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"I came to America because of the great, great freedom which I heard existed in this country. I made a mistake in selecting America as a land of freedom, a mistake I cannot repair in the balance of my lifetime."
-Albert Einstein, 1947
"It is perfectly possible for a man to be out of prison, and yet not free - to be under no physical constraint and yet to be a psychological captive, compelled to think, feel and act as the representatives of the national state, or of some private interest within the nation, wants him to think, feel and act.
“The nature of psychological compulsion is such that those who act under constraint remain under the impression that they are acting on their own initiative. The victim of mind-manipulation does not know that he is a victim. To him the walls of his prison are invisible, and he believes himself to be free. That he is not free is apparent only to other people. His servitude is strictly objective."
-Excerpt from Brave New World Revisited by Aldous Huxley, 1958.
"Colonialism or imperialism, as the slave system of the West is called, is not something that is just confined to England or France or the United States. The interests in this country are in cahoots with the interests in France and the interests in Britain. It”s one huge complex or combine, and it creates what's known not as the American power structure or the French power structure, but an international power structure. This international power structure is used to suppress the masses of dark-skinned people all over the world and exploit them of their natural resources."
-Malcolm X
"We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated Governments in the world - no longer a Government of free opinion, no longer a Government by conviction and vote of the majority, but a Government by the opinion and duress of small groups of dominant men."
-Woodrow Wilson [U.S. President during World War I]
"The U.S. must carry out some act somewhere in the world which shows its determination to continue to be a world power."
-Henry Kissinger, post-Vietnam blues, as quoted in The Washington Post, April 1975
"Throughout the world, on any given day, a man, woman, or child is likely to be displaced, tortured, killed, or “disappeared”, at the hands of governments or armed political groups. More often than not, the United States shares the blame."
-Amnesty International, 1996
"If war aims are stated which seem to be solely concerned with Anglo-American imperialism, they will offer little to people in the rest of the world. The interests of other peoples should be stressed. This would have a better propaganda effect."
-Private memo from The Council of Foreign Relations to the U.S. State Department, 1941
"College courses in political science generally take one of two approaches when analyzing U.S. actions abroad. Some professors and textbooks are quite critical of what might be called the American colossus. In this 'American century,' the United States has been the most powerful nation on earth and has typically acted to maintain its hegemony. This view holds that we Americans abandoned our revolutionary ideology long ago, IF INDEED WE EVER HELD ONE, and now typically act to repress the legitimate attempts at self-determination of other nations and peoples. [my emphasis]
"More common is the realpolitik view. George Kennan, who for almost half a century has been an architect of and commentator on U.S. foreign policy, provided a succinct statement of this approach in 1948. As head of the Policy Planning Staff of the State Department, Kennan wrote in a now famous memorandum:
"We have about 50% of the world's wealth but only 6.3% of its population. In this situation, we cannot fail to be the object of envy and resentment. Our real test in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity. We need not deceive ourselves that we can afford today the luxury of altruism and world benefaction---unreal objectives such as human rights, the raising of living standards, and democratization."
-Excerpt of Chapter 8 (“Watching Big Brother: What Textbooks Teach about the Federal Government”) of Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong by James W. Loewen.
"Starting after the multiple bombings of the Federal office building in Oklahoma City, April 19, 1995, I wrote and then spoke on talk radio about an aborted military coup. Brought home to me, however, was the reality that my fellow Americans had little knowledge or understanding of the masterstroke, the overthrow of government, whether for the good or for evil.Who is an "American?"
"In the past, had we as Americans been clearly informed by the popular press of a putsch, the overthrow of government by violence, by political assassination, such as to benefit domestic or foreign powers? After all, who benefitted from the political assassination of President Abraham Lincoln if not the British and the French who held the means to swoop upon us at the time from their entrenched positions to the south and north of us, in Canada and Mexico. The British wanted to split apart the nation by aggravating the natural friction between the ideas of the North and the South in America. The French were ready to carve up America as well. Since at least the War of 1812, the British had plotted to take back this continent as a puppet colony with so-called 'Americans' again as subjects of the British Crown. [To their credit, Czarist Russia at the time of the War Between The States, or as called, the American Civil War, attempted to aid Lincoln with the Czar's naval fleet coming right offshore the U.S.]
"Look what happened in the decades after the murder of Lincoln. President James Garfield was against the British controlling the growing financial power of the U.S. President William McKinley [the Brits hate the Irish] opposed the British trying to strangle the rise of American industrial power. Their political assassination in the years after that of Lincoln, in its simplest explanation, benefitted British attempts to grab back America.
"Seldom, if ever, are these events explained in this way."
-Excerpt of an article entitled, "The Overthrow Of The American Republic, Part One," by Sherman H. Skolnick, 09/22/01.
Without war materiel and other aid from European allies, future Indian wars were transformed from major international conflicts to domestic mopping-up operations. This result was central to the course of Indian-U.S. relations for the remainder of the century. Thus Indian wars after 1815, while they cost thousands of lives on both sides, would never again amount to a serious threat to the United States. Although Native Americans won many battles in subsequent wars, there was never the slightest doubt over who would win in the end.
"Another result of the War of 1812 was the loss of part of our history. A century of learning [from Native Americans] was coming to a close. A century and more of forgetting---of calling history into service to rationalize conquest---was beginning. After 1815 Indians could no longer play what sociologists call the role of conflict partner---an important other who must be taken into account---so Americans forgot that Indians had ever been significant in our history. Even terminology changed: until 1815 the word Americans had generally been used to refer to Native Americans; after 1815 it meant European Americans."
-Excerpt of Chapter 4 ("Red Eyes") of Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong by James W. Loewen.
This information below is offered to give you, the reader, an idea of new ways of interpreting and understanding the world in which we ALL live. And as well new ways of solving the problems, since we now know that we cannot change the world an issue at a time, since the problems are and have always been integrated and interrelated, thus systemic or cyclic.
"As the century draws to a close, environmental concerns have become of paramount importance. We are faced with a whole series of global problems that are harming the biosphere and human life in alarming ways that may soon become irreversible. We have ample documentation about the extent and significance of these problems.
"The more we study the major problems of our time, the more we come to realize that hey cannot be understood in isolation. They are systemic problems, which means that they are interconnected and interdependent. For example, stabilizing world population will be possible only when poverty is reduced worldwide. The extinction of animal and plant species on a massive scale will continue as long as the Southern Hemisphere is burdened by massive debts. Scarcities of resources and environmental degradation combine with rapidly expanding populations to lead to the breakdown of local communities and to the ethnic and tribal violence that has become the main characteristic of the post-cold war era.
"Ultimately these problems must be seen as just different facets of one single crisis, which is largely a crisis of perception. It derives from the fact that most of us, and especially our large social institutions, subscribe to the concepts of an outdated worldview, a perception of reality inadequate for dealing with our overpopulated, globally interconnected world.
"There are solutions to the major problems of our time, some of them even simple. But they require a radical shift in our perceptions, our thinking, our values. And, indeed, we are now at the beginning of such a fundamental change of worldview in science and society, a change of paradigms as radical as the Copernican revolution. But this realization has not yet dawned on most of our political leaders. The recognition that a profound change of perception and thinking is needed if we are to survive has not yet reached most of our corporate leaders, either, or the administrators and professors of our large universities.
"Not only do our leaders fail to see how different problems are interrelated; they also refuse to recognize how their so-called solutions affect future generations. From the systemic point of view, the only viable solutions are those that are 'sustainable.' The concept of sustainability has become a key concept in the ecology movement and is indeed crucial. Lester Brown of the Worldwatch Institute has given a simple, clear, and beautiful definition: 'A sustainable society is one that satisfies its needs without diminishing the prospects of future generations.' This, in a nutshell, is the great challenge of our time: to create sustainable communities---that is to say, social and cultural environments in which we can satisfy our needs and aspirations without diminishing the chances of future generations"
-Excerpt of Chapter 1 (Deep Ecology---A New Paradigm) of The Web of Life: A New Scientific Understanding of Living Systems by Fritjof Capra.
"When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe."
-The quote is from My First Summer In The Sierra by John Muir.
"We abuse the land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see land as a community to which we belong, we will begin to use it with love and respect."
-Anonymous quote
"In a real sense all life is inter-related. All men are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be, and you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be. This is the inter-related structure of reality."
-Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
“Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.”
-Albert Einstein, in Humanity
“The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science.”
-Albert Einstein, in Mystery
“True art is characterized by an irresistible urge in the creative artist.”
-Albert Einstein, in Art
“We should take care not to make the intellect our god. It has, of course, powerful muscles, but no personality.”
-Albert Einstein, in Science
“I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.”
-Albert Einstein, in Imagination
“It is not enough for a handful of experts to attempt the solution of a problem, to solve it and then to apply it. The restriction of knowledge to an elite group destroys the spirit of society and leads to its intellectual impoverishment.”
-Albert Einstein, in Politics/Anarchy
“Few are those who can see with their own eyes and hear with their own hearts.”
-Albert Einstein, in Philosophy
“The human mind is not capable of grasping the Universe. We are like a little child entering a huge library. The walls are covered to the ceilings with books in many different tongues. The child knows that someone must have written these books. It does not know who or how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. But the child notes a definite plan in the arrangement of books--a mysterious order which it does not comprehend, but only dimly suspects.”
-Albert Einstein, in Nature
“The important thing is not to stop questioning.”
-Albert Einstein, in Education
“There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.”
-Albert Einstein, in Perspective
“In a web, the potential impact of local actions bears no relationship to their size. When we choose to act locally, we may be wanting to influence the entire system. But we work where we are, with the system that we know, the one we can get our arms around. From a Newtonian perspective, our efforts seem too small, and we doubt that our actions will make a difference. Or perhaps we hope that our small efforts will contribute incrementally to large-scale change. Step by step, system by system, we aspire to develop enough mass or force to alter the larger system.
“But a quantum view explains the success of small efforts quite differently. Acting locally allows us to be inside the movement and flow of the system, participating in all those complex events occurring simultaneously. We are more likely to be sensitive to the dynamics of this system, and thus more effective. However, changes in small places also affect the global system, not through incrementalism, but because every small system participates in an unbroken wholeness. Activities in one part of the whole create effects that appear in distant places. Because of these unseen connections, there is potential value in working anywhere in the system. We never know how our small activities will affect others through the invisible fabric of our connectedness. I have learned that in this exquisitely connected world, it”s never a question of “critical mass.” It”s always about critical connections.”
-From Leadership and the New Science: Discovering Order in a Chaotic World by Margaret J. Wheatley
“In a broader sense polylectics is that non-myopic scientific evidentiary factual reference-reasoning and view. That beginning or developed profound realization of how in fact, and some day why, many and all things in the known and unknown universe, including all the earthly societies, groups of people, and, at the turn of the twenty to twenty-first century, with nearly six billion living human beings, inclusive of all-earth-life diversity and non-human animal life, of organic and inorganic existence is, in the macro sense, and are, in the micro sense, both deductively and inductively interconnected and or interrelated in some way, shape, fashion or form must now be about another synthesis realization, rather than a linear-mechanistically separate pseudo science view. Where myth and myopics is to be negated. In human relations beyond and out side of any notions of practicing “superiority” over others for what ever political-social exploitative purposes or beliefs, i.e. the pseudo science of Herinstein”s “The Bell Curve.”
“Superiority belief-notions, especially racial superiority notions however concocted, politically constructed as they are, are like isolationist xenophobic misunderstood “survival of the fittest” limited value belief ideas, residing in some backward two thousand year old concept-notions revolving around a limited two dimensional relationship to an anti-factual and artifactual-mystical eternity belief system. Such slow two dimensional level beliefs, in a real constantly changing matter-energy functions in our universe of all things in an investigational and observable three dimensional world of things, are hopefully fast becoming obsolete beliefs & notions. Fast in a possible fifty to a hundred years...”
