it casually. If we want to stop suicide attacks, we will have to investigate why attackers think such drastic measures are necessary.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
Countries start wars because they want something another country has. They will never admit this. Instead, they make up the silliest excuses imaginable for killing the other country’s children.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
Democracy only works when the citizens keep themselves informed and ride herd on their leaders.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
Democrats want other countries to take America’s prisoners of war currently held at Gitmo off their hands because keeping them in the USA would be too expensive and because of the danger of escapes. Why would it be any less expensive or dangerous for other countries to keep them?
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
Despite draconian efforts, drug addiction is on the rise, except for tobacco. Perhaps we should try our successful approach for reducing tobacco use to other addictive drugs.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
Did you ever notice that anyone who asserts their constitutional rights is always a mob boss or terrorist in the TV crime dramas? Did you ever notice how the heroes of these dramas so frequently break the law to chase criminals? Hollywood is conspiring to create fascist contempt for the constitution.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
Don’t ask, don’t tell is unique among laws. It requires people who have no classified information to lie.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
Even 8 years later, Americans still act as if 9/11 were the worst catastrophe in history. They forget America obliterated two Japanese cities with atomic bombs. They forget nearly every European capital sustained worse damage in even a single night of WW II bombing. Americans have grossly overreacted, invading two nations who had nothing to do with 9/11 and abrogating the majority of their constitutional rights. They fully deserve the moniker The Excited States of America.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
Even something as innocent sounding as ‘thirsting’, withholding water for a few days, is unimaginably horrible. You long to die. I know from personal experience. According to Frontline, Americans used this technique routinely on every detainee in Iraq. Because so few people have ever experienced torture, it is easy for the exposed torturers to convince the public they were merely causing extreme discomfort.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
Even the most peaceful president kills hundreds of thousands of victims. Perhaps if presidents kept the heads of their victims pickled in jars their deeds would be recognised as murder.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
Even though bearing bad news is the hardest time to tell the truth, when you tell someone something they don’t want to hear, that’s when they are most apt to accuse you of lying.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
Even though the USA officially ended segregation back in the 1960s, segregation lives on because whites don’t like living near blacks. This forms white and black neighourhoods. They are not held in place by law, but by mutual repulsion. This leads to de facto segregated schools. Further, some high schools in Mississippi still have separate proms for white and back students. The most backward of all are the churches, still 93% segregated.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
Even with the recent temporary drop, Americans are up in arms at high oil prices and the way America is hostage to foreign oil. The biggest single buyer of oil on the planet is the US military. They have bid the prices up with their wasteful consumption of oil. An aircraft carrier gets about 58,804 l/100km (0.004 mpg). Using fuel efficiently and protecting the environment are simply not on the military’s radar.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
Every day, mankind further perfects its weapons of war, making them ever more lethal and ever more capable of launching hair-trigger attack on their own. The human species has unconsciously decided to go extinct, certainly within a century.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
Everyone has heard about the 6 million Jews that Hitler executed. But how often you you hear about his 12 million other victims — the homosexuals, the gypsies, the leftists, the disabled, the Jehovah’s Witnesses, the Serbs…? I suspect modern day Republicans quietly envy Hitler’s bloody minded treatment of these groups that they despise too.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
Fights are easy to start. All it takes is a scowl or a shove. Fights are easy to keep going. All the blows received so far are sufficient justification to keep the fight going. Wars work the same way.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
For a new theory to replace an existing one, it must explain the facts better than the existing one. Those who deny the holocaust have the embarrassing problem of having no explanation for what happened to millions of missing people. The mainstream historians who accept the holocaust do.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
For mediation to work, both warring parties have to share the pain roughly equally. In Israel, the Palestinians have lost their country, their homes, their lands, their water and their livelihoods. Israel wants them to accept apartheid and still deeper economic degradation. The Israelis have taken the entire country of Palestine by force (an international war crime) and forced Palestinians out of their homes, stolen their orchards and forced them to work at slave wages. Israelis kill 20 times as many people as the Palestinians, yet the Israelis have successfully painted the Palestinians as the villains in the international media. There is no way a peace can ever be achieved based on maintaining the status quo. The status quo is simply too unfair.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
Fort Hood Shootings
The media have ignored the most obvious explanation for the Fort Hood shootings. As as a psychiatrist, Dr. Nidal Malik Hasan would have heard horrific confessions of brutality, sexual violence, and torture. Day after day of this, having to pretend to like these men, and keep their secrets might convince him that his psychotic patients should be exterminated. Few psychiatrists have serial killers exclusively as patients.In one news report, Hasan said he believed that killing these soldiers would save the lives of many children. No matter how strenously you deplore his murders, you can’t deny his logic. Motivated by racism, patriotism and religious bigotry, most Americans put no value of the lives of Afghan and Iraqi children, but some people, including Dr. Hasan do.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
Free speech includes the freedom not to listen. Free speech does not guarantee a spot on the Tonight Show. Christians imagine they are entitled to a seat at the table any time homosexuality, abortion or euthanasia is discussed even though they never contribute any useful information, just their faith-based beliefs for which they can offer no rational justification.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
George W. Bush tells us that Osama bin Laden masterminded 9/11. bin Laden confessed that the reasons he did so are:How many American do you think know that?
- The USA aided Israel in invading Lebanon in 1982.
- The USA aids Israel to oppress the Palestinians.
- There are US troops in Saudi Arabia, soil holy to Islam.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)9/11 aside, I think the USA acted unwisely on all three counts. Dramatic and horrible as 9/11 was, it killed far fewer people than the deaths bin Laden was protesting. Primarily pride will stop the USA from backing down and playing the role of an effective, neutral peace broker in the middle east. The USA persists in seeing itself as a 100% innocent victim on 9/11, and claiming the attack had no rational motivation. This deliberate blindness leaves the USA helpless to fully defend itself.
Given that corporations own the politicians, would it not make more sense to pressure the corporations than lobby the politicians?
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
Given that mere ownership of a gun used in a homicide is routinely used as evidence of guilt, I am surprised anyone would take the risk.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
Granted, Castro is a dictator, but as dictators go, he is reasonably benign and popular with his people. Yet Americans have focussed almost all their assassination efforts to kill him. Further they have, for decades, been doing all they could to make the Cuban people miserable, too. How come must nastier dictators such as Robert Mugabe and the Sudanese generals don’t rate this treatment? Similarly, Americans oddly hate and fear Hugo Chavez, who enjoys higher popularity ratings than Obama in his own country. He sold cheap heating oil to freezing New Yorkers. What a monster!
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
Have you ever noticed that if you watch a documentary on science, if there is doubt, the documentary always makes a polite reference to the opposing point of view, but for the most part, there is agreement on the facts. Why is this so different from political discourse, where there is no agreement on even the most basic facts? In science, there is great humiliation in being caught wrong, and a career end if caught out and out lying. In politics, spinning the facts to mislead and brazen lying is the norm, with no shame or penalty in getting caught.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump, Alberta, Canada bears witness to a custom practiced by native people of the North American plains for nearly 6000 years.Native Americans would panic buffalo herds into throwing themselves off a cliff. The hunters would then gorge themselves sick.
Modern Americans are just as naive as buffalo, allowing the insurance companies to panic them into paying twice what people in any other developed country does for the worst care in the developed world — on par with Cuba in outcomes. Check the IMR Infant Mortality Rate stats on the CIA website for yourself.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
Historically, all arms races ended in war or bankruptcy of one or both players. One problem with a nuclear arms race is it forces the losing player to skimp on safeguards in order to afford to keep up.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
Hitler attacked other countries unprovoked, starved civilians to death many of them children, and executed over a million of them using the same gas the USA used for gas chambers. George W. Bush did all these things plus routine torture of P.O.W.s, plus use of banned weapons such as white phosphorus, cluster bombs, land mines and napalm to burn people alive and depleted uranium to deform their fetuses for generations to come. Bush collected kiddie rape videos. Bush declared the Geneva conventions "quaint" and destroyed electric, water and sewer plants to trigger epidemics of cholera and other water-born diseases. Yet in the popular estimation, Hitler was an unspeakable monster and Bush was merely misbehaved. America treats Bush as an indulgent mother treats her serial-murdering son.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
Hitler managed to con the German people into thinking Germans were the master race, and that when they invaded other countries, the Nazis were doing them a favour. In Hitler’s view, the invasions to subdue lesser races were Germany’s moral duty. We laugh at German gullibility. Yet dozens of US military people have, with a straight face, assured me they invaded then occupied Afghanistan then Iraq, killing hundreds of thousands of Afghans and Iraqis plundering their resources purely out of an altruistic desire to serve their victims.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
How come almost nobody notices the inconsistency when a general excuses his slaughter of innocent civilians by claiming he did it to save the lives of innocent civilians?
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
How dense can Americans be. They watch those whose countries they occupy committing suicide just to help throw the invaders out, and still Americans imagine their yoke beneficial, light and pleasant. They explain that when Hitler invaded unprovoked, and plundered nations for natural resources, it was very bad, but claim when Americans do exactly the same thing, it must, by definition, be saintly. American shit does not stink.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
Human tribal loyalty is so strong that one nation will perceive an illegal act as a war crime and another will perceive it as noble and heroic service to one’s country. A case in point. America illegally invaded both Iraq and Afghanistan unprovoked using counterfeit evidence. This is the exact same crime Nazi Germany committed invading Poland. Americans see the those who participated in the first crime as national heroes protecting American freedom and the second as war criminals. The Germans see those who participated in the first as war criminals and the second as national heroes (at least, they did at the time).
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
Humans were once prey animals. Our sense of morality is based on that. Before we humans commit any atrocity, we ritually claim we are a victim. It takes on ridiculous proportions e.g in Iraq where the USA claims it is defending itself from invasion. Sometimes a nation will even put on the charade of a false flag attack on itself to claim the virtue of victimhood.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
I am a citizen of planet Earth first, Canada second.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
I am astounded that so many Americans are so stupid that they believe they have the best health care on the planet when 36% of claims are denied, seriously sick people find their policies cancelled, premiums are twice what they are anywhere else in the world, 46 million people can’t afford any insurance at all, and outcomes are on par with Cuba. This callous neglect the ill simply does not happen in other countries, but crooked Republicans have suckered American fools into thinking the status quo where insurance companies behave like Bernie Madoff is the best of all possible worlds. Far more people die from this insanity than will ever die from Al Qaeda attacks.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
I am horrified at Americans who justify ripping children to pieces with explosives, and burning them to death with white phosphorus “because of 9/11”.~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
- Obviously, these children had nothing to do with 9/11. Many were not even born.
- President Bush said their countries, Iraq and Afghanistan, had nothing to do with it.
- The perpetrator, according to President Bush, is bin Laden, a Saudi. Bush gave up chasing him long ago.
- Most of the perpetrators of 9/11 are dead. They allegedly committed suicide in the attack. Killing random children is an insane way to seek revenge on those still alive. It makes so more sense that killing random Muslim American children.
I don’t see much difference between the state offering immunity in return for testimony it wants and a criminal offering money in return for testimony he wants. He who pays the piper calls the tune. At the very least, the jury should be fully aware of what incentives were given for any testimony and the witness’s past history of accepting such incentives.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
I don’t think Americans yet understand that if their neighbour’s house is on fire, it is to their advantage to see it is put out quickly, lest it spread to their home, and that if a neighbour is being robbed, that it to their advantage that the robber is quickly apprehended, and that if their neighbour has tuberculosis, it is to their advantage that he gets immediate treatment, even if he is an illegal immigrant.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
I feel such fury and revulsion at Americans every time I watch the news. They are deliberately blind to the fact their wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are illegal, and hence all who participate are war criminals guilty of a capital crime. They blind themselves to the fact the people in Iraq and Afghanistan hate them with a passion because the Americans have occupied for so long after promising to liberate, imposed corrupt dictators, tortured, used banned weapons and killed their wives and children. Americans are so conceited they pretend to themselves they are loved as benefactors bringing the gift of democracy. It is not democracy if you shove it down somebody’s throat.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
I find it bizarre that young mothers ecstatically welcome their serial child-killer soldier husbands home to babysit their kids.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
I find it frustrating politicians almost never do what I ask them to, but then when I read the exhortations of history’s greats, I discover politicians pay no attention to them either.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
I find it massively hypocritical that Americans refuse to forgive a young Leni Riefenstahl for making a propaganda movie at Hitler’s command, but forgive themselves for volunteering to torture, mutilate and murder Iraqi children with every illegal weapon known to man for no plausible excuse other than stealing oil.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
I find it odd that Americans so strenuously vilify people like Castro, Chavez and Ahmadinejad. Americans have done infinitely more to harm Cuba, Venezuela and Iran than they have ever done to Americans in retaliation. Americans are behaving like the Nazis when they vilified the Jews to justify persecuting them.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
I find it odd that one cannot avoid military service for the following sensible reasons:However, you can avoid it by claiming you believe an invisible, imaginary man up in the sky will torture you after you are dead if you participate.
