Israeli forces raided ICS [Islamic Charitable Society] institutions on 6 March and 1 April seizing equipment, clothing, school buses and food and clothing from ICS warehouses and posting military closure orders on several buildings and offices. The charity estimated the cost of the raids in lost equipment and damage at US$418,000.
Describing the raids, Lynes said, "The Israeli army […] went into a bakery and literally destroyed all the equipment. They went into a sewing machine workshop, which is used for training the orphan girls, and they wrecked all the sewing machines and removed all the textiles. The machines turned up in the town dump."
A similar series of Israeli raids has been reported in Nablus since 7 July, with six charities reportedly joining the 50-odd closed by Israel in the last two years. From: Israel sets sights on Islamic organizations, July 25, 2008.

"Georgia started the crisis, but the West is blaming Russia. Everywhere there is total disinformation, distortion of facts, and international attempts to isolate Russia." - Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in Russia, August 2008.

So said the UK Home Office last week as it announced plans to give law-enforcement agencies, local councils and other public bodies access to the details of people's text messages, emails and internet activity. The move followed its announcement in May that it was considering creating a massive central database to store all this data, as a tool to help the security services tackle crime and terrorism.
Meanwhile in the US the FISA Amendments Act, which became law in July, allows the security services to intercept anyone's international phone calls and emails without a warrant for up to seven days. Governments around the world are developing increasingly sophisticated electronic surveillance methods in a bid to identify terrorist cells or spot criminal activity. ... More surveillance does not necessarily lead to a higher level of societal security. From: Surveillance made easy, NewScientist, August 23, 2008.

There is also evidence that for every dollar's worth of oil imported from the Persian Gulf region the Pentagon takes $5 out of the Federal budget to "secure" the flow of that oil. This is a clear indication that the claim that the US military presence in the Middle East is due to oil consideration is a fraud. - Are they really oil wars?, June 25, 2008.

Today’s utopia is the belief that the existing global system can reproduce itself indefinitely. The only way to be realistic is to envision what, within the coordinates of this system, cannot but appear as impossible. – Slavoj Zizek

Art and Aesthetics

“Everyone does what they can to avoid thinking. Laziness is the most basic human trait. People don’t want to think - they can’t make the connection between entertainment and thought. They want immediate kicks. People will not be human until they get pleasure from thought - only a thinking person can be a full person.” – Czech Film director Vera Chytilova, 1978.

"Every satisfied desire arouses the desire for more." - Sylvie Fleury

"It is a mistake to believe if you paint circles, cubes or some profound jumble of lines that you are being revolutionary - in comparison to Makart, perhaps. ... Your brushes and pens, which should be your weapons, are empty straws. Go out of your rooms, ... allow yourselves to be captured by the ideas of working people, and help them in their struggle against a rotten society." - George Grosz 1920"

"Nature is our best teacher." - Karl Blossfeldt

"Freedom is not something you are given, but something you have to take." - Meret Oppenheim

"I couldn't care less what people call it [art], as long as we can make what we want." - Atelier Van Lieshout

"No matter how much joy the exercise of a noble craft can bestow, let us not forget that it is a means of repeating and multiplying." - M.C. Escher

"Taxonomy, i.e. the classification of the natural world, is a system of order imposed by man and not an objective reflection of nature. Its categories are actively applied and contain the assumptions, values and associations of human society." - Mark Dion

"Beauty is that which provokes the greatest number of ideas in the shortest time," said the18th century Dutch writer Hemsterhuis.

"A bar is a sad place, a place full of strangers who are killing time, postponing the idea they are going to die" - Edward Kienholz

"I think the whole idea of continuance after death is an understandable projection of man's ego." Artist Edward Kienholz

Art comes from emotion and the strongest emotion is pain therefore all the best artists are masochists.

"We shape clay into a pot, but it is the emptiness inside that holds whatever we want." - Tao Te Ching

"Chaos is the beginning; simplicity is the end." - M.C. Escher

"Beauty? Let me tell you something - being thought of as 'a beautiful woman' has spared me nothing in life. No heartache, no trouble. Love has been difficult. Beauty is essentially meaningless and it is always transitory." - Halle Berry

Too many so called artists obscure their lack of talent with a lack of substance and ambiguity. - Freydis

Economics

Cleveland’s mayor Frank Jackson knows who to blame: Wall Street. The mayor’s office is suing some of the world’s biggest banks. including Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, HSBC and Royal Bank of Scotland’s Greenwich Capital, claiming they acted like organised criminals financing the sale of products that they knew could do nothing but harm to Cleveland. Sub-prime mortgages have proved as bad as drugs in the destruction they have wrought on the community, he said.

“Follow the money,” said Jackson. “If you ask organised crime figures why they persist in doing what they are doing, knowing the damage they are doing and the risks they are taking if they are held accountable, do you know what they will say to you? The money was just too good. You ask these financiers on Wall Street why they persist in doing this when they know the risks they are running and the damage they are doing to their communities and shareholders, do you know what they will tell you? The money was just too good.” From: Cleveland: ghost town created by America’s loan scandal, February 24, 2008.

The 16th amendment to the US constitution calling for a "small" income tax was enacted to compensate for the anticipated loss of revenue from the lowering of tariffs from 37% to 27% as authorized by the Underwood Tariff of 1913, the same year the Federal Reserve System was established. "Small" now translates into an average of 50% with federal and state income taxes combined. Free trade is only free in the sense that it is funded by the income tax.

The supply-side argument that corporate tax cuts stimulate economic growth only holds if at least half of the benefits of the tax cut are channeled toward rising wages instead of higher return on capital with the additional benefit of lower capital gain tax. Thus a case can be made to couple all corporate tax cuts with an index on wage rises to match or exceed corporate earnings. One of the reasons why strong corporate earnings have not helped the current credit crisis can be traced to the disproportional rise in equity prices having come from stagnant wages in the same corporations. - Henry C K Liu, January 2008

The report points out that the costs of the Iraq war in particular have been increasing rapidly with this year's expected tally of $135 billion amounting to a 40 percent increase over 2006. It notes that the average cost of a single U.S. soldier in Iraq last year was $390,000, up 22 percent from the $320,000 it cost in 2003. Congressional Agency Predicts War Costs Will Climb, July 11, 2007.