-From an article by Bobby Seale entitled, “Polylectic Reality.” {R.E.A.C.H. (Reclaiming, Recycling and Re-Evolving; Ecological Economic Enviro-Empowerment; Around All-Peoples Active; Creative-Cooperational; Humanism!) Chronicles at http://www.bobbyseale.com/polylectic.html.}
“Familiarity with basic ecology will permanently change your worldview. You will never again regard plants, microorganisms, and animals (including people) as isolated entities. Instead you will see them - more accurately - as parts of a vast complex of natural machinery - as, in the dictionary definition, “related elements in a system that operates in a definable manner.”“
-Paul Ehrlich
“The Web of Life is the totality of life on Earth, seen in all its interconnectedness. The Web is a self-regulating, self-evolving system of interlocking subsystems.”
-The quote is from Creating a World That Works for All by Sharif Abdullah, check out http://www.commonway.org for more information.
“Understanding is having the ability to see things clearly for what they are and not what they present themselves to be. It completes the cipher.”
-AZ in the introduction to the song, “Understanding,” by Nas
“At any given moment, life is completely senseless. But viewed over a period, it seems to reveal itself as an organism existing in time, having a purpose, trending in a certain direction.”
-Aldous Huxley (1894-1963)
“If you”re coming to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together““
-Australian aboriginal woman
“Liberty has never come from government. Liberty has always come from the subjects of government. The history of liberty is the history of resistance.”
-Woodrow Wilson
“It is the duty of the patriot to protect his country from its government.”
-Thomas Paine
“To announce that there be no criticism of the President, or to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.”
-Theodore Roosevelt
“Good teachers never teach anything. What they do is create conditions under which learning takes place.”
-S.I. Hayakawa
“Then said a teacher, Speak to us of teaching.
And he said:
No man can reveal to you aught but that which already lies half asleep in the dawning of your knowledge.
The teacher who walks in the shadow of the temple, among his followers, gives not of his wisdom but rather of his faith and his lovingness.
If he is indeed wise he does not bid you enter the house of his wisdom, but rather leads you to the threshold of your own mind““
-The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran, found in To Educate With Love by Dr. Herbert (Herb) M. Greenberg
“No one who has been thoroughly awake to the real universe would swap it for a “virtual” one. Our deepest urge is to bring our lives into direct contact with elemental life. No matter how clever our works, they will never satisfy our hunger. The likeliest way to achieve contact with life, the likeliest way to recover our senses, is by shutting off our machines, climbing out of our cars, our electrified boxes, walking beyond the pavement to actual dirt or rock, and opening ourselves to the world we have not made.”
-Scott Russell Sanders
“If you judge people, you have no time to love them.”
-Mother Theresa
“There is hunger for ordinary bread, and there is hunger for love, for kindness, for thoughtfulness; and this is the great poverty that makes people suffer so much.”
-Mother Theresa
“We think sometimes that poverty is only being hungry, naked and homeless. The poverty of being unwanted, unloved and uncared for is the greatest poverty. We must start in our own homes to remedy this kind of poverty.”
-Mother Theresa
“In the developed countries there is a poverty of intimacy, a poverty of spirit, of loneliness, of lack of love. There is no greater sickness in the world today than that one.”
-Mother Theresa
“In the West there is loneliness, which I call the leprosy of the West. In many ways it is worse than our poor in Calcutta.”
-Mother Theresa in Commonweal on 19 December 1997
“When a poor person dies of hunger, it has not happened because God did not take care of him or her. It has happened because neither you nor I wanted to give that person what he or she needed.”
-Mother Theresa
“It is not how much we do, but how much love we put in the doing. It is not how much we give, but how much love we put in the giving.”
-Mother Theresa
“Let us not be satisfied with just giving money. Money is not enough, money can be got, but they need your hearts to love them. So, spread your love everywhere you go.”
-Mother Theresa
“The poor give us much more than we give them. They're such strong people, living day to day with no food. and they never curse, never complain. We don't have to give them pity or sympathy. We have so much to learn from them.”Top
-Mother Theresa
“Changes” by 2Pac
“We gotta make a change...
It's time for us as a people to start makin' some changes.
Let's change the way we eat, let's change the way we live
and let's change the way we treat each other.
You see the old way wasn't working so it's on us to do
what we gotta do, to survive.”
-From “Changes“ by Tupac Amaru Shakur off the 2Pac Greatest Hits album
“And 2Morrow” by Tupac
“Today is filled with anger
fueled with hidden hate
scared of being outcast
afraid of common fate
Today is built on tragedies
which no one wants 2 face
nightmares 2 humanities
and morally disgraced
Tonight is filled with rage
violence in the air
children bred with ruthlessness
because no one at home cares
Tonight I lay my head down
but the pressure never stops
knawing at my sanity
content when I am dropped
But 2morrow I c change
a chance 2 build a new
Built on spirit intent of Heart
and ideals
based on truth
and tomorrow I wake with second wind
and strong because of pride
2 know I fought with all my heart 2 keep my
dream alive.”
-“And 2Morrow“ by Tupac Amaru Shakur comes from his book of poetry, The Rose That Grew From Concrete
“We cannot change unless we survive but we will not survive unless we change.”
-NoSecretsPress postcard
“The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything except our modes of thinking, and thus we drift toward unparalleled catastrophes. We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if humanity is to survive.”
-Albert Einstein
“We learn not from experience but from our capacity to experience.”
-the Buddha
“If you”re coming to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together““
-Australian aboriginal woman
“In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”
-George Orwell
“All peoples, should be constructed to mean, Indigenous peoples have that right to self-determination. And, by virtue of that right, they may freely determine their political status and freely pursue, their economic, social and political development. Accord us the same rights as all other nations of peoples. And through that process, allow us to protect our ecosystems, their inherent biodiversity, human cultural diversity, and those matriarchal governments which remain in the world.
“And with the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization (UNPO), we reaffirm that definition of self-determination provided in Article 1 of the International Covenant on Social Economic and Cultural Rights, further recognizing that the right to self-determination belongs equally to women and to men. We believe that the right of all peoples to self-determination cannot be realized while women continue to be marginalized and prevented from becoming full participants in their respective societies. The human rights of women, like the human rights of Indigenous peoples, and our inherent rights to self-determination, are not issues exclusively within the domestic jurisdiction of states. For further discussion of these, please see the international agreements and accords struck by hundreds of Indigenous nations, such as the Karioka document and the Matatua document.
“Finally, while we may, here in the commonness of this forum, speak of the common rights of all women, and those fundamental human rights of self-determination, it is incumbent upon me to point out the fundamental inequalities of this situation. So long as the predator continues, so long as the middle -- the temperate countries of the world -- continues to drive an increasing level of consumption, and, frankly continue to export both the technologies and drive for this level of consumption to other countries of the world, there will be no safety for the human rights of women, rights of Indigenous peoples, and to basic protection for the Earth, from which we get our life. Consumption causes the commodification of the sacred, the natural world, cultures, and the commodification of children, and women.
“From the United States position, consider the following. The US is the largest energy market in the world. The average American consumes seven times as many wood products per capita as anywhere else in the industrialized world. And overall that country consumes one third of the world's natural resources. By comparison Canada's per capita energy consumption is the highest in the world. Levels of consumption in the industrial world drive destruction of the world's rainforests and the world's boreal forests, drive production of nuclear wastes, production of pcbs, dioxin and other lethal chemicals, which devastate the body of our Mother earth, and our own bodies. Unless we speak and take meaningful action to address the levels of consumption, and subsequently, the exports of these technologies, and levels of consumption to other countries (like the international market for nuclear reactors), we will never have any security for our individual human rights as Indigenous women, and for our security as women.
“If we are to seek and struggle for common ground of all women, it is essential to struggle on this issue. It is not that the women of the dominant society in so-called first world countries should have equal pay and equal status, if that pay and status continues to be based on a consumption model which is not only unsustainable, but causes constant violation of the human rights of women and nations elsewhere in the world. It essential to collectively struggle to recover our status as Daughters of the Earth. In that is our strength and the security; not in the predator, but in the security of our Mother, for our future generations. In that we can ensure our security as the Mothers of our Nations.”
-“The Indigenous Women's Network: Our Future, Our Responsibility, from a statement of Winona LaDuke at the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, China on August 31 1995.”
“The Mess is the nightmarish complex of societal and personal problems that afflict today”s world. The Mess is incapable of being cleaned up with our current techniques of problem solving. The Mess is the polar opposite of the Web of Life.”
-From Creating a World That Works for All by Sharif Abdullah, check out http://www.commonway.org for more information.
“I think our whole society tries to stabilize itself by starting out to destroy sensitivity to incoherence starting with very young children. If people could see the vast incoherence that is going on in society they would be disturbed and they would feel the need to do something. If you're not sensitive to it you don't feel disturned and you don't feel you need to do anything.
“I remember an instance, a daughter was telling her mother, “this school is terrible, the teacher is terrible, very inconsistent, doing all sorts of crazy things,” and so on. Finally the mother was saying, “You'd better stop this--in this house the teacher is always right.” Now she understood that the teacher was wrong obviously, but the message was, it was no use. Even the message may have been right in some sense, but still it illustrates that the predicament is that in order to avoid this sort of trouble, starting with very young children, we are trained to become insensitive to incoherence. If there is incoherence in our own behavior, we thereby also become insensitive to it.”
-David Bohm, seminar on Thought and Dialogue in Ojai, 4 November 1989, from koyaanisqatsi: a state of life that calls for another way of living
“We find our selves living in the time of KOYAANISQATSITop
ko.yaa.nis.qatsi (from the Hopi Language) noun (n.)
1) crazy life.
2) life in turmoil.
3) life out of balance.
4) life disintegrating.
5) a state of life that calls for another way of living.”
-From rat haus reality: living life passionately/ratical branch: birthright of all life
“When you call yourself an Indian or a Muslim or a Christian or a European, or anything else, you are being violent. Do you see why it is violent? Because you are separating yourself from the rest of mankind. When you separate yourself by belief, by nationality, by tradition, it breeds violence. So a man who is seeking to understand violence does not belong to any country, to any religion, to any political party or partial system; he is concerned with the total understanding of mankind.”
-J. Krishnamurti, Freedom from the Known, pp. 51-52.
“War - a conflict which does not determine who is right--but who is left.”
-Anonymous?
“You can no more win a war than you can win an earthquake.”
-Jeannette Rankin
“There would be no one to frighten you if you refused to be afraid.”
-Mohandas K. Gandhi (Mahatma)
“War may sometimes be a necessary evil. But no matter how necessary, it is always an evil, never a good. We will not learn to live together in peace by killing each other's children.”
-From Jimmy Carter's Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech
“We never see the smoke and the fire, we never smell the blood, we never see the terror in the eyes of the children, whose nightmares will now feature screaming missiles from unseen terrorists, known only as Americans.”
-Martin Kelly of The Nonviolence Web: Your source for today”s peace and antiwar news
“In such a world of conflict, a world of victims and executioners, it is the job of thinking people not to be on the side of the executioners.”
-Albert Camus, from -From The Little Book of Peace
“When will our consciences grow so tender that we will act to prevent human misery rather than avenge it?”
-Eleanor Roosevelt
“I was once asked why I don't participate in anti-war demonstrations. I said that I will never do that, but as soon as you have a pro-peace rally, I'll be there.”
-Mother Teresa
“Shundahai is a Newe (Western Shoshone) word meaning “Peace and Harmony with all Creation.”“
-From Shundahai Network: Dedicated to Breaking the Nuclear Chain
“It's in our back yard... it's in our front yard. This nuclear contamination is shortening all life. We are going to have to unite as a people and say no more! We, the people, are going to have to put our thoughts together to save our planet here. We only have One Water...One Air...One Mother Earth.”