- The war in which you will serve is illegal.
- You don’t think it wise to kill people of all ages and sexs on the other side of the planet who are no threat to your country.
- You don’t want to be killed or maimed.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
I find it so odd that Americans would entrust their children to soldiers, knowing full well they have butchered other people’s children.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
I have often puzzled that humans feel most self-righteous when regulating the behaviour of others that has zero effect on them, e.g. sex, gay marriage, marijuana use, oral sex, contraception, pornography, the adultery of strangers, religious ceremonies…This is so weird, when you consider people do so many things that do adversely affect each other.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
I have the utmost contempt for Americans who justify the actions of the US military in Afghanistan and Iraq claiming the soldiers are torturing, violating the Geneva convention, killing civilians, supporting the drug and war lords, and generally behaving like Nazis, motivated by a desperate self defence. They pretend to forget the USA started both wars, attacking both Afghanistan and Iraq unprovoked, and under false pretenses to boot. Recall how Bush justified the attack on Iraq with fabricated WMD evidence. Americans are in Iraq because Americans desperately need oil, not because Iraq would or could invade the USA. This is claim is as ridiculous as mugging old ladies in ‘self defence’.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
I have to laugh at people who claim it is necessary to kill Afghans to protect our freedom. How are they supposed to invade us, in goatskin coracles? If they arrived on our beaches what chance would they have? Zero.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
I have to laugh contemptuously at Americans who tell they invaded Iraq motivated out of self defence because the Iraqis dared to shoot back at Americans who invaded their country. This is like a mugger pleading self defence because his victim failed to hand over his wallet without a fight.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
I have two complaints with the NRA, the first lying about the effect of gun control in Canada. Contrary to NRA propaganda, in Canada you are seven times less likely be killed by a gun, and gun violence has dropped every year since the stricter laws were enacted. Secondly they claim the NRA wants to give the right to a New Yorker to own a gun to protect himself. No matter what one’s intent for a gun are, the facts are guns are far more likely to kill a family member than a criminal, so if you keep one, your implicit intent is to bump off your family, hardly what the founding fathers would condone. It was a lot harder to fire a muzzle-loaded musket by accident or in a sudden fit of anger than a modern hair-trigger Firestar.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
I have yet to find a single American soldier who acknowledges that it is a capital (i.e. hanging) international war crime to aid and abet an aggressive war, namely one where your country strikes first, unprovoked. A few of them understand that it was illegal when Nazis did it, but for some reason they believe Americans are exempt from the law. They tell me, further, that they don’t care if it is illegal because they believe the US will protect them from any possible prosecution. Someone should remind them that is precisely what Nazi soldiers thought too.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
I know it is all the rage to laud Canadian soldiers, especially dead ones, as if they were heroes, on par with fire fighters or police SWAT teams. But the fact is they are anything but heroes. Afghanistan did not attack Canada (or the USA for that matter). It could not do so even if it tried. Canadian soldiers are thus not defending Canada. What motivates the soldiers is simple — they like killing people, any people, and getting away with it. That puts them on the same moral footing with civilian serial killers like Paul Bernardo.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
I once worked with a mild mannered guy named Andy on a telecommunications controller that evolved from a Univac 1616 military mini used to control nuclear submarines. To my astonishment, Andy expressed a desire to write software for nuclear submarines. To him, they were just giant toys. It did not dawn on him in the least that the function of these submarines was to wipe out life on earth.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
I refuse to wear a red poppy. Damned if I will honour today’s war criminals fighting in illegal aggressive wars. Honouring them cheapens the sacrifice of those who truly did serve and defend their country.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
I suppose, technically, it is legal for politicians vote to do nothing about global warming and greenhouse gas emissions. After all, suicide is legal. But this is tantamount to premeditated genocide.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
I suspect that bigots in the USA have been so keen on keeping a black man out of the white house, and on keeping their sons and daughters from having sex with black people, because they fear once they’ve tried black, they will never go back.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
I was pleased to learn American soldiers are continuing to come down with a nasty contagious disease called Melioidosis that they were exposed to long ago butchering peasants in the paddy fields of Viet Nam. It presents like tuberculosis with skin ulcers. You could look on it as the result of bad karma for the soldiers and those that encouraged them.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
I will never understand why American soldiers who close their eyes and drop bombs on random Iraqi homes filled mostly with children feel morally superior to suicide bombers who look their victims in the eye and sacrifice their own lives in order to commit their random murders.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
Identifying as a Republican is a bit like dressing up a civil war general and riding about on horseback waving a sword, feeling terribly heroic.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
If a criminal took a page from Israel, he would mug his tenants and neighbours, and when he got caught he would plead self defence on the grounds they refused to hand over their wallets without a fight.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
If a reporter permits a lie to pass without so much as an eyebrow twitch, he is complicit in that lie and should be held responsible for lying too.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
If a sadistic pedophilic priest came to you and whined, ‘Everyone is so unreasonable. Everyone hates me. They are trying to kill me and even my acquaintances. What can I do?’ You might answer ‘For a start, you are going to have to stop raping, torturing and killing kids. People won’t immediately forgive you, but at least the fury won’t escalate even further. You must make amends and go through a process similar to the 12 step process alcoholics do to cease destructive behaviours.’ I give the same advice to America.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
If Americans want to vote on whether they can deny gays people equal rights such as marriage, then legally they must first amend the constitution to repeal equal protection provisions of the fourteenth amendment.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
If Obama had defended the Nazis an Nuremberg, his defence would go like this. ‘Come on, fellas. Let’s forgive and forget. Let’s Look Forward™, After all, all those accused were acting with the best of motives. Further, they were just following orders. We have an economy to rebuild. We can’t dwell on the past.’
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
If Republicans ever become interested in animal rights, their ‘family values’ concerning abortion and the age of consent could morph into a zealous campaign to ban egg-eating and consuming poultry that did not die of old age.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
If someone has a serious genetic defect, and we as a society rescue them with extreme costly medical procedures, that person owes it to society not to pass the gene on. The condition of being treated should be sterilisation, ideally with a method that could be reversed if ever there is discovered a way to avoid passing on the defective gene. It is morally wrong to knowingly saddle a child with a such a handicap. It is morally wrong to saddle society with a huge bill to rescue that child. It is tantamount to deliberately burning the child over most of his or her body or deliberately infecting him or her with AIDS.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
If someone invites health problems with poor diet, lifestyle, alcohol/drug use, or dangerous sporting activities, or dangerous profession such as mercenary, should they have equal access to universal health care without paying a premium?
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
If the events of 9/11 had been presented as a whodunnit in 2000, viewers would have complained. There was 100 times too much evidence to know the president was complicit.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)People who believe Bush’s version of 9/11 did not reach that conclusion by studying the evidence. They simply refuse to believe any president could commit such a dastardly crime.
If the Iraq war were truly about taking out Saddam and installing democracy, the US would have withdrawn as soon as Saddam was toppled, Saddam was captured or the first election. The war rolled on through all three events without so much as a hiccup.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
If the Nazis had won WW II, the post-war German politicians would have argued for ‘moving forward’ and ‘avoiding a witchhunt’ because too many powerful people were involved in the genocide of the Jews, just as as today American politicians argue for ‘moving forward’ and ‘avoiding a witchhunt’ because so many Americans were involved in torture and other war crimes.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
If you are an American and you hold the citizens of Nazi Germany responsible for the holocaust, then you must also hold yourself even more responsible for the American genocide of Iraqis, since it is being done in the open.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
If you consider threatening people with death to make them vote a certain way, as terrorism, then Bush, Ashcroft, Rumsfeld and Tom Ridge with their phony terror alerts used to create fear just before the 2004 election, are terrorists.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
If you ever read what you supposedly said quoted verbatim in a newspaper, ever after, you will take anything you read there with a large grain of salt.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
If you go shooting rabbits in a field where kids are playing, and you kill twenty kids as “colateral damage”, you are still guilty of murder. Soldiers claim this reasoning does not apply to them.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
If you want another Hitler, all you have to do is close your eyes, trust and do nothing.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
If you want to know my faults, don’t ask me; ask those who have to deal with me. In a similar way, if you want to get the dirt on your own country, don’t ask your leaders; don’t ask fellow citizens. Ask people in other countries. Getting all your information from fellow citizens is like a mutual bathwater-drinking orgy.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
If your neighbours insisted on using a party drug, which would be best from your point of view, alcohol (loud, belligerent, drunk driving), tobacco (foul-smelling), LSD (psychotic), crack cocaine (paranoid), meth (horny, sickly), ecstasy (social), heroin (comatose), marijuana (sleepy), kava (meditative)… It seems me, since we are not likely going to convince people to give up party drugs, we should at least encourage them to move to the ones that disburb their neighbours least.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
Imagine a future where wearing a uniform is no longer an excuse to murder.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
Imagine if don’t ask don’t tell applied to blacks. They could serve in the military only if they bleached their skin and straightened their hair. Or Jews if they pretended to worship Jesus, or women if they taped their breasts and shaved their hair.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
Imagine if the world’s Mormons converged on New Jersey and expelled or killed all the residents, settling there, quoting the Book of Mormon as justification. This is what happened in Palestine when, in 1948, Jewish Zionist cultists expelled the Palestinians quoting the Jewish holy book as justification.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
Imagine if you lived in a country that had been occupied by the Chinese, the Nazis or the Russians since the end of WW II. Imagine the occupiers had set up an apartheid system, confiscated your lands, confined you to your home in lockdown one day in three, denied you work, water and food. Their avowed goal was the genocide of your people. How would you feel? What sort of violence would you consider justified? Now you know what it is like to be a Palestinian.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
In 2009-01 Israel invaded Gaza and bombed and killed over 2000 random people. Hamas killed 4 Israelis. Such is the power of propaganda that most North Americans see Hamas as the more blood thirsty.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
In a dark comedy TV program, Dead Like Me, reapers (ghosts) are given slips of paper containing the names and addresses of people they have to kill that day. The victims are not particularly old or evil. The ghosts unquestioningly carry out the executions simply because they have been told that is what ghosts do. This reminds me of the way soldiers happily kill soldiers from a country that did not attack them first, or slaughter civilians and children without any need for a reason why this might be necessary.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
In Israel, the Jews kill 20 Palestinians for every Jew the Palestinians kill. Or put another way, the Palestinians kill one Jew for every 20 Palestinians the Jews kill. Who then is defending and who is offending?