“[Climate change] is the greatest and widest-ranging market failure ever seen." - Sir Nicholas Stern

Remember that we do not have an "ownership" society when all we own is debt. - Axel Merk

It is clear that job cuts, energy-driven inflation—and the higher interest rates imposed by the Federal Reserve to keep inflation in check—are compounding the pressure felt by working Americans. Yet the painful consequences of this reality find no meaningful reflection in media coverage, the political campaigns of major party candidates, or federal policy. On the contrary, the decline in the housing market has been characterized as a temporary “price correction.” This euphemism is in part calculated to contain panic and prevent a mass sell-off before housing values decline further. - WSWS, October 9, 2006

Don't fool yourself: capital only looks out for capital. - Freydis

[On the conviction of Enron's Lay and Skilling] "It's a stunning verdict,'' said John Carney, a former federal prosecutor now at Baker & Hostetler. "It's the end of a chapter but not the end of a book. Enron was an icon of American business. Ken Lay was one of the most revered and respected CEOs in the country. To see him go like that is probably one of the greatest falls in business history.'' - Bloomberg news, May 2006.

"Whenever the stakes are high, that's when there will be disputes about the science." - David Ozonoff of Boston University on toxic TCE  pollution, March 2006

On why traffic congestion forms: "It's the science of complexity. In large-group dynamics, special things happen because each individual is trying to maximize their own benefit." - Craig Davis, University of Michigan physicist, MSNBC May 2006.

“In a consumer-based global market economy, low wages lead directly to overcapacity, because consumer demand depends on high wages.” - Henry C K Liu

"There are basic human needs that every economy is required to satisfy before market rules can be applied." - Henry C K Liu

"We [United States] have 50% of the world's wealth, but only 6.3% of its population. Our real task in the coming period is to maintain this position of disparity." George F Kennan, 1948.

"Whatever his other accomplishments, Bush will go down in history as the most fiscally irresponsible chief executive in American history. Since 2001, government spending has gone up from $1.86 trillion to $2.48 trillion, a 33 percent rise in four years!" - Fareed Zakaria, 09.05

"Consumer spending has been holding up the US economy in recent years, while most of the supply-side investment has gone overseas. This has caused a separation between the dollar economy and the US economy. The dollar economy expands from global dollar hegemony while the US economy is hollowed out of manufacturing. Dollar hegemony has deprived the US economy of real productivity from manufacturing and forced it into virtual productivity from finance manipulation." - Henry C K Liu

“If you are going to have socialism, then as a matter of principle, you can’t have a free market.” - Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore.

Economics is a lot simpler than economists and ideologues would have you believe. Capitalists are motivated by greed. End of story. To change their harmful behavior, you have to take away from them the only thing they care about - money. - Charley Reese

"It is dangerous, however, to place excessive reliance on the market mechanism. Markets are designed to facilitate the free exchange of goods and services among willing participants but are not capable, on their own, of taking care of collective needs. Nor are they able to ensure social justice. These "public goods" can only be provided by a political process." - George Soros

"I don't like to talk about market share because we don't want to share anything." - Jim Cantalupo on McDonald's corporate strategy, January, 2004.

On a stock market rebound:
"While we cannot predict an overshoot, history suggests that emotional shifts from fear to greed can be quite powerful." - Tobias Levkovich of Smith Barney, June 2003

"Black markets will always be with us. But they will recede in importance when the public morality is consistent with our private one. The underground [economy] is a good measure of the progress and the health of nations. When much is wrong, much needs to be hidden." - Eric Schlosser

"The Japanese economic miracle was just us learning from other people's failures." - Yotaro Hatamura head of shippai-gaku, or 'failure-ology' institute, 2003

"Charles Ponzi was deemed an unprincipled conman to insulate unregulated capitalism itself from being revealed as a systemic Ponzi scheme." - Henry C K Liu

“Never underestimate them,” advises Richard Hyman of Verdict, a consultancy. “They [Wal-Mart] foster an image as country hicks. It makes the kill more of a surprise.”

"I can't look for him because I'm looking for food," he said. "You spend all that to find Osama, and we're still hungry." Mohammed Asef, 25, on the U$ reward of $25 million for bin Laden at a Kabul market, November 2001.

"If I had a billion U.S. dollars, I suspect I too would be very committed to a fully globalized world without any barriers and without any constraints on what I can do with my money and how I can make even more money." Malaysian president Dr. Mahathir at the 'Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation' forum in Shanghai, October 20, 2001

"As of December 31, 2001, CitiGroup held derivative exposure of $6.25 trillion, while its combined total asset was only $500 billion, according to the FDIC."

"U.S. currency is the most widely circulated with nearly $600 billion worldwide, and officials want to keep costs low, near the current 5 cents per [printed] note."

"I'd rather be alive at 30 percent interest than be dead at 3 percent," William Zeckendorf real-estate tycoon.

Economics is just a mislabeled branch of psychology - Freydis

Interest is the price you pay to live a lifestyle you can't afford. - Freydis

"Economists" are forever barking up the wrong tree. - Hugo Salinas Price

It is better to deal with a government in difficulties than with one that has luck on its side.
If a high placed person enters into a [financial] partnership with a Jew, he belongs to the Jew. - Mayer Amschel Rothschild

Austrian school "where the free market always gets everything right"

Maynard Keynes said 'in the long run we are all dead', but what if his parents had acted on that glib phrase, he probably wouldn't ever have been around to espouse it.

"Owing to the growing complexity and difficulties of life which weigh, not only on the masses of the workers, but also on the middle classes, impatience, irritation and hatred are accumulating in all the countries of the old civilization and are becoming a menace to public order; employment must be found for the energy which is being hurled out of three definite class channels: it must be given an outlet abroad in order to avert an explosion at home." Cecil Rhodes quoted in Lenin's Imperialism, the highest stage of capitalism

Credo of the businessman: 'who cares about tomorrow when I can make a few dollars today?'  - Freydis

Food & Drug

No advocate of the ethanol boondoggle addresses the huge social cost that is beginning to hit the dining-room tables across the US, Europe and the rest of the world. Food prices are exploding as corn, soybeans and all cereal-grain prices are going through the roof because of the astronomical - US Congress-driven - demand for corn to burn for biofuel.
This year the Massachusetts Institute of Technology issued a report concluding that using corn-based ethanol instead of gasoline would have no impact on greenhouse-gas emissions, and would even expand fossil-fuel use because of increased demand for fertilizer and irrigation to expand acreage of ethanol crops. And according to MIT, "natural-gas consumption is 66% of total corn-ethanol production energy", meaning huge new strains on natural-gas supply, pushing prices of that product higher. - The great biofuel fraud, by F William Engdahl, August 1, 2007.