-Corbin Harney -Newe (Western Shoshone) Spiritual leader, Founder & Chairman of the Board of the Shundahai Network: Dedicated to Breaking the Nuclear Chain
“You can't separate peace from freedom because no one can be at peace unless he has his freedom.”
-Malcolm X
“May you have warmth in your igloo, oil in your lamp, and peace in your heart.”
-Inuit Proverb
“We have the power to change the world. It is not an issue of whether or not can we make a difference. The truth is that we do make a difference. Everything we do, say and think shapes our reality. It is time that we join our bodies, minds, hearts, spirits and voices and call for peace on the Earth and peace with the Earth.”
-Julia Butterfly
“If there is light in the soul, there will be beauty in the person. If there is beauty in the person, there will be harmony in the house. If there is harmony in the house, there will be order in the nation. If there is order in the nation, there will be peace in the world.”
-Chinese proverb
“When Yen Ho was about to take up his duties as tutor to the heir Fo Ling, Duke of Wei, he went ot Ch”u Po You for advice. “I have to deal,” he said, “with a man of depraved and murderous disposition. . . . How is one to deal with a man of this sort?” “I am glad,” said Ch”u Po Yu, “that you asked this question. . . . The first thing you must do is not to improve him, but to improve yourself.”
-Taoist story of ancient China, quoted in Martin Luther King, Jr. on Leadership: Inspiration & Wisdom for Challenging Times by Donald T. Phillips
“Beneath the surface of the present there is always the human material for change: the suppressed indignation, the common sense, the need for community, the love of children, the patience to wait for the right moment to act, in concert with others.”
-Howard Zinn in You Can't be Neutral on a Moving Train
“Every gun made, every warship launched, every Rocket fired, signifies in a final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed.”
-Dwight D. Eisenhower
“The people want peace; indeed, I believe they want peace so badly that the governments will just have to step aside and let them have it.”
-Dwight D. Eisenhower
“The Arms race can kill, though the weapons themselves may never be used. By their cost alone, armaments kill the poor by causing them to starve.”
-Vatican Statement to the U.N., 1976
“A country cannot simultaneously prepare and prevent war.”
-Albert Einstein, in War
“The pioneers of a warless world are the youth that refuse military service.”
-Albert Einstein, in War
“Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius and a lot more courage to move things in the opposite direction.”
-Albert Einstein
“He who joyfully marches to music in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would fully suffice. This disgrace to civilization should be done away with at once. Heroism at command, senseless brutality, deplorable love-of-country stance, how violently I hate all this, how despicable an ignorable war is; I would rather be torn to shreds than be a part of so base an action! It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder.”
-Albert Einstein
“We are not worth more. They are not worth less.
THIS SITE [Brian Willson”s Web page - see below] CONTAINS essays describing the incredible historic pattern of U.S. arrogance, ethnocentrism, violence and lawlessness in domestic and global affairs, and the severe danger this pattern poses for the future health of Homo sapiens and Mother Earth. Other essays discuss revolutionary, nonviolent alternative approaches based on the principle of radical relational mutuality. This is a term increasingly used by physicists, mathematicians and cosmologists to describe the nature of the omnicentric*, ever-unfolding universe. Every being, every aspect of life energy in the cosmos, is intrinsically interconnected with and affects every other being and aspect of life energy at every moment.
*everything is at the center of the cosmos at every moment.”
-These words at Brian Willson”s Web page were so moving and touching to me that I decided to include them on this page.
“No degree of prosperity could justify the accumulation of large amounts of highly toxic substances which nobody knows how to make “safe” and which remain an incalculable danger to the whole of creation for historical or even geological ages. To do such a thing is a transgression against life itself, a transgression infinitely more serious than any crime ever perpetrated by man. The idea that a civilisation could sustain itself on the basis of such a transgression is an ethical, spiritual, and metaphysical monstrosity. It means conducting the economic affairs of man as if people really did not matter at all.”
-E.F. Schumacher
“War is murder, force, anarchy and debt. Its end is evil, despite all incidental good.
This is a world that believes in War and Ignorance, and has no hope in our day of realizing an intelligent majority of men and Peace on Earth. There are many, many exceptions, but, in general, it is true that there is scarcely a bishop in Christendom, a priest in the church, a president, governor, mayor, or legislator in the United States, a college professor or public school teacher who does not in the end stand by War and Ignorance as the main method for the settlement of our pressing human problems. And this despite the fact that they may deny it with their mouths every day.”
-W.E.B. DuBois, 1935
“The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it... Through violence you may murder the hater, but you do not murder hate. In fact, violence merely increases hate.... Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.”
-Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
“A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.”
-Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
“It really boils down to this: that all life is interrelated. We are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied into a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. We are made to live together because of the interrelated structure of reality. Did you ever stop to think that you can't leave for your job in the morning without being dependent on most of the world? You get up in the morning and go to the bathroom and reach over for the sponge, and that's handed to you by a Pacific islander. You reach for a bar of soap, and that's given to you at the hands of a Frenchman. And then you go into the kitchen to drink your coffee for the morning, and that's poured into your cup by a South American. And maybe you want tea: that's poured into your cup by a Chinese. Or maybe you're desirous of having cocoa for breakfast, and that's poured into your cup by a West African. And then you reach over for your toast, and that's given to you at the hands of an English-speaking farmer, not to mention the baker. And before you finish eating breakfast in the morning, you've depended on more than half the world. This is the way our universe is structured, this is its interrelated quality. We aren't going to have peace on Earth until we recognize this basic fact of the interrelated structure of all reality”
“It's one of the strangest things that all the great military geniuses of the world have talked about peace. The conquerors of old who came killing in pursuit of peace, Alexander, Julius Caesar, Charlemagne, and Napoleon, were akin in seeking a peaceful world order. If you will read Mein Kampf closely enough, you will discover that Hitler contended that everything he did in Germany was for peace. And the leaders of the world today talk eloquently about peace. Every time we drop our bombs in North Vietnam, President Johnson talks eloquently about peace. What is the problem? They are talking about peace as a distant goal, as an end we seek, but one day we must come to see that peace is not merely a distant goal we seek, but that it is a means by which we arrive at that goal. We must pursue peaceful ends through peaceful means. All of this is saying that, in the final analysis, means and ends must cohere because the end is preexistent in the means, and ultimately destructive means cannot bring about constructive ends.”
-From “A Christmas Sermon on Peace,” in 1967 by Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
“Meanwhile we in the churches and synagogues have a continuing task while we urge our government to disengage itself from a disgraceful commitment. We must continue to raise our voices if our nation persists in its perverse ways in Vietnam. We must be prepared to match actions with words by seeking out every creative means of protest possible.
“As we counsel young men concerning military service we must clarify for them our nation's role in Vietnam and challenge them with the alternative of conscientious objection. I am pleased to say that this is the path now being chosen by more than seventy students at my own alma mater, Morehouse College, and I recommend it to all who find the American course in Vietnam a dishonorable and unjust one. Moreover I would encourage all ministers of draft age to give up their ministerial exemptions and seek status as conscientious objectors. These are the times for real choices and not false ones. We are at the moment when our lives must be placed on the line if our nation is to survive its own folly. Every man of humane convictions must decide on the protest that best suits his convictions, but we must all protest.
“There is something seductively tempting about stopping there and sending us all off on what in some circles has become a popular crusade against the war in Vietnam. I say we must enter the struggle, but I wish to go on now to say something even more disturbing. The war in Vietnam is but a symptom of a far deeper malady within the American spirit, and if we ignore this sobering reality we will find ourselves organizing clergy- and laymen-concerned committees for the next generation. They will be concerned about Guatemala and Peru. They will be concerned about Thailand and Cambodia. They will be concerned about Mozambique and South Africa. We will be marching for these and a dozen other names and attending rallies without end unless there is A SIGNIFICANT AND PROFOUND CHANGE IN AMERICAN LIFE AND POLICY. [my emphasis] Such thoughts take us beyond Vietnam, but not beyond our calling as sons of the living God.”
-From “Protesting The War,” part of the speech entitled, “Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence,” delivered by Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., on 4 April 1967, at a meeting of Clergy and Laity Concerned at Riverside Church in New York City
“Mr. Irucka Embry spoke on the “Realities of War” at the University of Tennessee campus, in Knoxville, Tennessee (USA), on Thursday, 20 February 2003 from 8 - 9 PM to a small gathering of people.
What do you think of when you think of War? Do you think that you are personally affected by War? If not, why not? By War, I am referring to two wars, the continued War that some humans have participated in against our Mother Earth and as well the continued War that humans engage in against each other. Either way, both Wars end up making the world that we live in less inhabitable and is just a War against our own selves, as we are ALL interconnected and interrelated. And these Wars that we participate in may eventually make the Earth inhabitable for ALL of us.
In terms of the latter War, I am referring to information/psychological (propaganda, advertising, commercialism), emotional {torture, rape, forced prostitution and sex enslavement}, electronic (dumping of electronic waste, use of electronic weapons), nuclear/radiological (experimentation on humans and other beings - consenting and unconsenting; uranium, plutonium, and coal mining; nuclear
and coal-powered power plants; nuclear weapons - including depleted uranium weapons and “mini”-nukes; X-rays; irradiation of food; testing/proving of nuclear and other weapons; dumping of nuclear waste), bacteriological/biological/genetic engineering [use of biological toxins, pharmaceutical products - vaccines, antibiotics, and drugs - including the various cancers and dis-eases that result from vaccinations/immunizations, genetically engineered food/genetically modified organisms, AIDS/HIV and Ebola virus, Gulf War Syndrome/Sickness, and other cancers and viruses engineered by people], intellectual, chemical (“chemo”/chemotherapy, Chemtrails, dumping of chemicals in waterways, in so-called “developing“/”Third World“ nations, and/or in landfills; incineration of toxic wastes and/or chemical weaponsfluoridated and chlorinated water and products/byproducts; Agent Orange; napalm; toxic chemical production/products/byproducts; gas), economic [sanctions, embargoes], scalar and spiritual/cultural {reservations - the world”s first concentration camps, missionaries and colonialism/capitalism/imperialism} Warfare. Although the aforementioned are written separately, each of the above subsystems of Warfare are interconnected and interrelated.
The “Realities of War” (War as a System), in general, is that Wars are built on lies and Wars always lead to DEATH. Whereas War = DEATH. I”ll discuss the aspect of Death in War later on in this section after discussing the lies more. Furthermore, War was a racket in 1933 and is still one now.
At the presentation/talk/discussion I had wanted to begin by playing the song “War” by Edwin Starr, but I do not have that single/album, so I was not able to do so. Therefore, I feel that it is appropriate in this discussion of the Realities of War to include the complete lyrics below. Thank-you Edwin Starr.
“War” by Edwin Starr
“Oh no-there”s got to be a better way
Say it again
There”s got to be a better way-yeah
What is it good for?
*War has caused unrest
Among the younger generation
Induction then destruction
Who wants to die?
War-huh
What is it good for?
Absolutely nothing
Say it again
War-huh
What is it good for?
Absolutely nothing
Yeah
War-I despise
“Cos it means destruction
Of innocent lives
War means tears
To thousands of mothers how
When their sons go off to fight
And lose their lives
I said
War-huh
It's an enemy of all mankind
No point of war
“Cos you're a man
*(Repeat)
Give it to me one time-now
Give it to me one time-now
War has shattered
Many young men”s dreams
We”ve got no place for it today
They say we must fight to keep our freedom
But Lord, there”s just got to be a better way
It ain”t nothing but a heartbreaker
War
Friend only to the undertaker
War
War
War-Good God, now
Now
Give it to me one time now
Now now
What is it good for?