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
In my fourth and fifth years at the University of BC I studied a branch of mathematics called Measure Theory which could be described as the science of how infinitely tiny things can add up to something truly substantial. Gandhi described the principle in non-mathematical terms like this: ‘Whatever you do will be insignificant, but it is very important that you do it.’ I applied the philosophy to gay liberation back in the 1970s with spectacular results. I try to instill it in everyone I meet.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
In the nuclear arms race, the Americans not only have insisted on having more destructive power than everyone else put together, they have insisted on overkill, more than enough ability to wipe out all life on earth several times over. This grossly excess capacity has no practical use as a deterrent, and it greatly adds to the risk of accidental or terrorist-induced nuclear war.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
In the time of Lyndon Johnson, Americans protested en masse against the pointless Viet Nam war. In the time of George W. Bush, Americans grumbled, but quietly acquiesced as Bush started two illegal aggressive wars, mocked the world court, laughed at the Geneva conventions, abrogated the constitution and routinely tortured P.O.W.s. Electing Obama no more wipes that shame from America than the death of Hitler wipes the stain from Nazi Germany. Further, though Obama is gradually shutting down one unwinnable war, he is escalating the other.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
In WW II, no journalist would dream of going behind enemy lines and expecting to live to tell the tale. Yet American, British and Canadian journalists act offended when they are not welcomed with open arms in Afghanistan and Iraq. They seem oblivious to the fact coalition of the coerced have killed millions of civilians, mostly kids.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
Ironically, most Republicans are not in agreement with the major Republican party platform planks. Like Christine Todd Whitman, rank and file Republicans don’t really want to overturn Rove v. Wade. They want the right to decide for themselves if their daughter should bear a child of rape or foolish infatuation. Like Jon Huntsman, they want pollution reduced. Like Arnold Schwarzenegger, they want something done about greenhouse gas emissions and global warming. Like Ron Paul, they want to bring their sons and daughters home from Iraq and Afghanistan. The appeal of the Republican party is the flag-glam and the ‘standing tough, standing tall, and pulling yourself up by the bootstraps’. They are seduced by the John Wayne myth. Republican strategists highjacked the intense emotions of national patriotism and redirected them to the Republican party using classic Pavlovian conditioning.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
Israel is like the spoiled son of a rich businessman. The USA invariably uses its power and UN Security Council veto to protect Israel from ever being prosecuted for its crimes.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
Israelis complained about Obama’s speech in Egypt on 2009-06-04, because he dared to suggest the suffering of the Palestinians at the hands of the Israeli government is comparable to the suffering of the Israelis at the hands of Palestinian terrorists. That is like Germans complaining their suffering was not sufficiently recognised when they invaded Poland or the Boers complaining their suffering was not acknowledged as infinitely greater than the blacks they oppressed with apartheid in South Africa. The Israelis kill 200 Palestinians for every Israeli the Palestinians kill. The difference is the Israeli killers wear uniforms. In 1948, Zionists invaded and occupied Palestine unprovoked, justifying this illegal act with religious boosterism. The Israeli Zionists believe they are the master race, aka God’s chosen people, so the killing they do does not count and the suffering of non-Jews does not matter. The horrible truth is the Zionists have become much like the preposterously conceited Nazis who so horribly oppressed the Jews in WW II. Let me make it clear, not all Jews and not all Israelis hold these such bigoted beliefs, but enough of them do for the Israeli government to behave in this racist manner. Israel could not be so cocky without generous contributions and low interest bond sales from Zionists living all over the earth, not to mention the lion’s share of America’s foreign aid budget. That gift should be cut back, even if purely on economic grounds. The USA is running massive deficit. Israel is running a surplus. Israel is the last country that needs a handout.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
Israelis remind me of a man who starves and beats his dog from puppyhood, then complains bitterly when it bites him.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
It is a capital war crime to aid and abet the invasion or occupation of a foreign country in an aggressive war, (a war in which your side attacks first unprovoked.) That makes every Jew in Israel a capital criminal. It is highly unlikely they will ever be tried, much less executed, but they would be if the same law applied to hang all the Nazi at the end of WW II were applied to the Jews in Israel too. If Jews were aware of that, they might have a tad more humility about their superiority over the Palestinians.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
It is a common pattern:~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
- After the American civil war, carpetbaggers flooded into the South. Resentments remain to this day.
- The Dutch invaded South Africa and set up an apartheid system. The Africans resisted them violently.
- The Chinese invaded Tibet and Chinese citizens flooded in and made the Tibetans into second class citizens.
- The Jews invaded Palestine and set up an apartheid system. The Palestinians fought back with terrorism.
It is amazing how comfortable some people feel near soldiers, even knowing they are brainwashed to kill innocent people for no reason other than someone asks them to.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
It is as unreasonable to expect Palestinians to accept the Jewish occupation of their country and the institution of apartheid as it would be to expect Americans to celebrate der Führer’s birthday had Germany won WW II.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
It is humiliating to be defeated in debate but utterly infuriating to be defeated by a woman whose only skill is making up lies and nonsense to appeal to an ignorant audience.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
It is interesting to compare American and British TV coverage of a bombing in Iraq. From the American report you would get the impression the bombing was a random killing of ordinary civilians. From the British report, you see it was an attack on the buildings and employees of the puppet collaborator government. Americans like to project the notion their foes are irrational. It makes genocide seem more like pest control.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
It is no surprise that a nation founded on slavery, that could see nothing wrong with it for almost a century today is blind to the fact that nation oppresses and exploits other nations.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
It is not a valid defence when you are caught breaking a law that you think the law should be changed. The time to change the law is before you have broken it. If you believe that extraordinary circumstances require you to break a law, you must be willing to prove your sincerity by accepting the penalty, as Gandhi and the civil rights marchers did. This applies even to Dick Cheney breaking the anti-torture laws.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
It is one thing to defend the right to keep a gun, and quite another to actually keep one. N.R.A. members who keep guns in the home value their possessions more than their loved ones. Any gun is far more likely to kill a family member than fend off a burglar.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
It is safer today to oppose war. Men who opposed the entry of the United States into WW I were charged with sedition. It was considered the equivalent of fomenting armed rebellion.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
It was a revelation when I saw my lover’s eyes tear up on hearing the Philipine national anthem. It had not properly sunk in that other people love their countries just as much as I love mine, even when that country is wracked with poverty. Conversely, when others hear patriotic songs about America, they may sound like Deutschland Über Alles.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
It would be an understatement to say that politicians don’t enjoy the best of reputations. Yet every school child is encouraged to win a ruthless American-idol like contest to find the consumate politician, the president of the United States.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
Lax gun laws allow criminals and gangs to stockpile caches of cop-killing weapons with impunity. How then do such gun laws make you safer from criminals? The only people who benefit from this insanity are gun manufacturers.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
Let us say that a man and woman marry who both have had a hare lip corrected early in life by surgery, or a serious heart defect surgically corrected at birth. They decide to have a child, knowing full well the child will probably also suffer that same defect. Who should be responsible for paying for that child’s surgery?
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
Let’s review. President Bush told us that he had absolutely no idea that 9/11 was coming, but within hours was 100% certain Osama bin Laden, a Saudi, was responsible. Later he announced that Mahmud Ahmad, the Pakistani ISI head of security, bankrolled it. He presented no evidence, presumably because he was concerned such information might be valuable to terrorists. He announced that Saddam Hussein, the leader of Iraq, though a wicked man, had no ties to 9/11. Then he invaded, not Saudi Arabia, not Pakistan, but Afghanistan and later Iraq and set up puppet governments. He explained that Saudi Arabia and Pakistan were still staunch allies. Stephen Harper, on 2009-04-04 explained that Canada did not actually invade Afghanistan, but had been invited by the Afghan government to help with security. That reminds me of the sorts of lies the Soviet Union used to tell about its suppression of Hungary and Czechoslovakia. Harper is vague. He could be claiming the Taliban invited Canada in, or that the Karzai puppet government was in power at the time of the invasion. Either claim is preposterous. To cap it off, the bulk of the publically accessible evidence points to 9/11 being an inside job. According to the head of German security, bin Laden and his motley band were nowhere near capable of pulling off such a dramatic feat. But the really astounding thing is most Americans see nothing at all odd in any of this.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
Liars and actors need the same skill set. No wonder Republicans enlisted Ben Stein, Sonny Bono, Ronald Reagan, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Clint Eastwood and Fred Thompson to represent them.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
Listening to President Obama speak about his valiant fight in Afghanistan for freedom, God, Democracy and all that is sacred, you’d think it was the Taliban who had attacked on 9/11, not Al-Qaeda Saudis. Think back. The official reason for the invasion was America’s impossible-to-comply-with demand that Afghanistan capture bin Laden for America, hand him over without an extradition treaty, or an extradition hearing and without presenting any evidence of his guilt. The real reason for the invasion of course was of course was the Taliban refused to give Unocal a free right of way for its oil pipeline. That is why Bush appointed mostly ex-Unocal people, including Karzai himself, to the puppet government.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
Listening to President Obama speak about his valiant fight in Afghanistan against drugs, you’d never guess it was the USA and its corrupt Karzai puppet government that saw the drug trafficking jump from almost zero to the #1 supplier of heroin in the world, producing over $1 trillion worth a year — more than the entire planet consumes.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
Luis Pasado Carrilles is an admitted terrorist and escaped felon wanted for blowing up a airliner in 1976 killing 53 people. The USA is harbouring this fugitive. George Bush justified invading Afghanistan with the words ‘If you harbor terrorists, you are a terrorist.’ Bush is either the world’s greatest hypocrite, or he publicly admitted he leads a nation of terrorists. Why is the USA harbouring a terrorist? Because Luis Pasado Carrilles blew up a Cuban civilian airliner. To American eyes, this does not count as terrorism. What the USA is doing is just as reprehensible as what Libya did to harbour the Lockerbie terrorists.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
Male animals tend to be territorial, especially male humans. It is not only my house, my car, but my country, my political party, my church, my favourite movies, my skin colour, my sports team… If you have anything less than extravagant praise for these extensions of himself, he feels personally attacked.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
Most people have a naive approach to politics. They pick a team e.g. Democrat, Republican, Christian, Muslim… and from then on ignore all evidence. They presume their team can do no wrong and the other teams can do no right. They carefully avoid researching facts for themselves. They are mindless sheep afraid ever to say anything that might offend the self-esteem of fellow team members, no matter how obviously true it is. This herd think is how Nazis were able to maintain the illusion they were the good guys.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
Most people presume that scientists err on the side of caution. They don’t; engineers do. Scientists err on the side of predicting the least dramatic outcome. It is too bad scientists rather than engineers have been in charge of explaining global warming to the public. Scientists consider it unseemly to show alarm, even when a tiger is about bite your head off. They believe it shows a lack of scientific detachment. If mass extinctions of the human race from the many side effects of global warming are not worthy of expressing a little alarm over, I don’t know what is.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
Most people would be more upset if their son dismembered a child than if some stranger across down did it. For the same reason, I get more upset when Canadian, American and British soldiers dismember children than when people from countries I have never visited do it.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
No matter how much you may disapprove of Major Malik Nidal Hasan shooting 31 American soldiers at Fort Hood, this was not an act of terrorism. By definition terrorism only refers to killing civilians. Personally, I see it as an act of treason. Hasan, acting as a psychiatrist was horrified at the stories returning soldiers told him of what they did to children in Afghanistan and Iraq and decided he had to switch sides and kill the killers to protect the kids. Though legally he almost certainly be convicted of murder, he was motivated by defence of innocents, a legitimate excuse for murder if the attack is imminent.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
No rain would ever fall if raindrops paused to contemplate their insignificance.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
Obama is huge improvement over W., but he is still a war criminal. Why? He is escalating the illegal Afghanistan war. America originally attacked Afghanistan unprovoked. Afghanistan had nothing to do with 9/11. The official story is bin Laden, a Saudi, masterminded 9/11 and Pakistan bankrolled it.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
Obama’s plan to get the Afghans to take over the American war against the Taliban is as futile as Hitler convincing the French to fight against the French resistance. Obama forgets that the Taliban have the support of the Afghan majority. Without that support, they could not possibly have held the combined might of the USA, Britain and Canada at bay. The Karzai puppet govermnent is a gang of monumentally corrupt drug and war lords. The Taliban, to our eyes, are completely unacceptable, but to the Afghans, Karzai is even more so.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