At one hospital in Birmingham the bacteria is reported to have infected 93 people, 91 of them civilians. Thirty-five died, although the hospital was not able to establish whether the superbug was a contributory factor.
A. baumannii is resistant to most common antibiotics and, if left untreated, can lead to pneumonia, fever and septicaemia. It has been identified in more than 240 military personnel in the US since the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and has been associated with five deaths. - Superbug brought back by Iraq war casualties, November 8, 2006

Professor Colin Waine, chairman of the National Obesity Forum, said that the figures revealed a public health timebomb because children who are obese between 11 and 15 are twice as likely to die in their 50s. He added that increased inactivity coupled with more energy-dense foods were fuelling the problem: “Being obese at adolescence increases the cancer risk by 21 per cent for girls and 14 per cent for boys.” - London Times, April 22, 2006

"Obesity has doubled for U.S. children ages 2 to 5 and tripled for kids ages 6 to 11 in the past 30 years, according to a 2000 study in the Journal of the American Medical Association. " - Bloomberg news

"The Westerners, when they want to help us, they should put the aid in our hands, not give it to the leaders," Mujahed said, adding that he would stop growing poppies if given an alternative.

...the American eater is like the proverbial horse that, left unsupervised, will gorge itself until it dies." The Onion 2000

Government

We treat 10-year sentences like they're nothing, like that's a soft penalty, when in much of the rest of the world a decade behind bars would be considered extraordinarily severe. This is what separates us from other industrialized countries: It's not just that we send so many people to prison, but that we keep them there for so long and send them back so often. Eight years ago, we surpassed Russia to claim the dubious distinction of having the world's highest rate of incarceration; today we're still No. 1. … America is expert at turning citizens into convicts, but we've forgotten how to transform convicts back into citizens. From: Slammed, by Jennifer Gonnerman, Mother Jones Magazine, July/August 2008, p. 46.

The refusal to allow Finkelstein to enter Israel is particularly telling since Israel legally permits every Jew to exercise his or her right to live in Israel as a citizen of the country, in contrast to the Palestinians who fled their homes in 1948 and 1967 who are refused entry or the right of return, in accordance with the Law of Return that is fundamental to the Zionist state. It demonstrates that the security force reserves to itself the right to interpret the law as it sees fit. Israel is a home to diaspora Jews only providing that they do not criticise its military expansionism and oppression of the Palestinian people.
The ban on an academic critical of Israeli policy is all the more noteworthy because Israel likes to portray itself as a beacon of democracy in the region. In reality Finkelstein is not the first to be barred from entering the country: Israel regularly stops pro-Palestinian academics and peace activists from entering Israel who go to show support for Palestinian activists. From: US academic Norman Finkelstein denied entry to Israel, by Jean Shaoul, May 31, 2008.

“It’s now too easy for autocrats to get away with mounting a sham democracy,” said Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch. “That’s because too many Western governments insist on elections and leave it at that. They don’t press governments on the key human rights issues that make democracy function – a free press, peaceful assembly, and a functioning civil society that can really challenge power.” - 2008 Report: Democracy Charade Undermines Rights

"I didn't know there is such torture at police stations or prisons for ordinary people," said one viewer, Amal Zaki, 25, as she was leaving the theater. "I thought they only torture terrorists." From: Egypt cheers films critical of police, AP January 25, 2008

The number of users has soared while drug-related crime is rising with narcotics now supporting a worldwide business empire second only in value to oil. "If policy on drugs is in future to be pragmatic not moralistic, driven by ethics not dogma, then the current prohibitionist stance will have to be swept away as both unworkable and immoral, to be replaced with an evidence-based unified system (specifically including tobacco and alcohol) aimed at minimisation of harms to society." - Richard Brunstrom, Chief Constable of North Wales recommending a full legalization of drugs, October 2007.

Contrary to the stereotype of the banana republic, only a minority of the political bribes paid each year goes to public officials in the developing world. The report published this week finds "the vast majority of bribes are paid to people in richer countries" where decision taking is "vulnerable to vast amounts of money". From: Organised crime: the $2 trillion threat to the world's security, September 12, 2007.

Captain [Bryce] Lefever [a Navy psychologist] says it is unfair to compare US antiterror interrogations with Soviet interrogation techniques. "Their abuse was a systematic practice to conceal the truth," he says. "If Padilla was abused, then it was for a righteous purpose – to reveal the truth." - US Gov't broke Padilla through intense isolation, say experts, August 14, 2007.

David Saranga, the counsel for media and public affairs at the Israeli Consulate in New York, told PR Week that the government was in consultation with a number of public relations and advertising firms and had not yet decided what the re-branding campaign would focus on. Saranga did point out that two important groups that the government wanted to reach are "liberals" and people aged 16 to 30.

"Israel also recently spent three years and millions of dollars developing and test marketing an advertising campaign," Kahn noted. "And yes, Israel does indeed 'start with I', as the country's new tag line helpfully points out. But so does Intifada -- and it will take more than a new marketing campaign to get potential investors and tourists to forget Israel's ongoing conflict with the Palestinians."
"In fact, it might require something beyond the abilities of even the most talented marketing consultant: peace." From: Israel Looking for an Extreme Makeover, by Bill Berkowitz, IPS, January 12, 2007.

We'll never see another voting meltdown in Florida--not because the system has been fixed but because the mechanism for demonstrating that a meltdown has occurred has simply been removed. Between the introduction of paperless computers and the abolition of recounts, what Florida is left with is, essentially, an electoral regime based on blind faith. - Guardian of the Ballot Box, by Andrew Gumbel, 2006.

In the past, the CIA has been responsible for "covert" operations - actions where United States sponsorship is not detectable. These require congressional authority. The military, meanwhile, has been at liberty to conduct "clandestine" operations - actions that are simply hard to detect, and do not need congressional authority.
The concern is that the Pentagon will broaden - or already has - its definition of clandestine operations to include covert activities. "You wind up provoking [your enemies]," says John Pike. "They regard it as retaliation, but to the American people [who know nothing of the covert operations], it looks like an unprovoked attack." Pentagon's intelligence role rising, May 18, 2006.

“Regimes collapse when people are no longer afraid and think they’re no longer alone.” - Gordon Chang, author.

"In our tactical decisions, we are operating contrary to our strategic interest," The chief of the Israeli military identified as 'Yaalon' on actions against Palestinians ,October 2003.