-From “War“ by Edwin Starr
These words of deception may concern themselves with why the politicians (in actuality their controllers and the controllers of the world) have taken a country into a physical war. Then, there is the lie that only people on the battlefield and in particular those that are fighting will be casualties and thus affected. The Truth is that EVERYONE in the whole world is affected indirectly and directly by each and every War. These and other lies may involve the media-military alliance or the academic-military alliance as well. What is the truth about wars in general? What are some oxymoronic terms used in War-speak? How about words such as: Humanitarian Bombing [that is with cluster bombs, cruise missiles, firebombs, and other weapons]; Humanitarian Intervention {that is with military force to install a “democracy”}; Smart Bombs (no creation of human beings are perfect); and lastly Bombing/Killing/Murdering them to LIBERATE them [if no one is left, then how are they free?]. Just some things for us to think about.
Are acts of terrorism (real or imagined/fake) the road to a dictatorship in a country/nation or the whole world and as well the road to Wars? In order for a dictatorship to happen, there has to be lies and deceit and/or support from a major military power as well.
“Today Americans would be outraged if U.N. troops entered Los Angeles to restore order; tomorrow they will be grateful. This is especially true if they were told there was an outside threat from beyond, whether real or promulgated, that threatened our very existence. It is then that all peoples of the world will plead with world leaders to deliver them from this evil. The one thing every man fears is the unknown. When presented with this scenario, individual rights will be willingly relinquished for the guarantee of their well being granted to them by their world government.”
-Henry Kissinger speaking at Evian, France, 21 May 1992 at the Bilderburgers Group meeting. “Unknown to Kissinger, his speech was taped by a Swiss delegate to the meeting.”
Was Pearl Harbor a surprise attack? If not, then why are we still told that lie? “...everything that the Japanese were planning to do was known to the United States...” - Army Board, 1944.
Now, let”s look at the first, complete “made-for-TV” War (Persian Gulf War of 1990-1991, though it continues to this present day and really began back in World War One) and the various lies of that massacre. “Did Saddam Gas the Kurds“? If so, why? If not, then why do we keep repeating that distortion/lie/deception? According to the USA Army War College, there is no proof that President Saddam Hussein of Iraq gassed the Kurds. So what is the Truth? If Saddam did gas the Kurds, was he the first person to do so? If not, then who was?
““Britain reserves the right to bomb niggers.” It isn't a well known policy of the British government, it rarely makes it into party manifestos before elections. Not even in the small print, only in the deceptions. Only in the decisions.
“When the BBC were making their dramatised version of the life of Lloyd George, former British Prime Minister from the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries they decided, like the political parties, to omit that particular phrase. In 1902 Lloyd George was giving his point of view to Parliament around the possibility of the UK government signing a treaty that prohibited the killing of civilians in any future wars. It didn't get very far. The young parliamentarian Winston Churchill, noted Hanson (the documenters of parliamentary life and debate) gave Lloyd George a standing ovation.
“Winston Churchill was also fully aware of the need for Britain to control the “uncivilised tribes” that threatened British control over major economic sources, shipping, minerals and so on. “Recalcitrant Arabs” he called them. Churchill who had become Colonial Secretary after the First World War decided that an impoverished Britain could fight by different, cheaper means. So he gassed the Kurds. He despised the “squeamishness” of those who “objected to poisonous gas against uncivilised tribes.” He used airpower that was just emerging to drop mustard gas on the Kurds, as he extolled, “spreading a lively terror.” Perhaps the most damning statement by Churchill was that in fact the gassing of the Kurds was “as experiment.”
“Now, 100 years later Tony Blair and his cabinet couch their wars in post-hippie language. Funky phrases like “open government” and “collateral damage.” When New Labour claimed it was opening up government to the people it simultaneously destroyed all documentation surrounding Churchill's gassing of the Kurds. Did we say post-hippie? We meant post-Orwellian”
““But it continues. The Iraq dossier revealed by Tony Blair is simply him repeating his previous claims. Just in this case it has “intelligence says” before any said claim. Basically just euphemisms for “trust me I'm Prime Minister”. Blair claims the attacks “will be in self-defence.” It sounds like an oxymoron. Self defence usually happens after an attack, hence the bundling with the phrase “will be” sounds a little odd. But it has international recognition.
“Because do you remember when Saddam Hussein tried to murder George Bush snr? No? Surely you must do. It was the excuse two months later, June 1993, for the USA to launch cruise missiles into Baghdad and other cities, killing civilians. Although no evidence was ever put forward for the Iraqi assassination attempt the commentators and top rate broadsheet journalists took it at face value. It was also just on the cusp of the takeover of the Presidency by Bill Clinton. It became Clinton's chance to make his mark it was said to “have cheered the President.” In the UK Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd said it was right and proper that the USA had failed to even glance at the UN or the Security Council or else there would be a “dangerous state of paralysis” in world politics. Not as dangerous as being an Iraqi under a cruise missile, but his supporters understood what he meant.
“Indeed the Conservative Government under Mrs Thatcher were in fact open supporters of both Churchill”s legacy and of state violence to suppress “recalcitrant Arabs.” Much has been noted of the gassing of the Kurds by Saddam in Halabja. The chemicals used to kill the 5000 or so Kurds were supplied by Germany. Three months after that attack deputy foreign secretary Norman Fowler went to Baghdad, not to chastise Saddam but to praise him and to offer up British arms sales. Saddam took him up on it. He took $1bn of weapons and never paid for them, we did, you and me.
“But never mind eh? It was all legitimate, it was a policy espoused by that genial and charming man Geoffrey Howe. That limp Tory whose attacks on Mrs Thatcher she liked to being “savaged by a wet sheep.” Indeed Howe had fully foreseen the problems of supplying arms to someone who killed kids with European gas. He drafted a document that set out the way forward for selling arms to this major killer. But he made sure it was hidden from view.
“There were “major opportunities for British industry” he pointed out. During the Scott Enquiry he said he hid the document from the public, MPs, anyone in fact, because he wanted to avoid “emotional misunderstandings” presumably by mere mortals like ourselves who do get all hot under the collar after a civilian gassing. He also wanted to avoid people like me, “malicious commentators.” He also wanted to avoid other Tories and make sure they didn't know about the administration and its desire to sell weapons to the Thatcher administration's favourite (as far as we know) major mass murderer. As Geoffrey explained, it was a “perfectly legitimate management of news.” Not like the Iraq dossier of course.
“So now, with hardly any evidence, with no political support around the world, with the backing of the global neo-media and partnering an administration that says even if it loses a UN vote it will act anyway, Tony Blair moves towards war and presents his dossier as a pretext for more “collateral damage”. After all, why not? Britain's politicians have always “reserved the right”.”
-From an article entitled, “Britain reserves the right to bomb niggers,” by Adam Porter
“We do not have any defense treaties with Kuwait, and there are no special defense or security commitments to Kuwait.”
-Margaret Tutweiller, U.S. State Department spokeswoman, 24th July 1990, nine days before Iraq”s invasion of Kuwait
Is the current accelerated War (the war has included sanctions, illegal “no-fly” zones, and contnous bombings since 1990/1991) against the people of Iraq and around that region built on fiction? If so, why do we believe those lies? Is it that we are conditioned to believe the deceit beforehand beginning in childhood? If so, why is that? Aren”t we “free”?
“If you give a man the correct information for seven years, he may believe the incorrect information on the first day of the eighth year when it is necessary, from your point of view, that he should do so. Your first job is to build the credibility and the authenticity of your propaganda, and persuade the enemy to trust you although you are his enemy.”
-From “A Psychological Warfare Casebook”: Operations Research Office at the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland (USA) {1958}
“We need a program of psychosurgery for political control of our society. The purpose is physical control of the mind. Everyone who deviates from the given norm can be surgically mutilated.
“The individual may think that the most important reality is his own existence, but this is only his personal point of view. This lacks historical perspective.
“Man does not have the right to develop his own mind. This kind of liberal orientation has great appeal. We must electrically control the brain. Some day armies and generals will be controlled by electric stimulation of the brain.”
Dr. Jose M.R. Delgado
Director of Neuropsychiatry
Yale University Medical School
Congressional Record, No. 26, Vol. 118
February 24, 1974
Do military recruiters lie to people to get them to become a part (property) of the military/police forces that are basically, as a system/institution, a terrorist/mercenary organization that protects the interests of the elites in this country and worldwide (the Global elite)? If military recruiters lie, then why is it? Do police officers or military personnel have the right to speak out against actions that their commanding/superior officers command/demand them to take? If not, then are they free? In terms of the United States of America, don”t we claim that we are “free”? Or are we not? In a real sense, it is as Albert Einstein once said, “No one is free while others are oppressed”. Thus, none of us are free since there is still oppression going on in the world today. Why is that? Why do we allow that to continue occurring today?
Are the government issue/owned (GI) members of the military in a CULT? If so, why don”t we condemn that practice and change it, thus work for peace? In terms of the terms that I used to describe the military/police apparatus as terrorist and mercenary, I”ll provide two quotes from veterans to hopefully explain that a little more here in this section. And to further illustrate the military as a quote with no ability to question authority, I”ll provide two quotes from veterans as well.
“The more I juxtapose logical world opinion with the Bush administration's actions in the war on terror, I realize one overwhelming theme: hypocrisy. No one in any of the branches of government runs a physical risk to themselves by entering a war with Iraq, and we can bet that none of their family members are at risk, either. That is, until the next “terrorist” attack. I put “terrorist” in quotes because its definition is subjective, and I myself used to be in the Marine Corps, part of the most powerful “terrorist” organization on the planet: the U.S. government. Of course, we never call our operations “terrorism” because every operation is considered legitimate to us. When found guilty by the World Court for violence in Nicaragua, we ignore the decision. Too bad the nations we hurt can't just ignore what we do to them. When the planet condemns us for killing between 2,500-4,000 people in Panama, we're too busy planning the next invasion of a country that can't fight back““
-Chris White: “Why I Oppose the US War on Terror: an ex-Marine Sergeant Speaks Out”“Sooner or later it had to happen: the fundamental transformation of U.S. military forces was really only a matter of time. Transformation, in this sense, from a national defense force to an international mercenary army for hire. With a U.S. national debt of $3 trillion, some $800 billion owned by foreigners, the United States sooner or later would have to find, or produce, the proper crisis - one that would enable the president to hire out the armed forces, like a national export, in order to avoid conversion of the economy from military to civilian purposes. Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, encouraged, it seems, by the Bush administration, is the necessary crisis.”
-From Z Magazine, November 1990, “Producing the Proper Crisis: A Talk by Philip Agee““The art of military recruiting is an ancient one. Militaries throughout history have used the darker side of human nature to their advantage and have long understood that “the passions that are to be kindled in war must already be inherent in the people.”
“In time of war, those passions are more base, more immediate. Young men are driven by hate and fear, not only of the “enemy,” but of the reactions of friends and family and society, should they fail to conform. Many would rather die than risk disapproval and loss of respect; would rather have their blood ebb away on distant sands than turn against the tide of common emotion and expectation. As Vietnam veteran and author Tim O”Brien observed, “The soldier”s greatest fear [is the] fear of blushing. Men killed, and died, because they were embarrassed not to... They were too frightened to be cowards.”
“In times of so-called peace, these “inherent passions” are less immediate but can be exploited nonetheless. Ambition, pride, elitism, and wanderlust; the quest for physical prowess, power, and control - all these are engendered by familiar slogans like the U.S. Army”s “Be all you can be” or Britain”s “Army soldier: be the best.”