On 2002-01-29, in his SOTU axis of evil speech, George W. Bush announced America’s intention to destroy the “axis of evil”, namely Iraq, North Korea and Iran. Iran had no chance against America with the largest and best equipped military on the planet. What were they to do? The only thing that could conceivably hold off the USA is a nuclear deterrent. Nuclear missiles worked for North Korea. Iran is trying them too, but since it can’t possibly deliver a missile to the continental USA, it has to bluff a nuclear strike capability against America’s proxy in the region, Israel, instead, and hope the USA cares enough about Israel to call off the attack on Iran. Iran further made it clear they could easily block the Strait of Hormuz and hence freeze 40% of the planet’s oil shipments which would cripple the USA. To me, all this was inevitable once Bush announced his attack plans. Oddly, for most Americans, Iran’s behaviour seems baffling and irrational. Americans refuse to take any responsibility for helping create this messy and dangerous situation. You can’t announce your plans to murder someone and expect them to take it lying down.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
One day, Dr. Z. A. Melzak, my discrete mathematics prof, laughed at us students racing for a piece of paper every time he gave us a problem. He rolled up his sleeve and showed us his number tattoo from a Nazi concentration camp. He told us, as a boy, how he managed to stay alive by entertaining the guards with feats of mental arithmetic. I know the holocaust was real because I trust Dr. Melzak not to lie to me. He never minced words.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
One of the most bizarre excuses for the Iraq war that Americans give me is that they are defending their freedom from attack by Iraq. What attack? 9/11? Even president Bush on 2003-09-17, said that a Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with 9/11. Bush said bin Laden, a Saudi, and a small band of Saudi Al-Qaeda was responsible. Everyone saw the USA bomb the residential sections of Baghdad live on CNN on 2003-03-20, the opening day of the war, not the reverse. There was no WMD attack. There were not even any WMDs. Perhaps Americans are offended that Iraqis attacked them when the US military illegally invaded their country and started plundering it. That is defence, not attack. What American freedom did Iraqis interfere with — the American divine right to steal? The war was not even about liberating Iraqis from Saddam since Saddam offered to surrender before the war, and was deposed the instant the war started. If regime change were truly what the war were about, the war should have ended as soon as Saddam was captured on 2003-12-13 (5 years and 10 months ago). It raged on even more fiercely, without even a hiccup, indicating there was something else fueling it. Hint what does Iraq have billions of barrels of that the USA thinks it desperately needs, needs badly enough to kill and torture children for? War is about stealing other people’s resources. The rest is patriotic bullshit to sell them to gullible people.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
One of the reasons the USA is eager to find an excuse to annihilate Iran is that Iran has been accepting Euros in payment for oil. Given that Iran’s customers include Europe, Russia and China why shouldn’t Iran accept Euros, rubles, and Renminbi? It could be the beginning of the end of the massive exchange commissions the US gets from having the world’s oil transactions transacted in US dollars. No longer, when the US prints money, would it effectively be able to tax (through inflation) all foreign countries that hold American petrodollars. Without massive foreign global petrodollar holdings, the value of the US dollar would collapse. Recall the Ambassador Glaspie incident when in 1990 the USA tricked Saddam Hussein into giving it a respectable excuse to invade shortly after Iraq started accepting Euros for oil.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
One way to understand the grievances of the Palestinians and the aboriginal North Americans is to imagine how we would feel if some alien race with advanced technology colonised earth, considering our lands as empty and us as vermin.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
Our ancestors used torture in cases of suspected disloyalty to the crown and religious heresy. They believed the crime was so serious it justified punishment before conviction and tortured confessions to obtain convictions. Better that 100 innocents perish than one guilty man or woman go free. That same attitude lives today in America with their horror of “crimes” allegedly committed by hairy Muslims, including defending their own country from an illegal American invasion.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
Over and over, Cheney gets away with conflating terrorists and P.O.W.s He even gets away with it when he said on 2009-06-01 that Americans captured ‘terrorists’ on the battlefield who were trying to kill Americans soldiers (who had illegally invaded Iraq). Those are prisoners of war. A terrorist is someone who kills civilians. Yet no one ever calls Cheney on his endlessly repeated lie.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
Over ¾ of North Carolina Republicans believe President Obama is not a citizen of the USA. Granted 8% of them don’t know that Hawaii is part of the USA. There is no evidence of any kind to support this view. There is plenty to disprove it. The delusion survives solely because racists tell it to each other. Average and below average intelligence humans tend to believe what they believe their fellows believe. It has nothing at all to do with evidence. It works much the way dogs in a pack don’t think for themselves. They defer to the alpha leader.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
People often accuse me of being anti-American. It is true I believe the Viet Nam, Afghanistan and Iraq wars are inexcusable, and I detest with extreme passion anyone who supports them. Unfortunately, even the most progressive Americans still blindly support the troops even when they commit atrocities. I also hold America in contempt for allowing the health care industry to corrupt its government and to refuse health care to so many citizens. However, there are some Americans I admire. Ones you may have heard of include:
- Dr. Noam Chomsky
- Rep. Barney Frank
- Al Gore
- Bill Joy
- Martin Luther King
- Dr. John Lilly
- Bill Maher
- Bill Moyers
- Dr. Carl Sagan
- Keith Olbermann
- Gore Vidal
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
People who advocate nuclear overkill claim that since we have not all been killed yet, it must be a wise strategy. That is like some ditzy queen having unprotected sex claiming it must be safe since he hasn’t caught HIV yet.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
People who burn, torture, maim and kill kids or who help others to do, so are the most degenerate creatures on the planet. This includes every US, Canadian and British soldier who aided and abetted either of the Afghan or Iraq wars, even if they just peeled potatoes. It is amazing how relentless propaganda has managed to convince so many people these perverts are heroes protecting the freedom of the homeland. The propaganda does not require censorship to be effective because of the power of wishful thinking. People are happy to believe flattering lies about themselves, even obvious lies. This self-deception is even more shameful than the Nazi embrace of Hitler’s propaganda since Hitler hid the truth.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
People worry that someday computers will become so powerful that they will enslave humanity. Humans will foolishly serve masters that are not even conscious. They fail to notice this has already happened, only it was the mindless legal entities called corporations without body, conscience or consciousness that took over the planet, not computers.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
Perhaps torturers should be give the option of a month of whatever torture they inflicted on others, in place of the usual punishment.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
Politicians are concerned about the aging of the population. Who will pay for the care of the elderly? Most politicians promote a Ponzi scheme to encourage population growth of the young through increased birth rate or immigration. This is not a sustainable solution, because when that generation ages you have an even bigger problem.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
Politicians claim to be time lords. They claim we must vote for them to ‘move forward’ into the future. I thought that would happen anyway. They remind me of Aztec priests who convinced the populace their ceremonies were necessary to make the sun rise each day.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
Politicians shilling for the health insurance companies remind me of villains in crime dramas, making up preposterous lies to cover their crimes. Like actors, they too are professional liars and manage to fool much of the audience.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
Possessing a gun makes you and your family considerably less safe and makes it much more likely you will commit a felony. Why then would you want one unless you were clinically paranoid?
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
Recipe to create a terrorist: take one idealistic young man, lock him into an apartheid system where there is no future, imprison and torture his father, rape his mother and sister then napalm his little brother with a twist of white phosphorous. What puzzles me is why there are so many self-styled warriors against terrorism working so hard to create more terrorists.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
Religious bigots threw early Christians to the lions. Protestant religious bigots in turn strenuously resisted giving Catholics equal civil rights. Religious bigots resisted freeing slaves. They also resisted giving women the vote. They resisted giving blacks the vote. They resisted giving gays equal civil rights. You can count on bigots to exploit religion as an excuse to oppress others. They brazenly spit on the constitution when they attempt to force their religious superstitions on others.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
Republican believe in letting the market make all decisions and keeping the government from interfering with private citizens — with two exceptions — pornography and marijuana.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
Republican Christians ignore evidence of holes in the official 9/11 story. They ignore holes in the bible story. They vote to preserve the privilege of the elites. Why? They have been trained since birth to defer to authority even when authority is apparently incorrect.?
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
Republicans have learned a filthy trick to control people from the Christians — make them feel guilty about perfectly normal sexual desire.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
Republicans tell us that those who tortured or ordered torture should not be prosecuted because they sincerely believed what they did was legal, even laudatory. Where have I heard this before? Was it ‘ignorance of the law is no excuse?’ No that’s not it. Ah yes, I remember — the insanity defence.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
Retribution for the casualties in the Afghanistan and Iraq wars in themselves have become sufficient emotional justification to continue the wars, which of course just creates still more casualties in a vicious circle. People forget there never was a legitimate reason to invade either country in the first place. Pride, not unlike that for a sports team, is now the primary motive for the slaughter of other people’s sons.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe is arguably the most psychotic dictator since Hitler. He makes Saddam look avuncular and the Taliban look saintly. He sends out his green bomber squads to rape children. Zimbabwe, a once prosperous nation, now has the lowest life expectancy of any country on earth — 35 years. Yet the West has done absolutely nothing to deter him. It makes one suspicious of American presidents when they claim the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are to free the people from tyranny.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
Saddam was indeed an evil man, but he was also an evil man when the CIA trained him, and helped to to seize power. He was also an evil man when he killed all his political rivals and the USA said nothing. He was also an evil man when he gassed the Kurds with gas and helicopters sold to him by the USA on credit. He was uppity when he accepted Euros for oil when George H. W. Bush demanded he accept only US petrodollars. But the US did not invade until they felt desperate for oil. They continued to occupy Iraq long after Saddam was dead. This suggests the invasion and occupation of Iraq has only a little to do with Saddam and a lot to do with oil.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
School yard bullies, gang leaders and presidents differ only in the size of their gangs and the cost of their weapons.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
Since German vets of WW II, American vets of the Vietnam War, the Afghan war and the Iraq war all fought in illegal first strike wars, violating the Geneva conventions, I don’t see why any of them deserve respect, honour or any form of support. They are all war criminals. That they were just following orders is no excuse.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
Since it is illegal to give someone a consideration to influence their testimony in court, the law should equally apply to the government. The government too should not be permitted to offer immunity or money in return for testimony. At the very least, the jury should be made completely aware of any deals made with criminals for their testimony.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
Since WW II, it is never about freedom. For the soldiers, war as about sadism. For the backers, it is about profit.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
Society faces the big problems: global warming, nuclear war, environmental collapse, overpopulation, bigotry… with suicidal passivity. This must be doubly discouraging for the young who have to live (or die) with the consequences.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
Some Americans say cradling a gun makes them feel safe. They know intellectually that gun is far more likely to kill a family member than an intruder, but the craving for feeling safe overrides. How idiotically cowardly!
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
Some of the goals I would hope for children’s television would include teaching:But what do we get? Puppets and adults in animal costumes behaving like drooling idiots, using atrocious grammar and pronunciation, singing mindless songs composed by a cat. This applies even to the ‘best’ shows like Sesame Street. One of the the few exceptions is the Backyardigans which is careful about pronuciation, grammar and ethics. It exposes children to many musical styles in a simplified form, but one that does not insult their intelligence.
- Basic language skills. Vocabulary, how to pronounce words properly, proper grammar.
- Elements of ethical behaviour and empathy.
- Modelling appropriate behaviour for both children and adults.
- Music appreciation, exposing children to a variety of musical genres.
- Encouragement in creative play, such as dance, singing, painting, crafts, drama, outdoor games.
- Avoiding dangerous situations.
- Basic life skills such as how to send a letter, how to buy something, how to save, selecting a sensible diet, how to summon help in an emergency.
- Fostering curiosity about science, biology, other languages, life in other countries, history, government etc.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
Suicide attacks are a rational strategy against American soldiers because these soldiers are so well protected, trained and equipped, that every one taken out of action will save hundreds of lives. There is nothing more immoral about a suicide attack than an attack where the attacker survives. We award bravery medals to those who sacrifice their lives in suicidally dangerous attacks, yet when our enemies do it, we pretend they are crazed and cowardly.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
Talking heads on TV have said that there could not be any sort of conspiracy of silence on the part of the government surrounding 9/11 since information about secret projects always leaks out. I counter:~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
- Plenty of information has already leaked about 9/11.
- The Manhattan Project maintained absolute secrecy until it was declassified.
- We only hear about projects that were declassified or where secrecy broke down. We don’t even know of the existence of the truly secret projects.