"The technology of war is out of control; I'm a warrior, but my conclusion is that war is obsolete." & "The sole purpose of war is to kill and destroy. There are no winners." - Former U.S. Army Maj. Douglas Rokke

"Under capitalism we have a state in the proper sense of the word, that is, a special machine for the suppression of one class by another, and of the majority by the minority at that." - VI Lenin from The State and Revolution.

"An entrepreneurial society can't exist if political freedom disappears, and if Big Brothers, public and private, are invading our daily existence with impunity." Dan Gillmor journalist, 2003

"The government has declared total war against us, and our response is to politically disregard the state, its representatives and its laws. A new, grass-roots power must be built by the people. ... The birth of this new power will not recognize old institutions." - "Byron," commander of the rebel FARC army's 51st front in Colombia, June 26, 2002.

The ultimate test of the government's success will be whether Russia becomes a comfortable and safe place to live, work and make money, "so that people aspire to go to Russia and not to leave it." Vladimir Putin's state of the nation address of 04.02

Our Government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or ill, it teaches the whole people by its example. Crime is contagious. If the Government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy. . . . To declare that in the administration of the criminal law, the end justifies the means . . . would bring terrible retribution. Against this pernicious doctrine this Court should resolutely set its face. - Justice Louis Brandeis in Olmstead v. United States, 1928

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

"When the white man governs himself, that is self-government, but when he governs himself and also others, it is no longer self-government; it is despotism." - Abraham Lincoln quoted in Lenin's Imperialism, the highest stage of capitalism

Ayn Rand on socialism: "Instead of prosperity, socialism has brought economic paralysis and/or collapse to every country that tried it. The degree of socialization has been the degree of disaster."

Mind & Intelligence

Multitaskers fool themselves by rapidly switching attention and, as a result, their output deteriorates. ... Chronic distraction, from which we all now suffer, kills you more slowly. Meyer says there is evidence that people in chronically distracted jobs are, in early middle age, appearing with the same symptoms of burn-out as air traffic controllers. They might have stress-related diseases, even irreversible brain damage. But the damage is not caused by overwork, it’s caused by multiple distracted work. One American study found that interruptions take up 2.1 hours of the average knowledge worker’s day. This, it was estimated, cost the US economy $588 billion a year. Yet the rabidly multitasking distractee is seen as some kind of social and economic ideal. From: Stoooopid .... why the Google generation isn’t as smart as it thinks, July 20, 2008.

People want the recognition, the validation, the sense of having a place in the culture [because] we no longer know where we belong, what we're about or what we should be about."
Without any meaningful standard by which to measure our worth, we turn to the public eye for affirmation. "It's really the sense that Hey, I exist in this world, and that is important. That I matter," Niedzviecki says. Our "normal" lives therefore seem impoverished and less significant compared with the media world, which increasingly represents all that is grand and worthwhile, and therefore more "real." - Lakshmi Chaudhry, January 2007.

"An intellectual is someone whose mind watches itself. " - Albert Camus

"Robots don't do well with changing situations. The real world is very confusing to them." - Mark Maimone of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, March 2004.

"True genius is creative and makes all from nothing." - Jean-Jacques Rousseau

"Men who are too superior to their epoch are generally without influence upon it."  - Gustave Le Bon

"The United States has got some of the dumbest people in the world. I want you to know that.'' - Ted Turner in 1996.

"Three scales of intelligence, one which understands by itself, a second which understands what is shown it by others, and a third which understands neither by itself nor on the showing of others, the first of which is most excellent, the second good, but the third worthless." - Niccolo Machiavelli

"But the analytic power should not be confounded with simple ingenuity; for while the analyst is necessarily ingenious, the ingenious man is often remarkably incapable of analysis. ... It will be found, in fact, that the ingenious are always fanciful, and truly never otherwise than analytic." From EA Poe's The Murders in the Rue Morgue.

"Man is a creature of habit, not of reason nor yet of instinct." - John Dewey, 1921.

"Cosmology is the ultimate quest for knowledge." - Author John D. Barrow

"Honesty is essential to intelligence — a fact ignored more and more fashionably by the press. Without honesty, the power of intelligence is wasted on "spinning." Casey Fahy

Intelligence needs to be the norm not the anomaly. - F.

If ignorance is bliss then genius is a tormented hell. - F.

In cyberspace ignorance is your worst enemy. - F.

Politics and Politicos

“Our country and the entire international community cannot stand by as a terror-supporting state fulfills its most aggressive ambitions.” –  Vice President Cheney, oblivious to irony and hypocrisy, referring to Iran in October 2007.

There is a difference between being sure and being right. Bush's conviction, here as elsewhere, came not from an independent analysis of the facts - of the interests and intentions of the nations involved - but from the wellspring of faith. He has confused rhetoric, however uplifting, and reality. - Mark Danner on George W. Bush - faith over facts, 2007.

"Iran needs to learn to respect us, and Iran certainly needs to respect American power in the Middle East." - R. Nicholas Burns, undersecretary of state for political affairs, January 2007.

At one point, Rice said that the difficult circumstances in the Middle East could represent opportunity. "I don't read Chinese but I am told that the Chinese character for crisis is wei-ji, which means both danger and opportunity," she said in Riyadh. "And I think that states it very well. We'll try to maximize the opportunity."
But Victor H. Mair, a professor of Chinese at the University of Pennsylvania, has written on the Web site http://pinyin.info, a guide to the Chinese language, that "a whole industry of pundits and therapists has grown up around this one grossly inaccurate formulation." He said the character "ji" actually means "incipient moment" or a "crucial point." Thus, he said, a wei-ji "is indeed a genuine crisis, a dangerous moment, a time when things start to go awry." - Glenn Kessler, Washington Post, January 19, 2007

"I find it ironic that on one hand you put [Saddam Hussein] on trial for using biological warfare, but in another country where you sprayed chemicals for warfare, you neglect your responsibility." - Duc Nguyen, referring to dioxin laced Agent Orange blamed for continuing birth defects in Vietnam; Washington Post, November 13, 2006.

Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion himself is reported (by Nahum Goldmann) to have asked in private, "Why should the Arabs make peace? If I were an Arab leader I would never make terms with Israel. That is natural: we have taken their country. Sure, God promised it to us, but what does that matter to them? Our God is not theirs. We came from Israel, it's true, but two thousand years ago, and what is that to them? There has been anti-Semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They only see one thing: we have come here and stolen their country. Why should they accept that?" From: America Right of Wrong by Anatol Lieven, 2004, page 196.