“We make much of cults whose leaders deceive naive followers and lead them down paths of death and destruction; the ire of the American public is kindled at the very mention of Jonestown, Waco, or Heaven”s Gate. But what would people say if they were to learn of an organization that entices hundreds of thousands of teenagers into its ranks each year, offering money and adventure, a new family, a new identity, and a promise for membership in “one of the most elite organizations ever created”? And what if they heard that this organization makes it illegal to leave, and imprisons or shoots members who try?
“What if they were told that the leaders of this organization systematically corrupt the morals of its new converts, teach them the dehumanization of whole nations and classes of people, take them to foreign countries, put weapons in their hands, and force them to kill?
“Wouldn”t such an organization be perceived as one of the biggest cults of all time? ““
-Excerpt from Chapter 3 (“The Sell”) of Bloody Hell: The Price Soldiers Pay by Dan Hallock““I suspected I was just part of a racket at the time. Now I am sure of it. Like all the members of the military profession, I never had a thought of my own until I left the service. My mental faculties remained in suspended animation while I obeyed the orders of higher-ups. This is typical with everyone in the military service.”
-Part of an excerpt from a speech delivered in 1933, by Major General Smedley Butler, United States Marine CorpsRealities of War: Death, in picture and in words
In the section above, I stated that another Reality of the system/institution of War, other than lies, is DEATH.“On the road to Basra, ITV was filming wild dogs as they tore at the corpses of the Iraqi dead. Every few seconds a ravenous beast would rip off a decaying arm and make off with it over the desert in front of us, dead fingers trailing through the sand, the remains of the burned military sleeve flapping in the wind.
““Just for the record,” the cameraman said to me. Of course. Because ITV would never show such footage. The things we see - the filth and obscenity of corpses - cannot be shown. First because it is not “appropriate” to depict such reality on breakfast-time TV. Second because, if what we saw was shown on television, no one would ever again agree to support a war.
“That of course was in 1991. The “highway of death”, they called it - there was actually a parallel and much worse “highway of death” 10 miles to the east, courtesy of the US Air Force and the RAF, but no one turned up to film it - and the only true picture of the horrors we saw was the photograph of the shrivelled, carbonised Iraqi soldier in his truck. This was an iconic illustration of a kind because it did represent what we had seen, when it was eventually published.
“For Iraqi casualties to appear on television during that Gulf War - there was another one between 1980 and 1988, and a third is in the offing - it was necessary for them to have died with care, to have fallen romantically on their backs, one hand over a ruined face. Like those First World War paintings of the British dead on the Somme, Iraqis had to die benignly and without obvious wounds, without any kind of squalor, without a trace of shit or mucus or congealed blood, if they wanted to make it on to the morning news programmes.
“I rage at this contrivance. At Qaa in 1996, when the Israelis had shelled Lebanese refugees at the UN compound for 17 minutes, killing 106 civilians, more than half of them children, I came across a young woman holding in her arms a middle-aged man. He was dead. “My father, my father,” she kept crying, cradling his face. One of his arms and one of his legs was missing - the Israelis used proximity shells which cause amputation wounds - but when that scene reached television screens in Europe and America, the camera was close up on the girl and the dead man's face. The amputations were not to be seen. The cause of death had been erased in the interests of good taste. It was as if the old man had died of tiredness, just turned his head upon his daughter's shoulder to die in peace“““
-Excerpt of an article by Robert Fisk, entitled, “The human cost - “Does Tony have any idea what the flies are like that feed off the dead?”“““The message is to practice democracy and to get involved,” he [Scott Ritter] said. “I”m very disturbed by the concept that you cannot be patriotic unless you accept, without question, the policies of the president of the United States. What I”m trying to encourage is a debate, discussion and a dialogue about a war with Iraq.”
“Ritter encouraged students to think on their own and to reflect on the issue to the most extreme.
““Are you ready to lay your life down for Iraq?” he quipped. “Because there are 200,000 Americans that are being asked to do that right now as we speak. The average age of a Marine Corps Lance Corporal is 19, the same average age of the student body here at the University of Tennessee. Do we really want them to die?”
“Ritter said the questions that the nation should be asking, are not being asked or confronted.
““These questions are ones we must confront before we march off to war,” he said. “I have a problem with people who blindly sign on to war without considering the ramifications. That's not a democracy, that's a dictatorship.”“
“When confronted with the question of avoiding war, Ritter's facial expressions drastically changed.
““When you're out at sea and your ship has sunken and you're just bobbing, do you think some ship will come along and rescue you?” he asked. “No, but do you give up? No, you just keep hoping that it will happen. The consequences of war is about DEATH and DESTRUCTION [my emphasis].”
“Ritter said he was sickened by the calls for war from uneducated citizens.
““I get sickened when I hear people say “I want to go to war,”“ he said. “What they're really saying is “I want to be gut-shot and bleed to death” or they’ll do the same to someone else. America has to understand the consequences for this war will be devastating for all parties involved, and if we understood that, we wouldn't be rushing off as we are“““
-Scott Ritter, the former United Nations (UN) chief weapons inspector from 1991 to 1998, was in the US Marine Corps for 12 years was interviewed by The Daily Beacon in an article, entitled, “Ritter favors more time, no war,” and is the source for the above information/quotes.Two other articles from The Daily Beacon about the talk that Scott Ritter gave to an audience on the campus of the Univeristy of Tenessee in Knoxville, Tennesseee (USA) on 25 February 2003 follow:
Audience urged to question government and Former weapons inspector visits UT, speaks for anti-war effort
Did you know about this?:
“As a working Artist I was deeply troubled to hear the following news. The reproduction of Picasso”s famous antiwar mural, Guernica, hanging at the entrance to the U.N. Security Council, was censored in January, 2003.” -Excerpt of an essay essay by Mark Vallen
If you did not know about it, why not? Did the media not inform us of that happening? Was it not logical for members of the United Nations/Security Council to look at pictures or paintings of war to let them know what they were voting for or against? Why was that mural censored? Why did Pablo Picasso paint Guernica in the first place? How is the message of peace being brought to Colombia through Picasso”s works?
Description of event: War - violence, rape, torture, power, money, fear, environmental degradation and destruction, conscientious objection, peace, alternatives, a new way of living. These and other ideas will be talked about, as War will be examined as a system and a cycle and as well ways to avoid war and how to make real: “Another World is Possible!”
In the presentation, I spoke about War as a system, as a cycle. Thus it is not a part or an issue. War cannot be described or understood by looking at its seemingly unconnected and unrelated aspects: such as the physical aspects (torture, ecological damage, rape, bombings, death, bloodshed, “cannon fodder,” physical affects to the people directly involved, and so on). It can only be understood by looking at ALL of the interconnected and interrelated realities that make up War. In reality, those aspects, cycles, or (sub)systems of war are actually interrelated and interconnected systems within the total system of War. As such, the total system of War is a (sub)system of our Reality as we perceive it.
Furthermore, War is not just what happens on the battlefield(s), but it is also the various processes that bring forth wars (educational institutions, media, politicians and others and their rulers in the Global elite, weapons manufacturers, petrochemical industry, and the ignorance of people due to the aforementioned institutions - systems, and so on.) And beyond that, how do the aforementioned institutions or systems contribute to the war effort, by masking their liability, lies, omissions, acceleration, and so on of Wars worldwide.
Basically, the presentation used as its basis to a degree, the ideas of systems theory and
cybernetics and adjusted those ideas to look at War in a new perspective, as a system.
Let”s look at the use of depleted uranium/nuclear weapons. What is depleted uranium (DU)? Why is/was it used? Is DU a type of nuclear weapon? Are nuclear weapons illegal weapons? If so, why are they still be used and refurbished/produced in the United States of America and elsewhere in the world? Let”s also not forget being sold worldwide, including by the USA. Is depleted uranium safe? If you think that it is safe, why do you think that? What are the biological effects of nuclear radiation? If nuclear power, weapons, X-rays, irradiation of food, and other uses of radiation are NOT safe, then why are we still being exposed to radiation? Why are we still being told that radiation is safe in low-levels if it is not? Did the Pentagon/Department of Defense KNOW that DU was dangerous before it was used in the Persian Gulf War of 1990-Present? If so, why did they still use weapons made with DU? Do the people in the DOD not care for the health of the people that we call “Troops“ and the health of others around the world? If not, why not? Shouldn”t they care? Who made the decision(s)? Why? So, who is putting the people in uniform at risk? Why? What does the “Environmental Exposure Report: Depleted Uranium in the Gulf” provided by the US military say about the affects, if any, of DU? What was the “Evaluation of the Health Risks of Embedded Depleted Uranium Shrapnel on Pregnancy and Offspring Development“ by the US military? Was the Department of Defense (DOD) formerly known as the Department of War, if so why the name change?
“Aerosol DU (Depleted Uranium) exposures to soldiers on the battlefield could be significant with potential radiological and toxicological effects. [...] Under combat conditions, the most exposed individuals are probably ground troops that re-enter a battlefield following the exchange of armour-piercing munitions. [...] We are simply highlighting the potential for levels of DU exposure to military personnel during combat that would be unacceptable during peacetime operations. [...DU is..]... a low level alpha radiation emitter which is linked to cancer when exposures are internal, [and] chemical toxicity causing kidney damage. [...] Short term effects of high doses can result in death, while long term effects of low doses have been linked to cancer. [...] Our conclusion regarding the health and environmental acceptability of DU penetrators assume both controlled use and the presence of excellent health physics management practices. Combat conditions will lead to the uncontrolled release of DU. [...] The conditions of the battlefield, and the long term health risks to natives and combat veterans may become issues in the acceptability of the continued use of DU kinetic penetrators for military applications.”
-Excerpted from the July 1990 Science and Applications International Corporation report: “Kinetic Energy Penetrator Environment and Health Considerations,” as included in Appenix D - U.S. Army Armaments, Munitions and Chemical Command report: “Kinetic Energy Penetrator Long Term Strategy Study, July 1990”. “These documents state clearly and equivocally that the U.S. army was well aware of the radioactive and toxic dangers of Depleted Uranium ammunition long before the first shots of the war were fired.”
Where is the uranium that is used for nuclear weapons mined? What ecological problems result from the mining - on that environment and the people there and as well to the whole Earth? How long does the uranium stay radioactive in the places where it is mined? Where are the radioactive wastes (rad wastes)/byproducts stored - from nuclear power plants and/or DU/nuclear weapons? What problems are associated with that?
What affects does the mining and/or storage of waste have on the people involved if the mining is done on or near a place of spiritual sacredness or if the waste storage site is in that area? Would you want an area that was sacred to you to be desecrated by radioactive dust, acid mine drainage, and/or other contaminants?
Are the people mining the uranium and having the waste stored on their lands mostly people that are materially impoverished and/or people of color? Can that be considered to be environmental ethnocentrism/racism and just a continuation of the hundreds of years of colonialism, exploitation, and imperialism (capitalism)?
What is high-level waste? What is low-level waste? What is mixed waste? What are the effects of those various types of waste on those directly involved with the production, removal, and/or transportation of those various waste and with everyone else on this planet?
Who are the people that are involved in making DU weapons or other weapons, that work in nuclear power plants, that live near the areas where those weapons are made or near nuclear power plants? Does working in such environments have an affect on the people that work or live in those areas and thus on their families? If so, what affects?
What do you know about mining and dumping of waste on the lands of sovereign Nations of indigenous peoples? Let”s not forget about oil exploration too. What do you know about the proposal to transport nuclear waste across the USA to Yucca Mountain, in the heart of the Western Shoshone Nation, (Nevada)? If you oppose the Yucca Mountain Nuclear Disposal, then sign this PETITION. Read below and find out more information.