Teabaggers taking over the Republican party remind me of a spiteful wife in a divorce dispute who got the house only to burn it down.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
Tell people that Hitler was a vegetarian, and some will hear a comment on the quirkiness of human nature able to hold conflicting beliefs simultaneously. Others will hear it as condemning vegetarians as anti-Semitic.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
The America military tell me nukes are weapons of peace. If that were true, then they should want to see everyone gets one. They are weapons of hegemony.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
The American president has two jobs; one of them is ceremonial head of state — king for a quadrennium. Americans too have a privileged nobility; it is just more fluid.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
The ancient Romans believed in group punishment, punishing people for the crimes of others. If the resistance attacked a Roman soldier, the Romans would line up everyone in the village and kill every tenth person, a process they called decimating. Hitler did the same thing killing one in thirty. Americans and Israelis have their own variant. They kill at least 100 random children, usually with explosives, whose parents need have no connection to the resistance at all. They call this defending themselves and feel quite self righteous about the moral propriety of punishing children for the crimes of unrelated adults.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
The biggest roadblock to peace in Israel is Israelis understanding why Hamas sent rockets at them. The Israelis naively believe themselves utterly blameless for the escalating violence. This feigned innocence leaves them helpless to remedy situation.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
The Bushes have greatly enhanced presidential prestige. All a president has to do now on a foreign visit is avoid getting drunk, throwing up on his hosts and starting a war then the public think he has just walked on water.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
The Canada-Israel Committee is the lobby group that provides the most free trips to Canadian MPs. The MPs justify taking the trips on the grounds it helps them understand the middle-east situation. What is actually does is help them better understand the Israeli point of view, which they already understand far better than they understand the Palestinian point of view. Twelve of the trips were simple bribes, trips to giant birthday party.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
The criticism that cuts deepest is the one that points out how a man is hurting his own cause.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
The Cuban missile crisis of 1962 was by far the most terrifying event of my life. The world escaped nuclear war only because a Soviet submarine captain refused orders to fire his nuclear weapons. Oddly, as the cold war thawed, the USA stepped up its blockade on Cuba. In 1992 the Torricelli act made it illegal for a ship to dock in the USA for 160 days after docking in Cuba. In 1996 the Helms-Burton act sanctioned any country that traded with Cuba. On 2004-06-04 the USA allocated $59 million dollars for anti-Castro propaganda. To top it off, the US attempted to assassinate Castro over 600 times. Why is this? Today, Cuba presents little military threat to the USA. It can’t be that Castro is a dictator. The USA has happily supported hundreds of many other dictators throughout the world including the leaders of Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Chile, Indonesia, the Philipines, Jordan, Zimbabwe, Brazil, Nicaragua, the Shah of Iran, Batista in pre-revolutionary Cuba, even Saddam Hussein in pre Gulf war Iraq… The reason is the USA wants to return to the way things were prior to 1959, when the USA picked the puppet dictators who ran Cuba for the benefit of the USA, treating it the way Britain used to exploit its colonies.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
The DEA argue for harsh marijuana enforcement because marijuana grown by criminals contains illegal pesticides and the growers leave litter in the national parks when they grow marijuana hidden in the forests. It does not seem to dawn on the DEA that tobacco does not have either of these problems because it is grown legally. Further it does not dawn on them tobacco use is decreasing, where use of other drugs is increasing. When a drug is legal, it can be better controlled.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
The denial of Americans is so powerful, that they will deny American soldiers have ever killed any children in Afghanistan or Iraq based on a single propaganda photo of a soldier handing out candy or holding a child. They ignore the fact they funded $1 trillion in aircraft, bombs, white phosphorus, napalm, tanks, rifles… to pound these countries to rubble. They ignore the photos of bombed homes or dead children. They will even ignore the televised deliberate killing of children during the killing of al-Zarqawi.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
The enemies of America must be chortling with laughter watching American senators plotting to kill off millions of American citizens by denying them health care. Al Qaeda, in its wildest dreams, could never hope for casualties that large.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
The essential character of the soldier comes clear when discipline breaks down, such as in the Congo where soldiers rape women and then poke sticks and guns in their vaginas to destroy the wall between the vagina, uterus and rectum leaving them in pain and incontinent for life.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
The government snoops on the Internet porn viewing habits of its citizens for the same reasons the pervert FBI director J. Edgar Hoover spied on Martin Luther King’s sex life. The two motives areIf they were truly interested in the welfare of the porn models, they would go after the porn sites, not the people who harmlessly view the freebie ads.
- prurient interest.
- wanting to intimidate citizens for political control.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
The greatest propaganda coup of the last 100 years is AIPAC’s convincing the public that any criticism of the Israeli government is tantamount to anti-Semitism.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
The herd instinct is so powerful, that even Bill Moyers bought into the lie that Afghanistan attacked the USA first, thus justifying the invasion. That would be like justifying invading and plundering Mexico’s or Columbia’s natural resources because of the actions of drug smugglers. That Nazis were able to bamboozle their entire population to follow a path of evil is more understandable.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
The holocaust has become too much of a sacred cow. Surely the claims of the deniers are more plausible than the Christian claims of a talking snake, a 40-day flood covering Mount Everest, and a wooden boat containing tens of millions of animals which we discuss openly. It permissible to debate any other incident in history but the holocaust. Censorship just gives the whackos credance.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
The illegal American occupation of Afghanistan has been going on for 8 years, 1 month and 1 day, since 2001-10-07. America signed a treaty agreeing not to attack other nations unless attacked first. Not even Bush claims Afghanistan was involved in 9/11.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
The illegal American occupation of Iraq has been going on for 6 years, 7 months and 19 days, since 2003-03-20. America signed a treaty agreeing not to attack other nations unless attacked first.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
The image to the right is Michael York. In the 1968 film The Strange Affair, criminals attacked P.C. Peter Strange, played by Michael York, by boring holes in his cheeks with a power drill. Now we discover the Bush administration used power drills as an ‘interrogation’ technique.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
The Iraq war amounts to home invasion on a massive scale, yet Americans can’t understand why the rest of the world, including the international court, considers what they are doing criminal.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
The leaders of Hamas and Israel out of frustration at not being able to kill each other, kill children. These leaders all deserve death by hanging, drawing and quartering.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
The least efficient way to stimulate the economy is with military spending. Why?~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
- When you are done you have nothing to show for it, no highways, schools, education, sewers or airports that help support business.
- The spending usually happens on the other side of the world. The spinoffs flow there, not back home.
- Military spending is a high profit business. This means most of the money ends up in the pockets of a very few, very rich people. Other forms of spending spread the money around more evenly.
The most revolting perverts on earth are the US soldiers who claim they are killing Iraqi civilians to defend the USA. They are such liars. They watched the USA launch the war, unprovoked, live on CNN by bombing the residential parts of Baghdad. They are fully aware Iraq has no planes, submarines, ships, tanks, missiles, nukes… The Iraqis must resort to home-made bombs and small arms to defend against the American occupation. The soldiers are fully aware Iraqis killed not a single American even when the USA killed 1.5 million Iraqis in the sanction bombings prior to the Iraq war. If the Iraqis would not retaliate against US civilians with even that provocation, what would it take? The soldiers know the USA auctioned of all of Iraq’s oil resources to American and European oil companies. They know the war is really about oil. Why then are they killing, raping and torturing? They surely would not risk their lives simply for oil. It is not the pay. It is not the travel. Iraq is the arm pit of the earth. What does that leave — sadism.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
The odd thing about militiamen is they are willing to kill fellow Americans over their differences in political opinion, but are often unwilling campaign or even to vote to throw out the politicians they disagree with.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
The official story is a rinky dink, broke, untrained, terrorist outfit orchestrated the most complex terrorist act in history, completely defeating the combined efforts of a multi-trillion dollar defence system using nothing more than a few box cutters. How do you explain it?~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
- Divine intervention.
- Blind luck on the part of Al-Qaeda.
- Gross incompetence on the part of the US military.
- Inside help.
- The whole story is a complete crock. It was actually done by someone with access to high tech, most likey Bush himself as an excuse to start two wars and suspend the constitution with the patriot act.
The only way for a Canadian Prime Minister to avoid being vilified, betrayed and turned on by his party is to die in office.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
The Ortho® Home Defense MAX® Kill & Contain® Mouse Trap is a beautiful metaphor for American attitudes to the children of Afghanistan and Iraq killed by the American occupation. The advantage of the trap is it does not let you see the dead mouse or learn the mechanism by which the mouse was killed. Deliberate ignorance somehow assuages the conscience.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
The Oxford dictionary defines holocaust as “destruction or slaughter on a mass scale”. Yet if anyone uses the term in this sense, a horde of harpies swoop down on him shrieking “holocaust denier!”. The holocaust has become a sort of sacred cow.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
The people of Afghanistan and Iraq have the moral and legal right to kill American soldiers, anywhere on the planet, because America attacked their countries unprovoked and continue to occupy their countries. Given that Americans have butchered so many children, the people of Afghanistan and Iraq also have the natural right, though not the legal or moral right, to butcher American children anywhere on the planet. We should all be thankful they have refrained from exercising that right.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
The planet should only have to bear as many new humans as it can support.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
The popular wisdom is the USA has the highest percentage of people in jail because it has the highest percentage of criminals. Shouldn’t someone check that it is not the reverse?
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
The primary motivation now for fighting the Afghanistan and Iraq wars is male pride. The pro-war faction don’t want to admit that even with unlimited budget they cannot defeat an small band of what they consider their racial inferiors. Granted, withdrawal means wounded pride, but persisting with the occupation means more people maimed and killed on both sides just to procrastinate the emotional pain of admitting their “enemies”/victims will never say uncle no matter how viciously they are bombed or tortured. Americans give lip service to Christianity, but the Afghans and Iraqis truly do believe they will live forever.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
The primary technique of manipulation is telling lies. The manipulator promises that doing as he asks will lead to satisfying some strong basic drive or avoiding something feared. The satirical movie Idiotocracy lays the mechanism bare in its crudest form. The art reaches its peak in religious evangelism.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
The problem with the news is it reports only the transient. Anything important builds gradually over years.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
The purpose of an air show is twofold: to impress and cow the populace with the power of the military machines and secondly to camouflage the true purpose of these expensive machines, namely to burn the skin off the backs of children in the Middle East.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
The purpose of torture is not to gain information but rather to cow the population. It is thus a form of terrorism, one practiced by the USA.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
The question to ask a politician running for office is ‘What results have you already accomplished on issue X?’ not what are you in favour of? not what do you promise to do? not what experience do you have at getting nothing accomplished?
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
The Republican party is like some bimbo in a sci fi movie whose brain gets taken over by group after group of aliens. Originally it was old money, then corporate America (mostly defence and energy), then evangelistic Christians, then corporate America again (mostly insurance and big pharma), then teabaggers… It has no moral compass, so it cannot resist takeover.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
The United States spends more on its military than all other countries in the world put together. Polls tell us Americans believe this money is well spent, necessary to prevent invasion. They fail no notice that almost no countries are ever invaded, not even ones without militaries like Costa Rica. The country most likely to invade others is the United States itself. This suggests the purpose of the US military is not defence, but planetary hegemony.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
The US military is having trouble with soldiers, especially young married ones, refusing to kill children when ordered to in the Iraq and Afghanistan occupations. One of the research think tanks has come up with what amounts to a outsized version of the successful Ortho® Home Defense MAX® Kill & Contain® Mouse Trap that lets you kill mice without ever seeing them or knowing the mechanism by which they were dispatched. The child killing trap is baited with candy instead of peanut butter, almost irresistible to children living on a calorie deprived diet.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)I am pulling your leg. This is not literally true, but the military uses all manner of long range weapons, such as bombers, rockets, high powered rifles, flame throwers, napalm, white phosphorus,… that let soldiers kill their victims without ever seeing their faces.