"The resolution to this war [in Lebanon] must respect international law and U.N. resolutions, not just those selected by Israel, a state that deserves its reputation as a pariah because of its consistent disdain for and rejection of international law and the wishes of the international community for over half a century." - Fouad Siniora, Prime Minister of Lebanon, August 9, 2006.

"The president is always right.” - Steven Bradbury in June 2006 as head of the Justice Department’s office of legal counsel in the Bush administration.

He [Hans Blix] also urged those negotiating with Iran to look at the issue through their eyes. "They see 130,000 American soldiers in Iraq, and they see American bases in Pakistan and Afghanistan," Blix said. "They remember that (Mohammed) Mossadeq, who was elected premier, was ousted with subversive methods from the outside" in the 1950s.
In the broader effort to free the world of weapons of mass destruction, the commission said the single most important thing that countries can do is to ratify the nuclear test ban treaty, which the U.S. Senate has rejected. From: 'Study wants nuclear weapons outlawed'

Only if we [Americans] begin to see ourselves more clearly will we be able to understand how others see us. We need to revise the narrative of the American century and recognize that it has been about a host of other things that are far more problematic than liberation. There can be no understanding the true nature of the American century without acknowledging the reality of Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Dresden, Hanoi, and Haiphong. - Andrew Bacevich, May 2006

"Political settlement demands equity of power. Israel holds all the cards. So why is there a demand for our surrender?" - Nawaf Mousawi of Hezbollah

On Hamas' surprise election victory in Palestine:  "Washington miscalculated in pushing for the vote, as part of its pro-democracy campaign in the Arab world." - Hanan Ashrawi, Palestinian legislator, January 2006. (That's the funny thing about elections, sometimes the stooge doesn't win.- F)

"Even if you get Bin Laden, you can't be sure there won't be another Bin Laden. You cannot get terrorists to sign a peace treaty. The only way to beat terror is to go for the basic causes. They don't blow themselves up for no reason, they're angry, they're frustrated. And why are they angry? Look at the Palestinian situation. Fifty years after you [England] created the state of Israel, things are going from bad to worse." -  Malaysia's Mahathir Mohamad on defeating terrorism

"Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we." - George W. Bush on August 5, 2004

"What Nixon and Kissinger began, Pol Pot completed." - John Pilger

"The liberation of Iraq will make the world more peaceful." - Pres. G.W. Bush, Ft. Hood Texas, April 20, 2003.

"We flaunt our superpower status with arrogance. After war has ended the United States will have to rebuild much more than the country of Iraq. We will have to rebuild America's image around the globe."- Sen. Robert Byrd D-WV, March 19, 2003.

"If you see 10 troubles coming down the road, you can be sure that nine will run into the ditch before they reach you." - Calvin Coolidge

"Our [Israel's] fate is intertwined with the Palestinians." - Avraham Shochat, former Israeli finance minister.

"In this city, which has always been known for its tolerance, the only thing we will not tolerate is intolerance," declared District Attorney Terence Hallinan during San Francisco 'anti-hate' campaign, September 2002.

"The US and the Soviet Union each spent the equivalent of 10 trillion dollars on the arms race." - Mikhail Gorbachev, July 2002

Famous last words: "We've destroyed al Qaeda in Afghanistan and we have ended the role of Afghanistan as a haven for terrorist activity,'' said Secretary of State Colin Powell on NBC's Meet the Press. Dec. 16 2001

"America never gave trade favors to Cuba. America embargoes Iraq. What about human rights in China? There are no sanctions. America believes that capitalism will defeat socialism and that this is the best way towards a democratic society. I am confused. If money can change tyranny, then former President Ronald Reagan was wrong when he called the Soviet Union 'the Evil Empire' and said, 'Tear down this wall [the Berlin Wall]'. He should have instead been giving the Soviets trade favors and money." Harry Wu interviewed for Worldnetdaily Apr 5, 2001

"This is the greatest thing in history!" - President Harry S. Truman upon hearing of the successful A-bombing of Hiroshima

"Fox's courtship of Mexicans living in the United States isn't just for their benefit. The money they wire home now accounts for Mexico's third-largest source of income, after oil and tourism."

"As Mr Berezovsky happily acknowledges: "Let's say without hypocrisy: people wanted to elect Zyuganov. They didn't want Yeltsin." The money and determined efforts of the oligarchs, after a secret pact struck at the Swiss resort of Davos, helped to change the voters' minds. I was wrong to help elect Putin, says bitter kingmaker Berezovsky" By Steve Crawshaw UK Independent in New York 28 November 2000

A former senior DIA official told UPI: "People should keep in mind" that Sharon is the one who visited the Temple Mount or al-Haram al-Sharif in Jerusalem last September with 1,000 guards in attendance. "Why take 1,000?" he said. "First, he wanted to provoke the Palestinians. Next, he wanted to stick a thumb in Barak's eye. Sharon is a planner." UPI wire Jan.17, 2001

"He [Sharon] is a pyromaniac on a powder keg." - Afif Safieh

Bush often mangled prepared speeches during the campaign, once calling tactical weapons "tacular," and referring to a school's "Preservation Week" instead of "Perseverance Week" at an appearance with its students. Reuters Jan 15, 2001

Trenchant insights courtesy of the illustrious Mad. Albright:
Appearing on CNN's "Late Edition," Secretary of State Madeleine Albright challenged assertions that Clinton's last-ditch peace efforts were an attempt to ensure his legacy.
"I could end my career as secretary of state with a barnyard expletive, but I will not do that," Albright said. "What is true is that he is called upon to fulfill this role. He is working very hard." January 2001.

Al Gore was facing fresh questions about his credibility yesterday over his claim that a labor song he heard as a childhood lullaby wasn't even written until 1975 - when he was 27. Gore has made a series of strange pronouncements about his life, including claims to have invented the Internet, been the basis for "Love Story" and exposing the Love Canal disaster. The song was penned in the mid-'70s for the International Ladies Garment Workers Union. Gore was decades out of diapers when the ditty debuted in 1975 as part of a TV ad campaign for the union. 2000

Past Nobel peace prize recipients include Mother Teresa, the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., Nelson Mandela, Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat, Holocaust researcher Elie Wiesel, the Dalai Lama, former U.S. secretary of state Henry Kissinger, South African peace activist the Rev. Desmond Tutu, Polish Solidarity leader Lech Walesa, former U.N. secretary-general Dag Hammarskjold, medical researcher Albert Schweitzer.

"That since his love depends upon his subjects, while his being feared depends upon himself, a wise Prince should build on what is his own", Niccolo Machiavelli

"I am going," Yeltsin said in a televised address. "I did all I could."
...yeah but to make things better or worse?