“Only Navajo, where the mines were unvintilated shaft are covered by the injury remedial payments from Congress. Acoma and Laguna pueblo workers worked at the huge open-pit Jackpile mine are not covred. Nither are the many Indian workers in theseveral huge unraium processing mills of thye Colorado Plateau. Government studies show the millers to have been exposed to more radioactive rock dusts during the processing. Recently when one of the old mills was torn down a vast amount of yellowcake (highly poisonous processed urainium dust) was found to have percolated between two roofs on a building over the years of operation -- indicating vast amounts of poisonous dust in the working environment of the millers, confirming Indian witness descriptions of working cxonditions. Death statistics have not been gathered for the millers, but early government studies show that about twice as many of them were getting lung cancers -- the only injury considered -- as miners.
“How many won't ever be known. One of the causes of radiation death is housing. The mines and mills produced radioactive tailings. Uranium was removed, but other radionuclides -- some quite deadly, and water-soluble, som that give off radon gas -- were left. In isolated locations of the mines, people built homes, schools, clinics from these materials -- contaminated sandstone blocks, and fine sande and gravel. Radioactivity levels in such houses are 5 or more times normal. Villages have long had traditional outdoor community ovens, made of mortared rock. These, too, are often radioactive.
“In the small Navajo communities in Monument Valley, and in Shiprock, children play on thse piles of radioactive waste. Sheepherders ride up twice a day to get a good view. Abandoned small old mines have been converted to corrals and hunting camps. The people in these isolated locations are not sophisticated. Young Navajos employed by the tribe on reclamation and data-gathering projects find it difficult to explain what the problems are. They use the concept of steam to try to explain the deadly invisibles, but say that elders, thinking of the steam of sweat lodges, aren't alarmed by the idea that rocks, sand, gravel may be giving off steam.
“What is most worrisome about the radioactive remnants of som 1200 mines is water. Some of the radioactive materials in tailings and waste are water-soluble and are leaching into the deep water tables that serve the desert peoples. Open pit mines fill with water, which seeps down. There has been one spill in the 1970's of very highly contaminated water into the Rio Puerco, that is the main water source for many isolated Navajo herder families (and their sheep). Wild desert animals and birds consider the open pits like any desert waterhole, but th water is highly radioactive.
“The only solution found for huge piles of tailings -- 60 and 75 acres -- and mill waste has been to cover them with supposedly impermeable layers of clay, rock and dirt, to keep rain from leaching the radioactive minerals down into the water table. But tough desert salt bush is already flourishing on newly-covered waste piles, breaking through the supposedly impermeable covering, and letting in the rain. And to suppose this “solution” could hold for thousands of years is folly. Radioactives are already showing up in some deep water tables, and travelling to nearby rivers, too.
“Laguna and Acoma pueblo miners working at the huge open-pit Jackpile mine are not covered by the belated and difficult to receive government compensation. The thory is that open pit mining conditions don't pose the hazard of the closed, unventilated shaft mines. But these miners were subjected to very dusty working conditions, in the countless explosions and continual rock-crushing. Both radiation damag and silicosis have been causing deaths among them, though the studies and documentation of the Navajo closed-shaft kminers has not been done.”
-Excerpt of a review by Paula Giese of the book,If You Poison Us: Uranium And Native Americans, by Peter H. Eichstaedt
“Beating the drum of nuclear energy, the Bush administration is pushing legislation aimed at declaring Yucca Mountain, Nevada - a sacred site to the Western Shoshone Nation - as a national dump for deadly waste that continues to amass on site at the power plants where it is created. It seems to be of no apparent importance to them that Yucca Mountain sits on an earthquake zone and above a fresh water aquifer, and that the mountain itself has consistently failed independent scientific testing in its capacity to safely contain this waste for tens of thousands of years. The nuclear industry's desire for expansion requires that a dumping place be found for the tons of waste already accumulated so that more can be created. The industry is desperate to get this deadly stuff off their hands - and into ours.
“We believe the nuclear industry has no right to create a dangerous substance it can neither safely contain nor control. The industry”s right to profit from the creation of energy stops when it chooses to slough off the responsibility for its garbage onto us.
“And Yucca Mountain is just the first target. Next on the nuclear industry”s hit list is the Reservation of the Skull Valley Band of Goshute Indians in Utah. The nuclear industry argues that a “temporary site” for storage of radioactive waste is necessary because, even if approved, Yucca Mountain will not be “ready” until at least 2010. Thus, an equally-if-not-more-lunatic plan is to store high-level nuclear waste, encased in cement casks, or “coffins,” on the surface of the ground in Skull Valley, 60 miles west of Salt Lake City, Utah.
“The federal government estimates that 77,000 tons of deadly nuclear waste will have to be transported over our railways and highways. Shipping this highly toxic waste through 44 states and the District of Columbia presents the potential for a disaster of astonishing proportions. The irresponsible “out of sight, out of mind” proposals at Yucca Mountain and Skull Valley represent an ecological insult of historic import. Therefore, we call upon the United States Senate to act on behalf of all citizens and the environment by preventing the licensure of private fuel storage at Skull Valley and by voting to stop the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump.”
-Excerpt of an article entitled, “Yucca Mountain waste dump: Bad for people and the environment,” by James Cromwell and Mike Farrell
“(The mine operated in Laguna Pueblo) for 30 years...I think I was the third woman that got hired. They used to blast sometimes four times a day. When there was no wind, that sulfur that they put in the blasting powder would just kind of sit over the village and sometimes we had to cover our food. We...Indians dried our meat and some of our vegetables out in the sun; we never realized how much contamination there was in the air til we realized cancer was the main thing killing our people here in Paguate.
“I miscarried three times; that”s what really broke my heart. After that, I almost bled to death, I had to have surgery. There”s quite a few that have had miscarriages and we have had deformed babies and 2 or 3 months ago there was a cat that had a litter that didn”t have no tails at all...We”ve had mentally retarded children here, and we have so much allergies. I have asthma too and bronchitis. Once when you come to find out what radiation can do...going to these conferences, you find out. But people are scared to ask, but some of these people that are so highly educated want to hide a lot of stuff, not letting us know.
“We were asked to give a document...I stood up at a village meeting and told them, “I”m living proof; I”m standing here, I have cancer, what more do you want?” We all know that our people are dying of cancer. In order to push something, you have to have a 100 % backing from your community because only half a dozen (can”t) do what has to be done. And that”s why when I”m called to go somewhere, I go because I want people to know what's going on on the Laguna reservation.
“Any company that wants to come in, they better tell us what to expect, because other than that, it”s just no more. We were told there is some company that wants to come back to re-open the mine. I said, “No way. Not over my dead body are they going to re-open. We've gone through enough.” And what more do they want? We're losing our Laguna people, just like the Alaskan people...
“Right now, I'm glad the mine is closed, and the reclamation they did I don't appreciate. It makes me so sick just to ride through where once the mine was because I worked there and now I'm dealing with cancer. And I think it was very unfair for the companies hiding all the secrets and not being man or honest enough to say, “This is what you're going to expect. Are you going to accept or not?” ...the new generation... should be taught...I feel my life is cheated on right now.
“The reason nobody opened their mouth was because the bread and butter were placed on the table every weekend. Money is the maker of all evil. It's very sad what we're going through. People are crying out for help. One day, with God”s will, that will straighten out““
-Excerpt of an article entitled, “Uranium Mining and the Laguna People,” an interview of Dorothy Purley by Susan Lee in July 1995 in Paguate Village on the Laguna Pueblo Reservation.
“It will, however, again be the native people who will immediately and ultimately suffer from the onslaught of the uranium companies. Alcohol problems sharply increase each time the traditional economy and communities are undercut by corporate expansion. There are many more alcohol-related arrests (causing a disturbance, breaking the Liquor Act and impaired driving) in frontier native communities like La Loche, Buffalo Narrows and Ile A la Crosse, than in more remote communities like Stoney Rapids and Black Lake. While police discrimination is likely involved, these greater alcohol-related arrests also reflect rapid disintegration of frontier native communities. The corporate development that brings uranium mines will therefore bring more jails to the north.
“These comparisons of alcohol-related arrests were presented to Bayda but were omitted from his final report. Its few, token pages on the social impact of uranium mining instead stressed the higher rate of alcohol-related arrests in northern native than white communities. It viewed this as some sort of proof that employment from uranium mines would help solve social problems.
“No one disagrees that new employment opportunities are needed in the north. In the long run, however, uranium mining will likely destroy more job opportunities than it creates. The few jobs created are short-term and extremely hazardous. In the first phase of construction of AMOK”s mine, there were only 57 (out of a total of 92) jobs available to northerners, and 42 of these were as laborers. When completed, the AMOK mine will provide only 100 maximum jobs for northerners, and at costs of $250,000 or more per job. If this investment were put into renewable resources in the north, under northern control, many more permanent jobs would be created.
“The proposed Key Lake uranium mine would provide only 200 jobs for northerners by 1996. And that is only if demand for uranium doesn”t fall. Opposition to uranium mining by the Council of Indian Chiefs, farm and labor groups has led to a seven-year moratorium in British Columbia. Growing, worldwide opposition, accelerating safety problems and rising costs in the nuclear industry will likely cause a drop in the demand for uranium and a shift to alternative energy sources. Meanwhile, the people who work in uranium mines will face a serious risk of developing lung cancer and premature aging when their exposure to radiation is within the permissible limits”
“It is the large multinationals, not the people of the north, hat will benefit from uranium mining. They continue to lock scarce capital into non-renewable, capital-intensive resource extraction which is then unavailable for investment in conservation and renewable energy. This is already leading to a serious crisis of capital in Canada. The percentage of investment going into energy production has risen from 25 to 50 percent of all investment just since the OPEC and oil cartel price increases in 1973. Few jobs, at great costs, have resulted from this, while wealth continues to go out of the north and Canada.
“This trend cannot continue. It is time that corporate development be replaced by northern development. The government funds presently being squandered to help the multinationals mine and pollute the north need to be redirected to strengthen the traditional, renewable economy, and protect the northern environment. This would create far more jobs, at far less cost, with the wealth staying in the north.
“The propaganda to sell uranium mining to northerners is in the tradition of the swindling and blackmail of the earlier colonialism of the Hudson Bay Company. It is time that northern people were given the time and options to make a real choice about the kind of development they want. A moratorium on uranium mining and the settlement of aboriginal rights is a step in the right direction.”
-Excerpt of a “pamphlet produced by the research committee of the Regina Group for a Non-Nuclear Society,” entitled, “Uranium Mining: Northern Development or the New Colonialism.” The “pamphlet was written and published in 1981 by Jim Harding (with thanks to Robin Hill) and designed by Gary Robins, with artwork by K. Kokotailo.”
“Yucca Mountain, in the heart of the Western Shoshone Nation, is a place of deep spiritual significance to Shoshone and Pauite peoples. Despite this, the federal government plans to send there 98 percent of the radioactivity generated during the entire Nuclear Age. The Department of Energy (DOE) has already spent 3 billion dollars towards the project and wants to spend 35 billion more to complete it before the end of the decade.
“The government has no right to use Yucca Mountain this way. Newe Sogobia-the land guaranteed the Western Shoshone Nation by treaty-includes Yucca Mountain. Even the mere study of the site is a violation of the treaty. The Shoshone people have made their wishes clear: They want the DOE off their land and their mountain restored to them.
“Because of U.S. nuclear testing over Nevada, the Western Shoshone Nation is already the most bombed nation on earth. They suffer from widespread cancer, leukemia, and other disease as a result of fallout from more than 900 atomic explosions on their territory.
“More than 100 grassroots environmental groups, Native and non- Native, organized to gain broad participation in the Yucca Mountain Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) process. But the vast majority of people who might be affected by this decision still are not aware of the danger. The Yucca Mountain EIS largely sidesteps the issue of transport.
