"When things get so balled up that the people of a country have to cut loose from some other country, and go it on their own hook, without asking no permission from nobody, excepting maybe God Almighty, then they ought to let everybody know why they done it, so that everybody can see they are on the level, and not trying to put nothing over on nobody.
"All we got to say on this proposition is this: first, you and me is as good as anybody else, and maybe a damn sight better; second, nobody ain't got no right to take away none of our rights; third, every man has got a right to live, to come and go as he pleases, and to have a good time however he likes, so long as he don't interfere with nobody else. That any goverment that don't give a man these rights ain't worth a damn; also, people ought to choose the kind of goverment they want themselves, and nobody else ought to have no say in the matter. That whenever any goverment don't do this, then the people have got a right to can it and put in one that will take care of their interests."
"And I say that if a rhetorician and a physician were to go to any city, and had there to argue in the Ecclesia or any other assembly as to which of them should be elected state-physician, the physician would have no chance; but he who could speak would be chosen if he wished; and in a contest with a man of any other profession the rhetorician more than any one would have the power of getting himself chosen, for he can speak more persuasively to the multitude than any of them, and on any subject. Such is the nature and power of the art of rhetoric."
"Announcing the staging of a series of concerts named Live 8, which will precede the G8 summit in Scotland, Sir Bob said: 'It is intellectually absurd that people die of want in a world of surplus.' Which again sounds good but completely misses the point.
"Still, that may be the intention. For while Sir Bob laments over Africa's debt burden, he completely overlooks the fact that the debt burden for the entire planet is built on the same fraudulent principles.
"In short, money is simply printed by privately owned national banks like the Bank of England or the U.S. Federal Reserve, then lent to the government of the day who must repay the loan plus interest with money collected from taxes. Thus money is not created by governments themselves but by privately owned national banks, the governments being no more than the bank's debt collectors.
"That is bad enough but it doesn't stop there. Organizations like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund work on exactly the same principle: money is created or more precisely, credit is conjured out of nothing at all. This credit is then extended to impoverished nations who repay it, not with cash, but with their natural resources, be they mineral reserves or the fruits of human labour. Either way the debt, created out of nothing at all, is settled with some sort of real, hard currency.
"In plain terms it's fraud, a confidence trick that results in poverty, hardship and in some cases, starvation and death.
"Don't expect Sir Bob to tell you about the real causes however. He's too busy drawing attention to Africa's debt problem, a detail if you will, that is only part of a much bigger problem. However by focusing on this one tragic detail, he diverts attention from the overall picture and the ultimate solution.
"For even if Sir Bob gets Africa's debt written off, it won't stop further debts accumulating or help others with similar burdens."
"In the United States, doing good has come to be, like patriotism, a favorite device of persons with something to sell."
- H. L. Mencken -
"Capitalism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy. Capitalism leads to the enslavement of the sheep citizens by the greedy, selfish plutocratic class."
- Jacques Hardy -
"Just because you like my stuff doesn't mean I owe you anything."
- Bob Dylan -
"The history of the world, my sweet
Is who gets eaten and who gets to eat."
- Sweeny Todd -
"Consumers who buy popular cold remedies in Riverside County would be required to give their names, addresses, and telephone and driver's license numbers to store clerks for law enforcement inspection under a sweeping rule aimed at illicit production of Methamphetamine...
"Under the ordinance, customers who buy even one package of cold medication that includes pseudoephedrine, phenylpropanolamine or related compounds would be required to provide the personal information to a store clerk. Stores would be required to keep the logs available for law enforcement officials for three years."
"Yeah, we all know that major Methamphetamine manufacturers buy their ingredients one at a time at K-Mart."
- the rational idiot -
"President Bush on Tuesday retooled his original argument for the Iraq war, justifying the U.S. military presence there as the solution to a problem that critics say the war itself caused."