The US military works non-stop to provide a respectable cover for the sadists, rapists and racists who enlist. It is much like the way the Catholic church provides a holy cover for pedophiles who enlist in the priesthood.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
The USA and Iraq are as mismatched combatants as Mike Tyson and a bag lady. Americans make themselves look ridiculous when they justify invading and occupying Iraq in self defence.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
The USA rejects the world court. Further, it refuses to give foreign aid unless the recipient country agrees to sign a treaty agreeing never to hand over Americans to the world court for trial. Bush dismissed the ICC (International Criminal Court) as ‘Kofi Annan’s kangaroo court’ even though it has more legitimacy than any national court to deal with international war crimes and even though the rest of the world respects its judges and procedures for fairness. Why is American thumbing its nose at the world court? If Americans were punished for their war crimes, including the crime of aiding and abetting an aggressive war (such as the illegal war in Iraq), it would have a chilling effect on America’s resource wars. America’s political, economic and military power to protect its war criminals from prosecution is waning. Remember that it took 50 years to prosecute some of the Nazi war criminals.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
The USA signed a treaty giving its word it would abide by the Geneva conventions of war. It signed a UN treaty giving its word it would never make a first strike at another nation. It signed the NAFTA free trade treaty with Canada agreeing that goods could travel back and forth across the border without tariffs. Then Bush invaded two nations unprovoked. Bush then slapped tariffs on Canadian softwood lumber. Then Bush called the Geneva conventions “quaint”. This is tantamount to America declaring that keeping your word is “quaint”. And Americans wonder why they are no longer respected.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
The way Americans vilified the French when France refused to join the USA in the illegal invasion and plunder of Iraq reminds me of the way a drug addict turns on then sheds his friends who try to warn him of the dangers of his lifestyle.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
There are a few important things you can do totally on your own, but most important projects require the co-operation of large numbers of people. This means the most important life skill is one usually looked down on — persuasion, sometimes called salesmanship.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
There are less than 100 Al Qaeda left in Afghanistan. Surely that counts as winning. Yet Obama/the military establishment is so keen on keeping the war/cash cow going he bleats that ending the occupation would be admitting defeat. The other interpretation is he wants to destroy fundamentalist Islam in Afghanistan, the religion of nearly everyone there. That can only happen by killing everyone.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
There are two kinds of evil nations, those who make lives miserable for their own citizens and those that make misery for the citizens of other countries. The United States is the most evil nation in history of the second type, simply because they are the most militarily and financially powerful nation of all time and because they have chosen conspicuous consumption as the national virtue and unregulated capitalism as the state religion. The irony is, because of the power of propaganda, they see themselves as the greatest benefactors of all time.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
There are two sorts of crimes: ones where there is a victim, and ones enforcing religiously-inspired social mores, such as public nudity, smoking marijuana, a 16 year old seducing a pop star, bigamy, pornography, burning a flag, homelessness…
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
There are under 1000 deaths a year world wide attributable to terrorists, and 1,000,000 deaths attributable to vehicles. Yet the spending to stop terrorists dwarfs that to make vehicles safer. An automobile is 1000 times more likely to kill you than a terrorist, yet Americans fear terrorists far more than they do Hummers.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
There is a primitive tribe in the Americas that has an odd custom. The elders hand out special ritual garments to selected lay members of the tribe, usually from the lower castes. Wearing this clothing bestows almost complete ritual immunity to all taboos. The wearers may steal, rape, murder… with impugnity. In turn the wearer of one of these garments agrees to unquestioningly do anything one of the elders wants, most commonly dispatching rivals or killing for entertainment, or sometimes S&M-tinged sexual favours. This primitive tribe live to this day in the USA, and they they call the ritual clothing a military uniform.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
There is a scene in Dexter, a TV show, where a serial killer stabs Dexter’s mom to death in front of Dexter as a child. It is gut wrenching. In real life this happens every day in Iraq and Afghanistan where parents are butchered in front of their children at the hands of Americans, with all manner of weapons. I can never forgive them for this. These are deeds evil beyond imagination.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
There is something deeply unfair and absurd about a society that insists that every discussion about civil rights, (e.g. euthanasia, gay marriage …) has to have religious fundamentalist bigot on the panel for ‘balance’, even when that bigot cannot muster even a single fact to support his view. Yet evangelists may make the most hateful, absurd, fallacious and fraudulent claims from the pulpit without anyone invited or permitted to dispute them.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
There was no exit strategy for Iraq because the Cheney/Bush administration never planned to leave. Why would they leave before all the oil and gas were gone? The trillion dollar plus investment in gaining control of the oil would make no sense if Americans just handed it back to Iraq. Obama announced the phased withdrawal from Iraq on the same day he announced the auction of all of Iraq’s oil resources where the invited buyers were American and European oil companies.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
Though nearly every businessman is aware of the damage large corporations are doing e.g. crushing competition through mergers and acquisitions, corrupting democracy buy buying politicians, crushing civil rights, lying to the public, polluting, encouraging war… almost never does a businessman decide to refrain from helping the process along.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
Though nearly every scientist is aware that every year, science collectively discovers dozens of new mechanisms for man to ever more certainly render himself extinct, almost none refrain from helping the process.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
Though Russia, the United Kingdom, France, China, India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea have threatened to use nuclear weapons on other countries, only the United States has actually done it.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
To get more oil, Americans will happily destroy their national parks, foul their beaches, go to war, bankrupt themselves, kill and torture children… Oddly, they flatly refuse to use less oil, use it more efficiently or use alternative fuels because they are as addicted to oil as any junkie is to methamphetamines. They have this weird idea you have to burn oil to prove your masculinity.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
Toys and games help children rehearse adult activities. When you give your child a video game where the goal is to steal automobiles, rape and kill prostitutes, bludgeon your opponent to a bloody pulp, or kill as many strangers as quickly as possible, just what is it you are training your child to grow up to be?
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
Truth in advertising department. A TV US military recruiting ad shows a young man saying ‘When I enlisted in the National Guard, I never thought I’d be saving lives.’ Presumably he expected to be sent to Iraq to slaughter people.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
Trying to stop war with a website is a bit like being a raindrop trying to put out a forest fire. The raindrop has the consolation that all wild fires eventually are put out, mainly by the concerted action of raindrops.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
Under what extreme circumstances would you consider participating in suicide attacks? Perhaps if some foreign power had invaded and occupied your country for 8 years, raped your women and children, rounded up and tortured your young men, desecrated your places of worship, used hideously cruel, illegal weapons of war on your civilian populations, and/or killed your family. What is your evidence the Taliban are any different from you?
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
Very few Germans publicly questioned the righteousness of Hitler invading his neighbours unprovoked, so it is not surprising most Americans have no moral qualms about invading and occupying Iraq and Afghanistan. Americans are concerned about American casualties, war costs and oil — not about morality or legality.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
War is just well-funded terrorism. It is no more respectable.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
Wars, like other government projects, require funding. They must compete for funding, just like other mega-projects promoted by lobbyists. The lobbyists with the biggest purses to sell their wars both to the politicians and the public are the ones promoting resource wars with the highest financial return. As Dr. Bethune put it, ‘It is the secret of all wars: profit.’
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
We all know how young athletic men with high testosterone levels behave in a football or hockey game. Imagine how they would behave without a referee! War is an athletic contest with lethal weapons and no referee. Why then are we surprised at torture and other flagrant violations of the Geneva convention rules of war?
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
We are lucky that terrorists prefer suicide attacks. If they did not, terrorists would become more successful with each attack, and they would teach young terrorists from their experience.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
We despise the Chinese collaborationist government of the Japanese occupation. We hold Vichy collaborationist government of the Nazi occupation of France in contempt. Why then does the Hamid Karzai provisional government during the American occupation of Afghanistan have any credibility, especially when Karzai and friends are unusually corrupt heroin drug and war lords? The Iraqi collaborationist government is little better. They are all traitors to their own countries.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
We expect far too much from our leaders and far too little from our citizens.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
We North Americans treat killing as casually as the Romans because it has become a form of entertainment. We are willing for the most trivial of reasons to kill, especially people in other parts of the world. But killing someone is a monumental crime. Not only do you deprive them of absolutely everything, you create a life-long aching hole in the lives of those that knew them or depended on them.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
What do you do when the majority are religious bigots who scoff at the First Amendment and improperly use the law to enforce their superstitions on others?
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
What does a terrorist organisation need? recruits and money. The illegal invasion of Afghanistan is helping Al Qaeda with both. The worse the US behaves with torture, banned weapons, killing civilians… the more recruits and money pour into Al Qaeda from around the world from people horrified at American behaviour. It is thus illogical to think the situation can be improved with still more torture, banned weapons and killing civilians. If nine years of it did not work, why would even more help? It is literal insanity to try the same brutality over and over expecting a different result. Ask the Russians. They occupied Afghanistan for a decade too, before they gave up and went home.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
What is the reaction a mother has on learning her son has been killed in a the act of committing a crime such as looting, torturing a crippled man who could not speak English, murdering an old lady, bombing a school, or raping a child? Grief? Shame? Nope. Pride! She holds her head high and brags how her son sacrificed his life for God, country, freedom, liberty and justice. What is the magic that allows to so delude herself? It is a mere coat, also known as a military uniform.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
What kind of person would stand idly by while his country tortured children? If you are from Paraguay, Chile or America, look in the mirror.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
What possible good can come from letting someone who is brain-damaged own a weapons cache?
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)Mind you, the very desire to own a weapons cache indicates someone might not be quite right in the head. What can you do with one but commit mass murder?
What possible good can come from letting a felon own a weapons cache?
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
What possible good can come from letting a teenager own a weapons cache?
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
What were the Americans thinking when they planted land mines in Viet Nam designed to keep on killing even 50 years later?It is a wonder that Americans enjoy a reputation any better than Nazis. How else could it be but the fruits of dogged self-promotion?
- They figured the war would still be ongoing?
- They wanted to rip the legs off Viet Namese children, yet unborn, to punish them for the sins of their grand parents, namely refusing to submit to the American occupation?
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
What would you say to someone who had raped, tortured, mutilated or murdered a child, or helped someone else do so? You get a chance every time you meet a member of the armed services of the USA, Canada or Britain.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
What would you think if America invaded Mexico because a suspected drug gang hung out there? What if it overturned the government and installed the world’s biggest drug lord as leader? What if it occupied Mexico for 8 years? What if it routinely tortured Mexican citizens. What if it killed over a million Mexican civilians, mostly children? That’s what America did to Afghanistan. If the treatment of Afghanistan appears acceptable to you, it is because you are more of a bigot about people from Afghanistan than Mexico.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
What would you think if America invaded Canada because a suspected terrorist gang hung out there? What if it overturned the government and installed the world’s biggest drug lord as leader? What if it occupied Canada for 8 years? What if it routinely tortured Canadian citizens. What if it killed over a million Canadian civilians, mostly children? That’s what America did to Afghanistan. If the treatment of Afghanistan appears acceptable to you, it is because you are more of a bigot about people from Afghanistan than Canada.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
What would you think of a guy who patched up serial killers then released them into the world to resume their killing sprees? That is exactly what army medics do.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
What would you think of an election where the candidates from one entire side of the political spectrum were automatically disqualified, where all candidates had to be approved by a foreign occupying nation who used torture routinely, where the ballots were sequentially numbered so votes could be tracked back to identify the voter, where voting boxes were made of clear plastic so anyone could see how you voted, where ballots were printed on translucent paper, so even folding your vote could not hide your choice, where the ballot box was guarded by armed soldiers working for an invading country? That’s what America offered to Iraq as a “democratic” election. That’s crooked even by Chicago standards.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
Whatever is evil for you to do is also evil for me; whatever is evil for me to do is also evil for you.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
When a Broadway show bombs, the producer does not blame the audience, yet Americans blame anti-Americanism on everyone but themselves.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
When a dog goes bad, most people will tell you it is because the owner mistreated it or incompetently raised it, or it suffered some trauma. When a person goes bad, nearly everyone puts 100% of the blame/responsibility on the offender. They expect bad people to reform themselves. They would never be so naive as to expect a dog to correct its own behaviour. They would never recommend even more brutality as the cure to rehabilitating a dog, but that is the only measure they consider to use in reforming a fellow human.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
When a man volunteers to rape, torture and kill children and women, I don’t believe him when he offers some vague noble-sounding excuse like ‘defending freedom’. We all know darn well he would have done it for any excuse.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
When a marten raids a squirrel nest, the squirrels can do nothing but shriek insults. Americans treat the shrill insults of their victims as serious threats that justify an initial attack. They are such Nazis, but have such a high opinion of themselves they can’t see how badly they are behaving.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
When a people become so addicted to oil that they are willing to butcher and torture tens of thousands of children to get it, you realise we are dealing with an addiction even more pernicious than heroin.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
When Americans say they ‘support the troops’ that means they support the troops in what they do, namely waging illegal aggressive wars, violating the Geneva conventions, using banned weapons, targeting civilians and torturing P.O.W.s., hardly part of the American self-image. Claiming to support the troops while simultaneously being opposed to the war is as silly as saying you support rapists, though you are opposed to rape. Americans are so deeply in denial, including left wingers like Al Franken, that they don’t even notice they are being ridiculous.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
When I ask ordinary Americans why they are fighting in Afghanistan, they tell me all the things they don’t like about Islam, and the need to kill them all, even the children. Given that nearly everyone in Afghanistan is a Muslim, are Americans seriously planning to kill everyone in the entire country to wipe out a competing religion? Do they imagine, with sufficient torture, a latter day crusade will convert all Afghans to Southern Baptist? This is all so bigoted and ignorant when the average American has not read even a single sentence of the Qur’an. Americans’ sole exposure to Islam is hate propaganda. Americans are behaving like the Spanish Inquisition, with their self-righteous cruelty and holy certainty.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
When I listen to NATO leaders toasting each other and joking around, I find it hard to reconcile with the mission that brings them all together — exterminating Muslims.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
When I look at the history of who is mistreating whom, it seems to me Israel is about 95% to blame for the conflict with the Palestinians. Yet others tell me it is 100% the Palestinians’ fault. Are we drawing different conclusions from the same facts or are we looking at different ‘facts’? I suspect most people get all their information from the Israelis or from American media, which is pretty much the same thing. It could also be a religious bias. Many Christians share the same nutty beliefs as Israelis about the Jews being God’s chosen people with special privilege to confiscate other people’s real estate. That ought to be as reprehensible as subscribing to Hitler’s master race theory, but in America it is quite respectable.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
When I see casualties of war, particularly the bystanders and the kids hideously burned, maimed or blown to a Cuisinart purée, I ask what possible justification could there be for such cruelty? If someone says freedom, I demand to know just whose freedom was enhanced and the freedom to do what? In what way, specifically, does that particular atrocity enhance anyone’s freedom? How could this hypothetical enhanced freedom possibly justify forcing innocents to sacrifice their ultimate freedom — the freedom to live?