“90,000 shipments of high level waste designated for Yucca Mountain will be passing by the front yards of more than 50 million Americans along highways and train routes. Obviously, the transport of this waste poses a huge public health risk. Even DOE studies anticipate a rate of one accident per 343 shipments or 268 nuclear accidents over the next thirty years, at a minimum.
“In addition to illegal treaty violations and the possibility of a “mobile Chernobyl” while the waste is on the road, Yucca Mountain is simply not a safe repository for nuclear waste. According to the DOE study, at least one storage canister of the more than 10,000 canisters envisioned at Yucca will fail within the next thousand years. After 10,000 years, all the canisters may degrade, according to a report on the DOE proposal in The New York Times.
“More than 621 earthquakes have been recorded in the area (at magnitudes of 2.5 on the Richter scale or higher) in the last twenty years. An earthquake at Yucca Mountain could cause groundwater to surge up into the storage area forcing dangerous amounts of plutonium into the atmosphere and contaminating the water supply. (Given this, it is not surprising that the nuclear industry has fought against any groundwater radiation standards for the facility-these standards could derail the entire project.)
“As the federal EIS process grinds on, the industry is doing all they can to expedite and insure Yucca's opening. Each year for the past five years, legislation has quietly appeared in Congress in a backroom effort by the industry to change current law and seal a Yucca deal.
“This year's proposed changes to the Nuclear Waste Policy Act pretty much “threw radiation standards out,” according to Michael Marriotte of the Nuclear Information Resource Service (NIRS) in Washington, D.C., going so far as to strip the EPA of authority for setting standards. All this, says NIRS, is to “make the Yucca shoe fit” and insure the production of more nuclear waste”
“Join the call for “No Nuclear Waste on Native Lands”“
“Nuclear Politics and Environmental Injustice
“Every single proposal to store high level nuclear waste in North America targets Native territories. Not only do these proposals represent immense environmental injustices toward Native peoples, but the dumps, if authorized, will enable a dying nuclear industry to get some last breaths. Nuclear waste is the Achilles heel of the industry. Reactors are filling up with spent radioactive fuel and there is no safe place to put this deadly waste. Utilities will have to close down their plants if they cannot get a waste site authorized. The industry sees this as a political problem, not an environmental one. Targeting isolated and economically disenfranchised Indians is their one solution. Help us close this loophole. Join the movement to stop nuclear waste on Native lands and create the impetus for our society to move towards wind, solar and other renewable resources..”
-Excerpt of an article entitled, “Yucca Mountain: No Place for Nuclear Waste“ by Corbin Harney, Western Shoshone spiritual leader
What do we do with ALL of the waste from this country and others? How do we make sure that this waste does not cause any more damage and harm to anyone again? Who are the people responsible for transporting the rad waste, toxic ash, or toxic metals? Who are the people responsible for transporting the uranium to the places where it is refined so that it can be used? Thus, who are the people transporting this waste in trucks, boats, or other automobiles? Does the load that they are carrying have any affects on them, their families, or the areas in which they pass through? If so, what affects?
Where are the DU weapons proving/testing grounds? How long does the DU stay radioactive both on the physical battlefields and on the proving/testing grounds? What problems are associated with that? Does the Department of Energy/Department of Defense (Pentagon) alliance have to clean up those proving/testing grounds, either in this country or abroad? If not, why not? If so, do they actually clean up the areas completely? If not, why not?
Now, let”s look at the actual use of the DU weapons in the physical aspects of War. When DU is used in a populated area, how many people die immediately? How many people die later on due to groundwater contamination, air pollution, and/or contamination of the physical Earth?
Just by looking at the use of depleted uranium/nuclear weapons, we can see that War as a system affects each and every one of us on this planet, not just those that we see as directly affected - those near the explosion of the DU on the battlefield. You may ask, how is that? We live on one planet, Mother Earth. Particles disperse around the world via the wind, water, equipment, physical bodies, and so on. As well, you may live close to or on the land where various nuclear weapons including, but not limited to DU, or other weapons have been tested and there is still the possibility that the land is still contaminated after all of these years.
When War is looked at as a system, it is a lot easier to see that it is a LOSE-LOSE situation for ALL of us on this planet, the only winners are those that profit from Wars financially and thus materially - financial industry(ies) [accountants, insurance companies, bankers (international and national)], weapons contractors/producers/munitions, petrochemical/pharmaceutical/energy industry(ies) [oil, gas, mineral mining, plastics, etc.], the metals industry, technological industry, food industry, clothing industry, politicians, the people in the so-called “First World”/”industrialized”/”civilized”/”developed” also known as the West {WE benefit from cheap energy products/byproducts, clothing, etc.} and so on. Though I would also like to point out too that even those that benefit financially/materially, are also losers in the same sense that ALL of us LOSE in War. We must work for peace by first finding peace within ourselves, with our families and friends, with the society we live in, with our Mother Earth, and ultimately with the Universe(s). This means that we must create a new world - Another World is Possible! (“Un Otro Mundo Es Posible!) no longer built on profits over Life, hatred, fear, ignorance, racism/ethnocentrism, militarism, ecological destruction, and so on. But, this world should be built on Life over profits, sustainable economies and relationships, love, courage/bravery, knowledge and understanding, peace, ecological wisdom/literacy, and so on. It is up to ALL of us to make that choice and work towards a better world for all of us.
“Even a new veterans history: our government has only rarely kept faith with its veterans. From the Revolutionary War vet cheated out of his bonds, to the Civil War veterans defrauded by lawyers in cahoots with corrupt Veterans Administration officials, to the World War I Bonus March vets dispersed by bayonet from their nation”s capital, the Korean War POWs accused of disloyalty, and the atomic vets of the Cold War dying of cancer by friendly fire”
“We tried to force recognition of dioxin poisoning from Agent Orange exposure - the government began to give us that finally, just as it began sending half a million men and women into the Persian Gulf, where the Pentagon did them with depleted uranium, nerve toxins and experimental vaccines the same way it had done us with defoliants.”
-From an “Peace with Honor“ by Ben Chitty. “This talk was delivered on April 30, 2000, at the celebration of the 25th anniversary of peace in Vietnam at the Simon Wise Free Synagogue in New York City.”
“We found also that all too often American men were dying in those rice paddies for want of support from their allies. We saw first hand how monies from American taxes were used for a corrupt dictatorial regime. We saw that many people in this country had a one-sided idea of who was kept free by the flag, and blacks provided the highest percentage of casualties. We saw Vietnam ravaged equally by American bombs and search and destroy missions, as well as by Viet Cong terrorism - and yet we listened while this country tried to blame all of the havoc on the Viet Cong”“An American Indian friend of mine who lives in the Indian Nation of Alcatraz put it to me very succinctly. He told me how as a boy on an Indian reservation he had watched television and he used to cheer the cowboys when they came in and shot the Indians, and then suddenly one day he stopped in Vietnam and he said, “my God, I am doing to these people the very same thing that was done to my people,” and he stopped. And that is what we are trying to say, that we think this things has to end.”
-From John Kerry - Navy lieutenant, leader of Vietnam Veterans Against the War in testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee - 23 April 1971
Where are the weapons proving/testing grounds that the Pentagon/DOD uses around the world? Are there local, national, or international laws that deal with the clean-up of such sites? Does the Department of Energy/Department of Defense (Pentagon) alliance have to clean up those proving/testing grounds, either in the USA or abroad? If not, why not? If so, do they actually clean up the areas completely? If not, why not?
“What's At Stake with the US environmental legislation and the DOE/Pentagon/DOD alliance:
“Background
“Congress is being asked to consider a proposal from the Pentagon that would provide the Department of Defense with sweeping exemptions from the laws that protect our water, air and wildlife. Under this proposal, the Defense Department will be exempted from laws that have long been supported by the American people, including laws that preserve the air and water around our military facilities, protect the health of people who live on or near military bases and sustain America”s wildlife. The specific laws include the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, Superfund (CERCLA), the Clean Air Act, the Endangered Species Act and the Marine Mammal Protection Act.
“The statutes now under fire already provide the flexibility needed to balance environmental protection and military readiness by allowing exemptions on a case-by-case basis in the interest of national security. There is no evidence that the military has ever been refused an exemption from these laws when it has been sought, and there is abundant evidence that cooperative local efforts have produced effective solutions. The military has, time and time again, found reasonable solutions to pursue necessary training in compliance with environmental laws.
“Independent and administration sources agree that protecting the environment has not compromised readiness. The General Accounting Office (GAO) said the DoD has failed to produce quantitative evidence that environmental laws or other “encroachments” have significantly affected military readiness. And Christine Whitman, head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, recently testified before the Senate that she has “been working very closely with the Department of Defense and [doesn”t] believe that there is a training mission anywhere in the county that is being held up or not taking place because of environmental protection regulation.
“Last year (2002), with the exception of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, Congress rejected these exemptions. But this year (2003), Congress is quickly moving forward with a Defense Authorization bill that contains these exemptions.
“Please take a moment to urge your members of Congress to oppose any attempts to exempt the Department of Defense from the nation's most important environmental laws. Follow the link below to go to a web page where you can e-mail your members of Congress.”
-From an action alert for US PIRG
“Last year (2002), Congress considered and rejected the Pentagon”s proposed exemptions from the Clean Air Act, Superfund, and other key environmental and public health laws. Independent and administration sources agree that protecting the environment has not compromised military readiness. The Pentagon has not taken no for an answer and continues to claim they need special treatment above and beyond the law.
“Specific laws affected by the Pentagon's current proposal (The Readiness and Range Preservation Initiative) include:
- The Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) - the Pentagon seeks to exempt explosives and munitions at “operational” military ranges, and the toxic contamination they cause, from regulation
- Superfund (or CERCLA) - the Pentagon seeks to delay clean-up of toxic substances that have leaked from military explosives and munitions, increasing the spread of such toxics off-site and the costs of the eventual clean-up
- The Clean Air Act - the Pentagon seeks to exempt military operations from complying with air quality standards
- The Endangered Species Act - the Pentagon seeks elimination of habitat protection for endangered species on lands they own or control - affecting 300 species on the brink of extinction
- The Marine Mammal Protection Act - the Pentagon wants exemptions from protecting marine mammals, such as whales and sea lions
There is no evidence that the military has ever been refused an exemption from these laws when it has been sought, and abundant evidence that cooperative local efforts have produced effective solutions. The military has, time and time again, found reasonable solutions to pursue necessary training in compliance with environmental laws.”
-From an action alert
“It is painful to see with what unconcern they talk of war. They do not know its horror. I have seen enough of it to know it as the sum of all evils. People who are anxious to bring on war don't know what they are bargaining for, they don”t see all the horrors that must accompany such an event.”
-General Stonewall Jackson, who was head of the Virginia Military Institute (VMI) before the Civil War/War Between the States began
““Basic training itself was often extremely brutal, even for conscripted recruitsThe most notorious training regimes were those conducted by the U.S. Marine Corps, but even in the other branches of the armed forces, violence was a common component of military training. In all these training programmes, the fundamental process was the same: individuals had to be broken down to be rebuilt into efficient fighting men. The basic tenets included depersonalization, uniforms, lack of privacy, forced social relationships, tight schedules, lack of sleep, disorientation followed by rites of reorganization according to military codes, arbitrary rules, and strict punishment. These methods of brutalization were similar to those carried out in regimes where men were taught to torture prisoners: the difference resided in the degree of violence involved, not its nature. Lieutenant William Calley, a participant in the My Lai massacre in Vietnam,”, described training at Fort Benning (Georgia) at the officer/Cadet School:
“One thing we were taught at OCS for twenty years we had thought was bad. To kill, and sergeant in gym shorts and a T-shirt taught it. We sat around, and he kicked another man in the kidney: a few inches lower, really, or this could be a lethal kick. It was just gruesome: a POP, and I thought, Oh god. No one can live through that. He really kicked or he flipped a man with karate and WHAM: he would show us the follow-up. And stomp on him right between the eyes: pretend to, and push his nose right into his brain. Or stomp on his solar plexus: his ribcage, to push splinters into his lungs. And then stomp on his heart to smash it.