"If, by the instruments of governmental power, a nationality is lead towards its destruction, then rebellion is not only the right of every member of such people – it is his duty." Adolf Hitler, American Constitutionalist?,  Mein Kampf

Religion

"There's a dilemma in Israel. Israel defines itself as a Jewish and democratic state. There is fear among some Israelis that if democracy is accorded to all its citizens this will attenuate Israel's character as a Jewish state. So there's that built-in tension between democracy and a Jewish state," said Wilcox. - Philip Wilcox, president of the Foundation for Middle East Peace

"But those enemies of mine who did not want me to be king over them - bring them here and kill them in front of me." -  Jesus quoted in Luke 19:27, Holy Bible, New International Version

"[M]odern theists might acknowledge that, when it comes to Baal and the Golden Calf, Thor and Wotan, Poseidan and Apollo, Mithras and Ammon Ra, they are actually atheists. We are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further." - Richard Dawkins

"Heresy is but the bridge between two orthodoxies." - Francis Hackett

Don't believe in any god that requires faith as a prerequisite for salvation. If God is not self-evident God is irrelevant.

"Who needs heaven and hell? We make our own hell right here." - Randy Weaver

"If I am going to hell, I'm gonna have a lot of company." - Timothy McVeigh

"To most people, peace means the victory of their side. In my opinion, there will be no peace in this country without dismantling the Jewish communities in the territories," - Susan Sonntag May 9, 2001, speaking on Israel in Jerusalem.

"Religions build theories about the world and then prevent them from being tested. Religions provide nice, appealing and comfortable ideas, and cloak them in a mask of 'truth, beauty, and goodness'. The theories can then thrive in spite of being untrue, ugly, or cruel." Susan Blackmore

"Just in terms of allocation of time resources, religion is not very efficient. There's a lot more I could be doing on a Sunday morning." - Bill Gates on religion

Iran: "We are not East or West we are Islam."

"In January, human rights groups slammed Israel after the Jerusalem District Court sentenced Jewish settler Nahum Kurman to six months of community service for beating to death 10-year-old Palestinian Hilmi Shousha. Kurman was fined $17,000. " 2001

"For religious people to accuse entertainment of being damaging, they have to realize that Christ was the first celebrity, and religion created entertainment."
--Shock rocker Marilyn Manson. [From AP ]

``There is no turning of the other cheek in Judaism...Judaism is revenge,'' said Noam Federman, a long-time friend of Binyamin Kahane and follower of his slain father. 31.12.00

A popularized phrase attributed to the eminent mathematical theorist Albert Einstein, and by that virtue obviously a genius at social insight as well, nonetheless has been warped to fit the modern Zionist agenda. The phrase I write of goes something like this:
"Peace can never be kept by force, only through understanding."
Einstein must surely be spinning in his grave having been anti-Zionist himself. His actual statement was "Peace in PALESTINE cannot be achieved through force, only through understanding."
Also Schindler's list similarly corrupted the (Babylonian) Talmud text of Sanhedrin 37a:
"Whoever preserves a single soul of Israel, it is as if he had preserved an entire world"
...into the more gentile friendly:
"Whoever destroys the life of a single human being...it is as if he had destroyed an entire world; and whoever preserves the life of a single human being ...it is as if he had preserved an entire world."

Why not put God on trial for crimes against humanity too eh? After all those floods, famines, volcanoes and earthquakes – should make an open-shut legal case!

"And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; He will crush your head, and you will strike his heel." Genesis 3:15

School

"The purpose of `higher' education is not to educate but to exclude as many as possible from the various professions." - Valerie Solanas

"I didn't like anything about school.'' - successful inventor, Dean Kamen

"I was bored with it all ... it was rigid, it was stupid, it was a lot like the news coverage now. There's very little originality going on. Everything I've learned I've learned on my own. I'm self-taught. I've kept some original thinking or what I think is original. [Other journalists] have to listen to an editor saying yes or no. I don't listen to anybody." - "the brutal wit of an accomplished young nihilist" - Matt Drudge

Sleep

I don’t care how much money you have - affluence is how much sleep you get each night. - Freydis

Worst German import - the early morning work ethic "Morgenstunde hat Gold im Munde" (the morning hour has gold in its mouth).

"How long you live is statistically related to the amount of sleep you obtain on average a night. The mortality rate is lowest for people who report sleeping seven to nine hours a night,'' Reuters: Tuesday March 27, 2001

War & Conflict

In Kosovo in 1999 around 290,000 sub-munitions were dropped over a 10-week period by North Atlantic Treaty Organization aircraft. During the five weeks of the 2006 conflict in Lebanon, as many as four million sub-munitions were spread by Israel across the country's southern regions, according to the ICRC. From: The politics of cluster bombs, by Brian McCartan, May 6, 2008.

"What we are not interested in is another war in the region," Mohammed Naqbi, who heads the Gulf Negotiations Center, told Burns. "Iraq is your problem, not the problem of the Arabs. You destroyed a country that had institutions. You handed that country to Iran. Now you are crying to Europe and the Arabs to help you out of this mess." LAT, January 24, 2007.

"In 2003, I don't think anybody predicted it would go as long as World War II and the wear and tear on equipment would be as intense,'' said Zakheim, now a vice president for global strategy consultant Booz Allen Hamilton Inc. ``When I left the department, we were spending less than $4 billion a month on Iraq. Now it's pretty much doubled.'' - Dov Zakheim, Pentagon's chief financial officer from 2001 to 2004. December 6, 2006.

Israel turned to cluster bombs in the last week of the war, apparently frustrated at the failure of conventional weapons to rout Hizbullah fighters from their foxholes. Mine-clearance teams are finding evidence pointing to their provenance: the US, the world's largest cluster bomb manufacturer, which gave Israel $2.2bn (£1.2bn) in military aid last year.
In Nabatiye, 15 people were injured in just one day along a bomb-strewn road. In Tibnin, 210 bombs were found around the town hospital. "That's about as inappropriate [a use of cluster bombs] as you can get," Mr Clark said.
Many share the blame equally between Israel and the US. "It's like we are living in a prison," said Aisa Hussain, 38, a Yahmour resident who has ordered his children to remain inside his house.
... Strolling through the village he pointed to yet another tiny black canister perched under a tree. "You see what America is sending us," he said bitterly. "This is their idea of democracy." From: The Guardian, August 21, 2006.