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
When I started my gay lib project back in 1969, I had never met anyone who agreed with me, not even gay people. When I opposed the Afghan and Iraq wars back before they started, most Americans considered me the equivalent of a terrorist. Now, the majority agree with me. I have had similar experiences with my ideas about computers. New ideas are what guide the direction of majority thinking. The majority instinctively resist new ideas, even when they are their own. If you want to have any effect on the future, you have to be able to take derision from your mindless fellows. You must have no fear of being a minority of one. Nothing stifles innovation more effectively that fear of being different.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
When I was a child, Americans told me Communists were evil because the government spied on its citizen, made them show papers and arrested people in the middle of the night and kept them without trial. When I was an adult, Americans told me Americans were admirable because they were willing to ‘pay the price of freedom’ and do these exact same things.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
When I was a teen, I often wondered what on earth got into ordinary German citizens that they not only went along with the Nazis, they also cheered them on and started a world war so Nazis could dominate the earth. Finally, I think I understand what happened. Hitler had control of media in Germany, much the way a few corporations control the media in the USA today. Hitler pumped his ‘We’re #1’ message, just the way American TV pumps its patriotic flag worship, America uber alles propanda 24/7. Today almost every American I encounter has never read a book on politics and does not read newspapers. He never reads anything written by ‘foreigners’. He may listen to talk radio or watch FOX News or other infotainment news. The way he decides if something is true is very simple. He asks ‘Does it conflict with the notion Americans are #1, the most important, the most generous, the most virtuous people on the planet by far?’ If it does, it can’t be true. If it doesn’t, it must be true. There is no fact checking at all. Germans and Americans were thus putty in the hands of the propagandists.Hitler was big on scapegoats suggesting that if only some group were eliminated all world’s trouble in the world would go away. Americans are big on scapegoats too. They use liberals, gays, blacks, pro choicers, Hispanics… Scapegoating has special appeal for losers. Even a high school drop out, alcoholic on welfare can feel superior to the local scapegoats with twice the income and education. This builds a culture of hate and violence that eventually erupts the way it did in Nazi Germany.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
When is murder justified? Perhaps to defend the planet from ecological destruction, to defend one’s homeland from invasion, or to prevent extinction, but surely not for trivial motives like hegemony, oil and sadistic entertainment, the motives for most of the killing.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
When the value of a building drops below its insured value, it becomes a temptation to arson. To counter, fire insurance should pay no more than the market value, plus a refund for the premiums paid on the excess above market value.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
Wherever there is imbalance of power, there is abuse of power.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
Whether a politician outright lies or merely dissembles, the intent is the same — to deceive the public. The result is the same — the public is deceived. We should condemn both practices equally.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
Which country is more admirable, A or B? Country A invested heavily in military technology, far in excess of other countries. Country A held its citizens without trial, and tortured them to death. Country A attacked other countries unprovoked to take control of their natural resources. Country A when occupying a country, used group punishment and terror to ensure compliance. Country A was a master of propaganda and disinformation, and considered this a primary tool of warfare. Country A believed themselves vastly superior to those they conquered and imposed their religion and culture on them. Country B tortured its own citizens on a much smaller scale, though did all those things too, and in addition thumbed its nose at the world court, killed primarily civilians and children in its wars, used banned weapons and routinely tortured all P.O.W.s. If you picked A, you picked Nazi Germany. If you picked B, you picked the USA.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
While the world has been fixated on 9/11, Iraq, and Afghanistan, 5 million people were killed in a another resource war in the Congo over mineral called colloquially coltan. It is a ore from which the rare metals niobium and tantalum are extracted. These metals are used to make cell phones.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
Why is health care so expensive in the USA?~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
- About 1/3 of the money spent is siphoned off as profit.
- In a modern US hospital are rooms full of people dealing with complicated insurance company billing paperwork. IIRC 1/3 of staff are paper pushers doing pointless tasks like billing for every aspirin. There are no such billing clerks in other countries, just people doing medical records.
- US doctors spend a huge proportion of their time on paperwork. In other countries, they spend most of their time practicing medicine. This is a waste of rare talent.
- Drug companies spend more money on advertising than they do on research.
- The health care lobby has corrupted the politicians into enacting laws that help them rip off the people, e.g. prohibiting hospitals from bulk buys of drugs.
Why is it OK for the USA and Israel to stockpile enough nukes to destroy the earth many times over, but when any other nation has even one, it is a totally unacceptable assault on world peace?
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
Winning equal rights is not something you do once and for all. It is more like a perpetual relay race between those who believe in equality and the bigots who believe in special privilege for some group. Each generation runs the race the best it can then passes the baton onto the next generation. ~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
With 7 billion people on the planet, trying to have any influence at all guiding our species is a bit like being a ghost.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
With official sanction, US soldiers hand out Christian medallions at checkpoints in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Taliban use this as proof that the US intends to interfere with their religion. Imagine the effect if occupying Muslim soldiers handed out Islamic medallions.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
You can’t help but be skeptical when the USA ponies up $3 trillion ($3,000,000,000,000.00 dollars) for the Iraq war which it claims it is fighting for ‘humanitarian’ reasons, when it only manages to come up with a few million bucks to help with a major tsunami or earthquake, and reneged on its $9 billion pledge to help with AIDS in Africa.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
You do think Republican Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa knows that if he succeeds in derailing healthcare reform, he will kill thousands of times more Americans than Al Qaeda ever will, and further that he will bankrupt his country. It is amazing what harm a crooked man will do for money.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
You hold prisoners of war who fight against you when you invade their country, not because they are terrorists or criminals, but to stop them from continuing to shoot at you. To their own people, they are patriots and heroes. They have broken no law. It is perfectly legal, nay a patriotic duty, to shoot at invaders.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
You really have to wonder about the motives of someone who tells you they are willing to endure extreme danger and hardship for a chance to butcher children, in ‘self defense’ of course, on the other side of the world.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
You’d think that people who have experienced great suffering would be unusually sensitive to the suffering of others. But it does not work that way. Children who are sexually or physically abused are likely to grow up and abuse their own children. Jews persecuted by the Nazis persecute Palestinians in Israel. People who were dirt poor then made it rich often have no compassion for the poor. Blacks who suffered from slavery and discrimination, line up to enlist to mindlessly slaughter people in the middle east even though they did nothing to America.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
Zionists always talk of how they came to hold sway in the middle east as the birth of Israel rather than the invasion of Palestine because harming a baby would be wicked whereas opposing an invasion is all but mandatory.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 61)
I ask you to judge me by the enemies I have made.
~ Franklin D. Roosevelt (born: 1882-01-30 died: 1945-04-12 at age: 63)
Every reform movement has a lunatic fringe.
~ Theodore Roosevelt (born: 1858-10-27 died: 1919-01-06 at age: 60)
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 (born: 1858-10-27 died: 1919-01-06 at age: 60)
But who is Osama bin Laden really? Let me rephrase that. What is Osama bin Laden? He’s America’s family secret. He is the American president’s dark doppelgänger. The savage twin of all that purports to be beautiful and civilised. He has been sculpted from the spare rib of a world laid to waste by America’s foreign policy: its gunboat diplomacy, its nuclear arsenal, its vulgarly stated policy of “full-spectrum dominance”, its chilling disregard for non-American lives, its barbarous military interventions, its support for despotic and dictatorial regimes, its merciless economic agenda that has munched through the economies of poor countries like a cloud of locusts. Its marauding multinationals who are taking over the air we breathe, the ground we stand on, the water we drink, the thoughts we think. Now that the family secret has been spilled, the twins are blurring into one another and gradually becoming interchangeable. Their guns, bombs, money and drugs have been going around in the loop for a while. (The Stinger missiles that will greet US helicopters were supplied by the CIA. The heroin used by America’s drug addicts comes from Afghanistan. The Bush administration recently gave Afghanistan a $43m subsidy for a “war on drugs”…)
~ Arundhati Roy (born: 1961-11-21 age: 47), 2001-09-29, Booker prize winner
The [Iraq] war could last six days, six weeks. I doubt six months.
~ Donald Rumsfeld (born: 1932-07-09 age: 77), secretary of War, 2003-02-07, apparently not.
Well, the Office of Management and Budget, has come up come up with a number [for the cost of the Iraq war] that’s something under $50 billion for the cost.
~ Donald Rumsfeld (born: 1932-07-09 age: 77), secretary of War, 2003-01. As of 2008-08 it is about $3000 billion and climbing. It is a debt so large it can never be paid off. Future generations will pay interest in perpetuity.
On October 26th, a date which will live in infamy, the President signed the USA/PATRIOT act, officially known as HR 3162. And you should well note that, according to Representative Ron Paul (R) of Texas as reported on November 9th by Kelly O’Meara of the Washington Times Insight Magazine, the bill had not even been printed and members of the House could not read it before they were compelled to vote on it. O’Meara wrote, “Meanwhile, efforts to obtain copies of the new bill were stonewalled even by the committee that wrote it.” Most of its provisions have nothing to do with fighting terrorism.
~ Michael C. Ruppert
the rich wage war, it’s the poor who die.
~ Jean-Paul Sartre (born: 1905-06-21 died: 1980-04-15 at age: 74)
When the rich wage war, it’s the poor who die.
~ Jean-Paul Sartre (born: 1905-06-21 died: 1980-04-15 at age: 74)
Current estimates suggest the cost of the war in Iraq could exceed $700 billion.
~ Representative Jan Schakowsky (born: 1944-05-22 age: 65) (D-IL),As of 2008-08 is it about $3000 billion and climbing. It is a debt so large it can never be paid off. Future generations will pay interest in perpetuity.
I am not going to answer any questions as to my association, my philosophical or religious beliefs or my political beliefs, or how I voted in any election, or any of these private affairs.
~ Pete Seeger (born: 1919-05-03 age: 90)
I still call myself a communist, because communism is no more what Russia made of it than Christianity is what the churches make of it.
~ Pete Seeger (born: 1919-05-03 age: 90)
I want to turn the clock back to when people lived in small villages and took care of each other.
~ Pete Seeger (born: 1919-05-03 age: 90)
All cruelty springs from weakness.
~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca (born: 4 BC died: 65 AD at age: 68)
Cui prodest scelus, is fecit.
The one who derives advantage from the crime is the one most likely to have committed it.
~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca (born: 4 BC died: 65 AD at age: 68)
The evil that men do lives after them. The good is oft interred with their bones.
~ William Shakespear (born: 1564-04-23 died: 1616-04-23 at age: 52) Julius Caesar Act II scene ii
England and America are two countries separated by a common language.
~ George Bernard Shaw (born: 1856-07-26 died: 1950-11-02 at age: 94)
I learned long ago, never to wrestle with a pig. You get dirty, and besides, the pig likes it.
~ George Bernard Shaw (born: 1856-07-26 died: 1950-11-02 at age: 94)
Parentage is a very important profession, but no test of fitness for it is ever imposed in the interest of the children.
~ George Bernard Shaw (born: 1856-07-26 died: 1950-11-02 at age: 94)
The worst sin toward our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them: that’s the essence of inhumanity.
~ George Bernard Shaw (born: 1856-07-26 died: 1950-11-02 at age: 94)
When a stupid man is doing something he is ashamed of, he always declares that it is his duty.
~ George Bernard Shaw (born: 1856-07-26 died: 1950-11-02 at age: 94)
The aim of military training is not just to prepare men for battle, but to make them long for it.