"Patriotism in its simplest, clearest and most indubitable signification is nothing else but a means of obtaining for the rulers their ambitions and covetous desires, and for the ruled the abdication of human dignity, reason, conscience, and a slavish enthrallment to those in power."
- Leo Tolstoy -
"Although continued attempts are being made to establish access to the President of Iraq who has been held without access to a lawyer, only one meeting has been arranged more than one year after the detention began. This meeting took place with one of the lawyers of Committee under strict monitoring (both visual and audio) whereby two US military officials were present at all times. This meeting was not under conditions that meet the minimum standards for access to legal counsel provided by international law (e.g. in article 14 of the ICCPR). Neither has this meeting been followed up with additional meetings. It is estimated that counsel need at least several hours of daily contact with their client to be able to consult with him and to facilitate the preparation of his defense. Unless such access is immediately provided all charges against the defendant should be dropped because of the serious violations of his human rights.
"Furthermore, legal counsels inability to have access to evidence or formal charges also contributes to the irreparable violation of defendants rights. For more than one year, and despite statements by United States and Iraqi government officials that huge amounts of evidence exist, no access to any of this evidence has been granted to defense counsel.
"Finally, legal counsel for the President continue to dispute the legitimacy of the Iraqi Special Tribunal for the following reasons:
"1. The tribunal is the result of an illegal invasion of Iraq which unequivocally violated international law, namely article 2(4) of the Charter of the United Nations. Attempts to justify this use of force as somehow justified by Iraq's reaction to UN Security Council resolutions are inconsistent with statements of the majority of both the permanent members of the UNSC and the total membership of this body and are devoid of any legal basis. To satisfy basic principles of justice any court concerned with trials in Iraq that have resulted from the United States' illegal use of force must be able and willing to try Americans who have committed crimes against peace, including American President George W. Bush."
"You may remember that in 2002, the year before the Iraq War began, the United Nations Security Council ordered Iraq to produce a report detailing all of its biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons - past and present. Iraqi officials complied and produced an 11,800-page report on Iraq's weapons programs. The report described all the chemical and biological weapons the country once had - where they came from and what was done with them - as well as what had happened to Iraq's nuclear weapons program.
"Although the report was prepared for the United Nations, U.S. officials intercepted the report, edited out 8,000 pages (over two thirds) of it, and delivered its Reader's Digest version of the report to the UN.
"A German reporter managed to obtain a copy of the original report from Iraq, and then compared it with the truncated copy the U.S. gave to the UN. He found that the missing parts covered the Iraqis' acquisition of chemical and biological weapons from the U.S., the delivery of non-fissionable materials for a nuclear bomb by the U.S. to the Iraqis, and the training of Iraqi nuclear scientists at U.S. nuclear facilities in Los Alamos, Sandia, and Berkeley...
"Colin Powell dismissed the report, calling it a 'catalogue of recycled information and flagrant omissions.' Of course, as we now know, the information was recycled because it happened to be true, and the omissions were flagrant because U.S. officials had done the omitting...
"One of the tragic ironies of the decision to invade Iraq is that the Iraqi WMD declaration required by security council resolution 1441, submitted by Iraq in December 2002, and summarily rejected by Bush and Blair as repackaged falsehoods, now stands as the most accurate compilation of data yet assembled regarding Iraq's WMD programs (more so than even Duelfer's ISG report, which contains much unsubstantiated speculation).
"Saddam Hussein has yet to be contradicted on a single point of substantive fact. Iraq had disarmed; no one wanted to accept that conclusion.
"In other words, the Butcher of Baghdad was correct; the President of the United States of America was wrong. The Butcher of Baghdad will be put on trial for 'war crimes.' The President of the United States of America was reelected to 'lead' the country for four more years.
"It's a sorry state of affairs in America when you can trust the words of Saddam Hussein more than those of your own President."
- Harry Browne, 1996 & 2000 Libertarian Party nominee for President: Can You Imagine?: Hussein Was Right & Bush Was Wrong -
"Last week, the Supreme Court ruled that police are not required to enforce restraining orders, even if state law mandates that they do so.