"What makes being a soldier great is the nobility of it — good fighting evil. If you lose that, all this sacrifice is for no good reason." - Maj. Peter Kilner, West Point. From: Combat stress takes toll, June 14, 2006.

News Excerpts

The problem the war creates for the punditocracy and the rest of the political establishment is twofold. First, the leaders they backed have not only been wildly incompetent but also impervious to reality. Offered a face-saving exit by the Baker Commission, Bush, Cheney & Co. prefer instead to double down on disaster. Second, there is the problem of the pundits' individual reputations. If William Kristol, Charles Krauthammer, Lawrence Kaplan and David Brooks et al. are so smart, why were they so wrong about something so crucial? And why, given their sorry records, do they and their editors still think anybody ought to keep listening to them? At the very least, those they misled are entitled to an explanation. - Eric Alterman, January 2007.

A study of urban American adults by Nancy Wells and Kristi Lekies of Cornell University sheds some light on environmental attitudes. Wells and Lekies found that children who play unsupervised in the wild before the age of 11 develop strong environmental ethics. Children exposed only to structured hierarchical play in the wild—through, for example, Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts, or by hunting or fishing alongside supervising adults—do not. To interact humbly with nature we need to be free and undomesticated in it. Otherwise, we succumb to hubris in maturity. The fact that few children enjoy free rein outdoors anymore bodes poorly for our future decision-makers. - The Thirteenth Tipping Point, by By Julia Whitty, MJ, 11/12 2006

[T]he Bush administration has launched an unusual effort to raise charitable contributions for another cause: the government's attempt to rebuild Iraq.

Although more than $30 billion in taxpayer funds have been appropriated for Iraqi reconstruction, the administration earlier this month launched an Internet-based fundraising effort that it says is aimed at giving Americans "a further stake in building a free and prosperous Iraq."

Contributors have no way of knowing who's getting the money or precisely where it's headed because the government says it must keep the details secret for security reasons.

The campaign is raising eyebrows in the international development and not-for-profit communities, where there are questions about its timing--given needs at home--and whether it will set the government in competition with international not-for-profits.

On a more basic level, experts wonder whether Americans will make charitable donations to a
government foreign aid program and whether the contentious environment surrounding Iraq will make a tough pitch even tougher. - New Twist On Aid For Iraq: U.S. Seeks Donations, By Cam Simpson, Chicago Tribune, September 18, 2005.

"They may want a lot of things associated with war - the comradeship, the thrill that comes from holding a weapon. I think this is what confuses people. Thrills, comradeship, all of that can come in many different ways; it comes from war, though, only when people are manipulated into it. To me the strongest argument against an inherent drive to war is the extent to which governments have to resort to get people to go to war, the huge amounts of propaganda and deception of which we had an example very recently. And don't forget coercion. So I discard that idea of a natural inclination to war." - Howard Zinn

"The way to be pro-Israel is to work for a better Israel, and the real Zionism is to work for an Israel that is not only physically strong but morally strong.
There is a false equation that if you voice any criticism of Israel you are delegitimising Israel at some level. I believe the opposite." - Activist Rabbi Arik Ascherman, March 2005

"The Americans brought electricity to my ass before they brought it to my house." - Jaded former detainee in Iraq's notorious Abu Ghraib prison. ATO 1.2005

"When you freeze that process, you prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state, and you prevent a discussion on the refugees, the borders and Jerusalem. Effectively, this whole package called the Palestinian state, with all that it entails, has been removed indefinitely from our agenda. And all this with authority and permission. All with a presidential blessing and the ratification of both houses of [U.S.] Congress." - the candid admission of Dov Weisglass, chief of staff for Ariel Sharon, from an interview in Ha'aretz Oct. 6, 2004.

"Wal-Mart wraps itself in the American flag, but even the flags they sell are made in China."  - James Thindwa, workers rights activist, 10.04

When Columbia University professor Zainab Bahrani visited the site of Babylon late last spring, she was stunned to see an American military base spreading across the hallowed ground. Workers scooped up earth potentially rich in relics to make blast walls. Bulldozers carved out helicopter landing pads, and the vibrations from the choppers themselves did still more damage. Portions of two ancient temples have collapsed and Nebuchadnezzar II's palace is threatened. "We're very worried about the palace walls," said Bahrani. "They're made of brick. They rattle when the helicopters take off." From: Newsweek, Unearthing the Bible, August 2004.

Frida Berrigan, a senior research associate at the World Policy Institute's Arms Trade Resource Center, said that according to the 2005 budget, the US will spend about $1.15 billion a day, or $11,000 a second, on defense. "In comparison, we spend half that on public education per year per child in the United States," she said. IPS August 19, 2004.

"Women dream more often about friends, family and domestic settings. Men are more likely to dream about sex and violence." Newsweek August 9, 2004.

"Torture is nurtured and justified by ideologies that create an ever-expanding category of 'enemy' others. ... Fear, whether or not deliberately instilled - as in fictions about 'weapons of mass destruction' - grants legitimacy to torture." - Martha Huggins, sociology professor at New Orleans' Tulane University via BBC news June 29, 2004.

There is a common starting point to any strategy of both insurgencies and contra-insurgencies. Who has the legitimacy? Now, with the International Court of Justice, the human rights treaties and the progress of liberal democracy, not to torture is not only a need, but an obligation. Winning depends on how you conduct yourself. Could an officer in an extreme case use some degree of physical violence to extract information from a prisoner? No, doing it could hurt the overall political strategy, as it has happened in Iraq. When you mistreat your detainees, you stimulate their opposition, their hate. - Former Salvadorian guerrilla leader Joaquin Villalobos, May 2004.

While traditionalists bemoan the demythologizing of heroes, children's-book experts say truth may ultimately be more inspiring than a glossed-over tale. Reading about imperfections of famous people gives youngsters more freedom to dream of what they might accomplish. "It's important for children to know that their heroes were real people' says author Yolen. "How do you emulate perfect?" A less-than-perfect hero—that's the real story." Review of new history books, Feb. 2, 2004 issue of Newsweek magazine.

"I shot one guy in the head, and his head exploded." - Sgt Randy Davis U.S. Army sniper, preserving American values in Iraq. From New York Times News Service, Eric Schmitt, January 2004.

"Rah el sani', ija el ussta" - "gone is the apprentice, in comes the master."
Popular phrase in Baghdad used to describe the relationship between America and Saddam's regime and the similarity of authoritarian control tactics used by both.