~ Louis Simpson (born: 1923-03-27 age: 86)
The rule in our society is that while those who kill once make wretched a single person are severely punished, those (heads of state, inventors, manufacturers) who are responsible for the death, mutilation or general wretchedness of thousands or millions are rewarded with fame, riches and prizes… If you are going to rob, rob big; if you’re going to kill, kill big.
~ Philip Slater (born: 1927 age: 82)
Accelerate your life!
~ Navy recruiting slogan . This is refreshingly honest — effectively, “Get your life over with faster.”
Moral cowardice that keeps us from speaking our minds is as dangerous to this country as irresponsible talk. The right way is not always the popular and easy way. Standing for right when it is unpopular is a true test of moral character.
~ Margaret Chase Smith (born: 1897-12-14 died: 1995-05-29 at age: 97)
The attempt to silence a man is the greatest honour you can bestow on him. It means that you recognise his superiority to yourself.
~ Joseph Sobran (born: 1946-02-23 age: 63)
Failing to curb the impact of climate change could damage the global economy on the scale of the Great Depression or the world wars by spawning environmental devastation that could cost 5 to 20 percent of the world’s annual gross domestic product.
~ Nicholas Stern (born: 1946-04-22 age: 63), economist
It’ll be a great day when schools have all the money they need and the Pentagon has to hold a bake sale to buy a bomber.
~ Viet Nam era bumper sticker
I wondered to myself during ‘Shock and Awe,’ I wondered which of the megaton bombs Jesus, our President’s personal savior, would have personally dropped on the sleeping families of Baghdad?
~ Meryl Streep (born: 1949-06-22 age: 60), 2003-07-09
The fact of the matter is that today, stuff-selling mega-corporations have a huge influence on our daily lives. And because of the competitive nature of our global economy, these corporations are generally only concerned with one thing — the bottom line. That is, maximising profit, regardless of the social or environmental costs.
~ Dr. David Suzuki (born: 1936-03-24 age: 73)
Corruptissima re publica plurimae leges. (The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws.)
~ Publius Cornelius Tacitus (born: 56 AD died: 117 AD at age: 61)
It is human nature to hate those whom you have injured.
~ Publius Cornelius Tacitus (born: 56 AD died: 117 AD at age: 61)
Seek to make a person blush for their guilt rather than shed their blood.
~ Publius Cornelius Tacitus (born: 56 AD died: 117 AD at age: 61)
The lust for power, for dominating others, inflames the heart more than any other passion.
~ Publius Cornelius Tacitus (born: 56 AD died: 117 AD at age: 61)
Of all manifestations of power, restraint impresses men most.
~ Thucydides (born: 460 BC died: 395 BC at age: 65)
Colin Powell had this quotation under the glass of his desk.
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 (born: 1805-07-29 died: 1859-04-16 at age: 53)
All violence consists in some people forcing others, under threat of suffering or death, to do what they do not want to do.
~ Leo Tolstoy (born: 1828-09-09 died: 1910-11-07 at age: 82)
I sit on man’s back choking him and making him carry me, and yet I assure myself and others that I am very sorry for him and wish to ease his lot by all possible means, except getting off his back.
~ Leo Tolstoy (born: 1828-09-09 died: 1910-11-07 at age: 82)
All war is deception.
~ Sun Tsu The Art Of War
Forgiveness is abandoning your right to revenge.
~ Bishop Desmond Tutu (born: 1931-10-07 age: 78)
Each man must for himself alone decide what is right and what is wrong, which course is patriotic and which isn’t. You cannot shirk this and be a man. To decide against your conviction is to be an unqualified and excusable traitor, both to yourself and to your country, let me label you as they may.
~ Mark Twain (born: 1835-11-30 died: 1910-04-21 at age: 74)
Sometimes I wonder whether the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on or by imbeciles who really mean it.
~ Mark Twain (born: 1835-11-30 died: 1910-04-21 at age: 74)
The government is merely a servant — merely a temporary servant; it cannot be its prerogative to determine what is right and what is wrong, and decide who is a patriot and who isn’t. Its function is to obey orders, not originate them.
~ Mark Twain (born: 1835-11-30 died: 1910-04-21 at age: 74)
All war is deception.
~ Sun Tzu (born: 544 BC died: 496 BC at age: 48)
If an unjust and rapacious conquer subdues a nation and forces her to accept hard, ignominious and insupportable conditions, necessity obliges her to submit, but this apparent tranquility is not a peace, it is an oppression she endures only so long she lacks the means of shaking it off and against which men of spirit arise on the first favourable opportunity.
~ Emerich de Vattel, (born: 1714-03-25 died: 1767-12-28 at age: 53), The Law of Nations
Born in iniquity and conceived in sin, the spirit of nationalism has never ceased to bend human institutions to the service of dissention and distress.
~ Thorstein Veblen (born: 1857-07-30 died: 1929-08-03 at age: 72)
As societies grow decadent, the language grows decadent, too. Words are used to disguise, not to illuminate, action: you liberate a city by destroying it. Words are to confuse, so that at election time people will solemnly vote against their own interests.
~ Gore Vidal (born: 1925-10-03 age: 84)
Currently, the [Afghanistan] pipeline is a go-project thanks to the junta’s [Bush/Cheney’s] installation of a Unocal employee (John J. Maresca) as US envoy to the newly born democracy whose president, Hamid Karzai, is also, according to Le Monde, a former employee of a Unocal subsidiary. Conspiracy? Coincidence!
~ Gore Vidal (born: 1925-10-03 age: 84) not to mention Zalmai Khalilzad, the Unocal point man in the Bush cabinet.
Happily for the busy lunatics who rule over us, we are permanently the United States of Amnesia. We learn nothing because we remember nothing… We have ceased to be a nation under law but instead a homeland where the withered Bill of Rights, like a dead trumpet vine, clings to our pseudo-Roman columns.
~ Gore Vidal (born: 1925-10-03 age: 84) The State of the Union, The Nation, 2004-09-13
I don’t see us winning the war. We have made enemies of one billion Muslims.
~ Gore Vidal (born: 1925-10-03 age: 84)
In 1950 the American republic was quietly retired and its place taken by the National Security State, set up secretly and outlined in a document not to be made public for twenty-five years, the National Security Council Memorandum 68. War and Navy Departments were combined into a single ‘Defense’ Department while the CIA, an unconstitutional secret police, was invented. The NSC-68 established the imperial blueprint that governed the world until the recent crack-up of the Soviet Union, which happened not as a result of our tactics of ongoing wars, and an arms race that they could not afford, but was due to the internal fragility of an artificial state which was, in a sense, a crude mirror of our own, now falling apart, as well, through debt and internal ethnic wars.
~ Gore Vidal (born: 1925-10-03 age: 84) Truman, The Independent Magazine, 1992-10-03
In almost every case (where the United States has fought wars) our overwhelming commitment to freedom, democracy and human rights has required us to support those regimes that would deny freedom, democracy and human rights to their own people.
~ Gore Vidal (born: 1925-10-03 age: 84)
It is difficult to find a reputable American historian who will acknowledge the crude fact that a Franklin Roosevelt, say, wanted to be President merely to wield power, to be famed and to be feared. To learn this simple fact one must wade through a sea of evasions: history as sociology, leaders as teachers, bland benevolence as a motive force, when, finally, power is an end to itself, and the instinctive urge to prevail the most important single human trait, the necessary force without which no city was built, no city destroyed.
~ Gore Vidal (born: 1925-10-03 age: 84) Robert Graves and the Twelve Caesars 1959
It makes no difference who you vote for — the two parties are really one party representing four percent of the people.
~ Gore Vidal (born: 1925-10-03 age: 84)
Liberal comes from the Latin liberalis, which means pertaining to a free man. In politics, to be liberal is to want to extend democracy through change and reform. One can see why that word had to be erased from our political lexicon.
~ Gore Vidal (born: 1925-10-03 age: 84)
Our form of democracy is bribery, on the highest scale.
~ Gore Vidal (born: 1925-10-03 age: 84)
The behaviour of President Bush on 11 September certainly gives rise to not unnatural suspicions.
~ Gore Vidal (born: 1925-10-03 age: 84)
The corporate grip on opinion in the United States is one of the wonders of the Western world. No First World country has ever managed to eliminate so entirely from its media all objectivity — much less dissent.
~ Gore Vidal (born: 1925-10-03 age: 84)
Today’s public figures can no longer write their own speeches or books, and there is some evidence that they can’t read them either.
~ Gore Vidal (born: 1925-10-03 age: 84)
I may disagree with what you have to say, but I shall defend, to the death, your right to say it.
~ Voltaire (born: 1694-11-21 died: 1778-05-30 at age: 83) [François Marie d’Arouet Voltaire]
It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.
~ Voltaire (born: 1694-11-21 died: 1778-05-30 at age: 83) [François Marie d’Arouet Voltaire]
No snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible.
~ Voltaire (born: 1694-11-21 died: 1778-05-30 at age: 83) [François Marie d’Arouet Voltaire]
In 1968, the year I wrote Slaughterhouse Five, I finally became grown up enough to write about the bombing of Dresden. It was the largest massacre in European history. I, of course, know about Auschwitz, but a massacre is something that happens suddenly, the killing of a whole lot of people in a very short time. In Dresden, on 1945-02-13, about 135,000 people were killed by British firebombing in one night. It was pure nonsense, pointless destruction. The whole city was burned down, and it was a British atrocity, not ours. They sent in night bombers, and they came in and set the whole town on fire with a new kind of incendiary bomb. And so everything organic, except my little POW group, was consumed by fire. It was a military experiment to find out if you could burn down a whole city by scattering incendiaries over it.
~ Kurt Vonnegut (born: 1922-11-11 died: 2007-04-11 at age: 84) A Man without a Country, 2005I think some atrocities, such a Dresden, can be attributed to a childish desire to play with a new toy.
Why kill good people just to get a bad man?
~ Loudon Wainright III (born: 1946-09-06 age: 63) in song Bad Man
Stephen Harper is 300 pounds of condemned beef.
~ Mary Walsh (born: 1952-05-15 age: 57)
Our true nationality is mankind.
~ H. G. Wells (born: 1866-09-21 died: 1946-08-13 at age: 79)
Liberty is the only thing you cannot have unless you are willing to give it to others.
~ William Allen White (born: 1868-02-10 died: 1944-01-31 at age: 75) American newspaper editor
The Second Amendment says we have the right to bear arms, not to bear artillery.
~ Robin Williams (born: 1951-07-21 age: 58)
The revulsion against war… will be an almost insuperable obstacle for us to overcome. For that reason, I am convinced that we must begin now to set the machinery in motion for a permanent wartime economy.
~ Charles Erwin Wilson (born: 1890-07-18 died: 1961-09-26 at age: 71) President of General Electric (1940-42, 1945-50), head of the Office of Defense Mobilisation in 1951, US Secretary of Defense (1953-57)
There are only about 100 Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, so…
~ Charles Nesbitt Wilson (born: 1933-06-01 age: 76) Texas congressman inspiration for the movie Charlie Wilson’s War 2009-10-07
For reason that have a lot to do with US Government bureaucracy, we settled on the one issue everyone could agree on, which was weapons of mass destruction.
~ Paul Wolfowitz (born: 1943-12-22 age: 65) 2003-06, explaining how the Bush administration sold the Iraq war to a gullible public.
It’s hard to conceive that it would take more forces to provide stability in post-Saddam Iraq than it would take to conduct the war itself and secure the surrender of Saddam’s security forces and his army. Hard to imagine.
~ Paul Wolfowitz (born: 1943-12-22 age: 65) 2003-02-27
For most of history, Anonymous was a woman.
~ Virginia Woolf (born: 1882-01-25 died: 1941-03-28 at age: 59)
But I know newspapers. They have the first amendment and they can tell any lie knowing it’s a lie and they’re protected if the person’s famous or it’s a company.
~ Steve Wozniak (born: 1950-08-11 age: 59) co-founder of Apple computer.
For lack of a few pinches of ordinary iodised table salt in the diet of a third world pregnant mother, a child can lose up to ten IQ points.
~ Sheryl WuDunn (born: 1959-11-16 age: 49), Pulitzer Prize winner
Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
~ William Pitt the Younger (born: 1759-05-28 died: 1806-01-23 at age: 46) Britain’s youngest Prime Minister.
Unlimited power corrupts the possessor.
~ William Pitt the Younger (born: 1759-05-28 died: 1806-01-23 at age: 46) Britain’s youngest Prime Minister.
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