"It was a bizarre decision, and a terribly misguided one...
"The high court's decision also sends mixed messages to abuse victims, who have often been chastised for not seeking the help of the state when they feel threatened.
"But in fact, the plaintiff in this case, Jessica Gonzales, did exactly what she was supposed to. As soon as her estranged husband absconded with their three daughters in violation of a court's restraining order she called the Castle Rock, Colo., police. She called six times over an eight-hour period including numerous calls after she had reached her husband on his cellphone and confirmed that he had the children with him.
"She repeatedly begged the police to enforce the restraining order and retrieve her daughters, citing the father's extremely violent and unstable history to no avail. Over and over again, she was told to call back later. At 3:20 a.m., the father appeared at the police station, where he opened fire on officers and was shot and killed. The dead bodies of the three girls, ages 7, 9 and 10, were found in the back of his pickup...
"How can we begin to take matters into our own hands? Perhaps we need a website where women could post the names of unresponsive officers. Unfair you think? But what else can we do if the court won't stand up for us? How else can we sanction the Castle Rock officer who, on Jessica Gonzales' sixth plea for help, still refused to investigate? Instead, he went to dinner."
"I trust that all of you will agree with me that the national security of the United States is at issue here, not the right of journalists to protect sources under 'normal' editorial circumstances. In this instance, a sitting President of the United States, via his top deputies, committed a major crime, solely out of vengeance against former Ambassador Joseph Wilson - Plame's husband - who had publicly noted Bush's deceit about 'significant quantities of uranium from Africa (Niger)' in his 2003 State of the Union Address in, ironically, a New York Times op-ed piece.
"Now, with Time considering doing the right thing under the prevailing circumstances, both for themselves and the country, it is important to bring massive and open public pressure upon them - and the NYT - to, in fact, do the right thing - under rather extraordinary and compelling circumstances.
"The VP of Corporate Communications at Time is Dawn Bridges. Her direct phone number is (212) 522-2494. Her e-mail address is:
dawn_bridges@timeinc.com . Her deputy is Peter Costiglio. He can be reached at (212) 522-3927. His e-mail address is
peter_costiglio@timeinc.com . I have already spoken with him, and he is a polite, professional person who thanked me for voicing my views. I am confident he will do the same for you. The New York Times can be reached at (212) 556-1234. The Executive Editor is Bill Keller. His e-mail is
executive-editor@nytimes.com . Judith Miller's e-mail is
jmiller@nytimes.com.
"In the case of Miller, I also trust you will heartily support her jailing if she continues to refuse to identify her source. Her horrible mis-reporting on the lead up to the war in Iraq, most notably her Ahmed Chalabi-inspired fabrications about the infamous aluminum tubes for a centrifuge suitable for making nuclear weapons, has unnecessarily cost countless thousands of human lives, including nearly 1,800 Americans, yet she has never apologized publicly, although the paper did - without naming her. She is, as you probably know if you have seen her on TV, one of the most arrogant occupants of the ivory tower in the history of journalism.
"The point is that she still has a job. She should go to prison for a long, long time - for what is, in effect, treason."
"No person shall be...deprived of life, liberty or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use without just compensation."
- U.S. Constitution, Fifth Amendment (1791) -
"There is an important topic barely mentioned in the Kelo opinion: The second of the two Fifth Amendment prerequisites to a taking of private property through eminent domain powers: the payment of 'just compensation.' The court seems to assume that all the property owners involved in this and other, similar cases, will get paid 'just compensation.' Nothing could be further from the truth...
"Ask any real estate agent, 'What's a piece of property worth?' Always, the answer will be, 'Whatever somebody is willing to pay for it.' There's the rub. When it's taken from you, nobody is bargaining to buy it, so its value never can be ascertained with anything approaching certainty. What if all the local appraisers are beholden to the developer? Or local government? Or..."