"It's like I am seeing the same movie twice and no-one is trying to fix the problem. What was promised to Afghans with the collapse of the Taliban was a new life of hope and change. But what was delivered? Nothing. Everyone [i.e. Taliban] is back in business." - Ahmed Wali Karzai in Kandahar Afghanistan, April 2003.

Through their coverage [of Iraq], the US media are undercutting their standing as an objective source of news and are undermining the basis for American democracy, with implications for years to come. While democracy relies on an informed public, US media outlets today appear more as tools of the US government's perception management campaign than objective sources of reports and analysis of the world situation. The United States - and the world - will suffer from this fall from the pedestal of journalistic ideals.
By Pascale Combelles Siegel, April 2003.

Occupation or Liberation?
"If there is one lesson Israel can impart to the Americans, it is that every occupation is appalling, that it tramples the occupied and corrupts the occupier. If the Americans pause for a moment to see what is going on in the Tul Karm refugee camp and in the casbah of Nablus, they will see what they will soon become. And if Israelis look at what is happening in Iraq, perhaps they will understand that it is not the Palestinians but, above all, we who have created the present situation." By Gideon Levy for Haaretz Daily Israel: America is not a role model April 2003.

Royalty:
"Princess Martha Louise of Norway married yesterday amid the cheers of tens of thousands who set aside her groom's rather mixed reputation as a writer, a television producer and a commoner.
Mr Behn, who was born in Denmark and grew up south of Oslo, scores poorly in popularity polls. His 90-page book, Sad as Hell, got mixed reviews, and he was chided for appearing in a television programme with Las Vegas prostitute junkies that he also produced. He said he was reporting their lifestyle, not endorsing it. "

U$ Social Insecurity:
Social Security's unfunded liability is a staggering $47 trillion over the next 75 years, Mitchell said. That figure represents the difference between total promised benefits and total available resources as the program is now structured. Failure to Repay Trust Fund Would Be Big Wealth Transfer, By Miles Benson, c.2001 Newhouse News Service

Red Light Cameras:
...local governments choose poorly designed intersections, and gratuitously shorten yellow-light cycles, to force otherwise conscientious drivers to run red lights and pay the steep fines -- in California, the penalty is $271, of which $70 goes to the private contractor that runs the system.
D.C. officials expect to make at least $117 million off the red-light cameras by 2004, while Lockheed Martin IMS expects to make about $44 million. From: Backlash stopping red-light cameras, By Sean Scully, Special to the Washington Times, August 2, 2001

Lobotomy:
Freeman's lobotomy procedure included knocking a patient out with electric shocks, lifting the eyelids and inserting an "ice-pick-like" instrument through the tear duct. He pierced the skull bone by tapping on the instrument with a surgical hammer, then shoved the pointed steel about an inch into the frontal lobe of the brain and moved its sharp tip back and forth. This procedure since has been universally discredited. From: Forgotten Dead of St. Elizabeths, By Kelly Patricia O'Meara, Insight Magazine, July 2001

Government At Work:
Under their system, the individual is a cog in a military machine, a cipher in an economic despotism; the individual is a slave. These facts are documented in the degradation and suffering of the conquered countries, whose fate is shared equally by the willing satellites and the misguided appeasers of the Axis. From: [American] Government Information Manual for the Motion Picture Industry, Office of War Information [WWII]

"They (China's communist party) do the propaganda because they don't want people to forget. Starbucks doesn't need to do much propaganda because people want to come here and drink coffee," said Donald Zheng 37 year-old interior designer, 01.07.01

"As experts warn that action is necessary now to curb the booming rise in international air travel - the most polluting form of transport - jet-setting celebrities appear to show no signs of ditching their Lears. Just one trans-Atlantic flight produces emissions equivalent to 40,000 cars traveling from London to Leeds." The Scotsman online Nov 20, 2000

"We know we have missed details. We have rearranged times. We have altered geography and in so doing we have shrunken history by making history fit onto our screens and to our purpose." - A candid Tom Hanks admitting to editing history to fit ideology and the screen. From: Tom Hanks defends Hollywood war history re-writes, Reuters Thursday June 7, 08:14 PM 2001.

"The incarceration rate at the end of the Clinton administration was 476 per 100,000 citizens, versus 332 per 100,000 at the end of Bush's term and 247 per 100,000 at the end of Reagan's administration."

"[The period] from the moment a piglet is born until the 250-plus-pound hog is sent off to slaughter spans all of six months. For the entire time, the animal is confined in an 8-by-2.5-foot metal pen...." Motherjones.com March 15 2001

"The Soviets were masters of deception and disinformation, and maskivovka was an important part of the Soviet military tactic and strategic doctrine. Some western intelligence analysts suspected that, as late as 1960, not only most of the missiles parading in Red Square were dummies, but even some units of the newly created Soviet Strategic Rocket Forces were not getting real missiles. The Russians have a long tradition in the deception business. One must bear in mind that it was count Grigori Aleksandrovich Potemkim who created the first Hollywood-style film sets."

One Japanese company that merged with an American corporation told its mostly male Japanese workers to desist from groping women in the lift because western females often held high-powered positions. Sunday Times UK Jan 21, 2001

Look Who's Talking

Madeleine Albright		"Hyperbole is like a boomerang. It will come back to hit you. I know. It did me." (September 2001)
Woody Allen (as Harry Block in Deconstructing Harry)		"Between air-conditioning and the Pope I'll take air-conditioning." "Tradition is the illusion of permanence"
Peter Arnett (Journalist)		"I don't want to give aid and comfort to the enemy - I just want to be able to tell the truth." (April 2003)
AG John Ashcroft		"it's against my religion to impose religion on people." "I think all we should legislate is morality." - speaking to the Christian magazine Charisma
Aristotle		Poverty is the parent of revolution and crime. Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work.
Andrew Bacevich		We [Americans] are not who we believe we are and, in some sense, others perceive us more accurately than we do ourselves.
Francis Bacon		If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties. [Therefore,] read not to contradict and confute; Nor to believe and take for granted; Nor to find talk and discourse; But to weight and consider.
Michael Bakunin		"It is the characteristic of privilege and of every privileged position to kill the mind and heart of men." "Between thought and life there is a wide abyss."
Eric Benjamin, Jewish person in Dominican Republic		"At our peak we had 600 people here. Now, counting our children and Dominican wives, we are down to 115. If you want to see the Jewish colony, look in the cemetery. We will all disappear in half a generation. Jewish communities cannot exist more than two generations isolated if the people around them are kind. If they are enemies, the Jewish community can last much longer." (1977)
Justice Hugo Black		"The First Amendment rests on the assu