“Such techniques were not limited to the American forces during the Vietnam War. In 1919, Private Stephen Graham described training in the British Army as a nightmare involving “constant humiliation and the use of indecent phrases” aimed at reducing each man “to a condition when he was amenable to any command”. He continued:
“To be struck, to be threatened, to be called indecent names, to be drilled by yourself in front of a squad in order to make a fool of you, to do a tiring exercise and continue doing it whilst the rest of the squad does something else; to have your ear spat into, to be marched across parade-ground under escort, to be falsely accused before an officer and silenced when you try to speak in defence - all these things take down your pride, make you feel small, and in some ways fit you to accept the role of cannon-fodder on the battle-ground.
“He described having to hit his rifle with his hands during drill until blood flowed as a necessary hardening procedure““
-Excerpted from An Intimate History of Killing: Face-to-Face Killing Twentieth Century Warfare by Joanna Bourke
“War is just a racket.
“A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of people. Only a small inside group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few at the expense of the masses”
“I helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China I helped to see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested.”
-From an excerpt of a speech delivered in 1933, by Major General Smedley Butler, US Marine Corps
“People don”t generally hear from retired Special Forces soldiers. But people need to hear the facts from someone who can”t be called an effete liberal who never “served” his country.
“A liberal will tell you the system isn”t working properly. I will tell you that the system is working exactly the way it”s supposed to.
“As an insider on active duty in the armed forces, I saw the deep dissonance between the official explanations for our policies and our actual practices: the murder of schoolteachers and nuns by our surrogates; decimations; systematic rape; the cultivation of terror. [my emphasis]
“I have concluded that the billions in profit and interest to be made in Colombia and neighboring nations has much more to do with the itch for stability than any concern about democracy or cocaine.
“After reflection on my two decades plus of service, I am convinced that I only served the richest one percent of my country.
“In every country where I worked, poor people”s poverty built and maintained the wealth of the rich. Sometimes directly, as labor; sometimes indirectly, when people made fortunes in the armed security business, which is needed wherever there is so much misery.”
-Excerpt of “Inside U.S. Counterinsurgency: A Soldier Speaks“ by Stan Goff
“Deadly Deceits [Referring to Deadly Deceits: My 25 years in the CIA by Ralph W. McGehee] became a college textbook in some classes. After a moving introduction, it starts slowly, climaxing with a series of haunting revelations. During McGehee's twenty-five year CIA career, he heartily believed in its stated mission of “fighting communism.” McGehee wrote that CIA fieldworker candidates are psychologically screened before being hired, and their most treasured quality is the willingness to blindly follow orders, thinking little about whom their work may harm.“One pivotal evening in his quarters near Saigon in December of 1968, McGehee finally figured it out:
““I sat there in agony thinking about all that had led me to this private hell. My idealism, my patriotism, my ambition, my plans to be a good intelligence officer to help my country fight the communist scourge - what in the hell had happened? Why did we have to bomb the people we were trying to save? Why were we napalming young children? Why did the CIA, my employer for 16 years, report lies instead of the truth? I hated my part in the charade of murder and horror. My efforts were contributing to the deaths, to the burning alive of children - especially the children. The photographs of young Vietnamese children burned by napalm destroyed me.”“
-Excerpt of “Deadly Deceits: My 25 years in the CIA“
“... Secret CIA operations constitute the usually unseen efforts to shore up unjust, unpopular, minority governments, always with the hope that overt military intervention (as in Vietnam and the Dominican Republic) will not be necessary. The more successful CIA operations are, the more remote overt intervention becomes - and the more remote become reforms. Latin America in the 1960s is all the proof one needs.If you feel that war is necessary, will you fight in this and other wars - will you be willing to sacrifice your Life and possibly die or be maimed severely?
“A book on the CIA could also illustrate how the interests of the privileged minorities in poor countries lead back to, and are identified with, the interests of the rich and powerful who control the US. Counter-insurgency doctrine tries to blur these international class lines by appeals to nationalism and patriotism and by falsely relating movements against the capitalist minorities to Soviet expansionism. But what counter-insurgency really comes down to is the protection of the capitalists back in America, their property and their privileges. US national security, as preached by US leaders, is the security of the capitalist class in the US, not the security of the rest of the people - certainly not the security of the poor except by way of reinforcing poverty. It is from the class interests in the US that our counter-insurgency programmes flow, together with that most fundamental of American foreign policy principles: that any government, no matter how bad, is better than a communist one - than a government of workers, peasants and ordinary people. Our government's support for corruption and injustice in Latin America flows directly from the determination of the rich and powerful in the US, the capitalists, to retain and expand these riches and power...
“The killings at Kent State and Jackson State show clearly enough that sooner or later our counter-insurgency methods would be applied at home.”
-From “Excerpts from the book: CIA Diary: Inside the Company by Philip Agee
“On her twenty-fourth birthday, Barbara Sonneborn received a knock on her door from a United States Army soldier, and heard the words “We regret to inform you....” Her husband Jeff had been killed by a mortar in Vietnam. She received a box containing Jeff's dog tags still encrusted with his blood. Twenty years later, Sonneborn embarks on a journey through the country where he fought and died. Woven into her personal odyssey are interviews with American and Vietnamese widows from both sides of the conflict who speak openly about the men they loved and how war changed their lives forever.”Quotes from the film - Regret to Inform
“He insisted on going, you know, he had this crazy notion that he always wanted his son to be proud of him. And I would tell him: he is proud of you. One day he came home, and said, “I enlisted”.”
“That night, there's a telegram and the telegram read: “This is to inform you that your husband, Private, First Class, David Reves Castillo had been wounded.” And it tells me that they had amputated the left leg above the knee, removed the right eye, he's still in a coma, and he has shrap-metal in the brain. And I contacted my physician, and he told me, “Grace pray... pray he dies.”“
“The city police force, under American advisors, came to search my house and arrested my husband, my sister, and my daughter. My daughter was just over three years old. They said, “If you do not tell your husband to testify and collaborate with the Americans and the Saigon authorities, don't you know that they will bury your mother and your daughter alive?”“
“Of course, in the United States...sisters, mothers and wives also feel pain when children and husbands are lost in war. But we lived in the country where the war was going on. The death and destruction were so horrible, so painful. We hope that there will never be war again, not anywhere, so that nobody, especially women and children, will have to endure that pain, that misery, ever again. It is very, very painful.”
“The staff grew from 30 scientists to 5,000, all trying to finish work on the bomb before the Germans did. On the day of the test, Oppenheimer fully realized the enormity of what he had just accomplished. As he stood watching the mushroom cloud, he recalled later, a phrase from the Baghavad Gita, the Hindu scripture, floated through his mind, “I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.” This responsibility weighed heavily on his shoulders, and when he met with President Harry Truman in 1946, he exclaimed, “Mr. President, I have BLOOD on my hands.” [my emphasis]Are you a scientist and/or an engineer in a career or a student studying in the sciences and/or engineering? If so, have you heard about the “Scientists” and Engineers” Pledge To Renounce Weapons of Mass Destruction“? Have you taken/signed the pledge? In order for weapons of mass/limited destruction (any weapons period) to be created, in these days -- scientists and engineers are needed as well as other people, but we are the main technical intellectual creators and thus we should think about ALL of the consequences of our research, designs, and/or inventions/innovations on the WHOLE of Life on Earth. We should also work on remediation/clean-up and working to create a less technological dependent society and figure out how to have sustainable activities as well. We have to start looking at the Earth and ALL Life on this planet as systems and thus treat them not as parts (mechanistic thinking) but as systems interconnected with other systems [systems/cybernetic thinking]. This requires for us a change in PERCEPTION.
-This quote is about J. Robert Oppenheimer - known as the “father of the Atomic Bomb”
“We must become the owners, or at any rate the controllers at the source, of at least a proportion of the oil which we require.”
-British Royal Commission, agreeing with Winston Churchill's policy towards Iraq, 1913
“What we want to have in existence, what we ought to have been creating in this time is some administration with Arab institutions which we can safely leave while pulling the strings ourselves; something that won't cost very much, which the Labour government can swallow consistent with its” principles, but under which our economic and political interests will be secure. [.....] If the French remain in Syria we shall have to avoid giving them the excuse of setting up a protectorate. If they go, or if we appear to be reactionary in Mesopotamia, there is always the risk that [King] Faisal will encourage the Americans to take over both, and it should be borne in mind that the Standard Oil company is very anxious to take over Iraq.”
- Sir Arthur Hirtzel, Head of the British government”s “India Office Political Department.” [1919]
“Our strategic and security interests throughout the world will be best safeguarded by the establishment in suitable spots of “Police Stations”, fully equipped to deal with emergencies within a large radius. Kuwait is one such spot from which Iraq, South Persia, Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf could be controlled. It will be worthwhile to go to considerable trouble and expense to establish and man a “Police Station” there.”
-British Foreign Office, policy memo, 1947
“I believe that if we had and would keep our dirty, bloody, dollar soaked fingers out of the business of these [Third World] nations so full of depressed, exploited people, they will arrive at a solution of their own. And if unfortunately their revolution must be of the violent type because the “haves” refuse to share with the “have-nots” by any peaceful method, at least what they get will be their own, and not the American style, which they don”t want and above all don”t want crammed down their throats by Americans.”
-General David Sharp - former United States Marine Commandant, 1966
“Access to Persian Gulf oil and the security of key friendly states in the area are vital to U.S. national security.”
-Excerpt of January 15, 1991 National Security Directive 54: Responding to Iraqi Aggression in the Gulf
“It is becoming increasingly clear, that George Bush, operating largely behind the scenes throughout the 1980s, initiated and supported much of the financing, intelligence, and military help that built Saddam”s Iraq into the aggressive power that the United States ultimately had to destroy.”
-Ted Koppel, NightLine, ABC News 06/09/1992
“The hidden hand of the market will never work without a hidden fist -- McDonald's cannot flourish without McDonnell-Douglas, the designer of the F-15. And the hidden fist that keeps the world safe for Silicon Valley's technologies is called the US Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps.”
-From an article entitled, “A Manifesto for the Fast World,” by Thomas Friedman in the New York Times Magainze, 28 March 1999
“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.”
-Air Force Brigadier General William Looney - head of the US Central Command's Airborne Expeditionary Force, which directs operations keeping Iraqi planes from flying south of the 32nd parallel. (Excerpt of an article by Kathy Kelly in the Spring 2000 Arab-American University Graduates, AAUG, Monitor).
Other source: (Interview The Washington Post, August 30, 1999)
[Referring, in reality, to the brutal mass-murder of hundreds of civilian Iraqi men, women and children during 10,000 sorties by US/UK war criminals in the first eight months of 1999]
“The greatest crime since World War II has been U.S. foreign policy.”
-Ramsey Clark [Former U.S. Attorney General under President Lyndon Johnson]
“Death squads have been created and used by the CIA around the world - particularly the Third World - since the late 1940s, a fact ignored by the elite-owned media.”
-Ralph McGehee [Former CIA analyst & Author] CIABASE; The Crisis of Democracy; Deadly Deceits: My 25 years in the CIA
““the greatest purveyor of violence on earth in the world today - my own country.”
-Exceprt of the speech entitled, “Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence,” delivered by Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., on 4 April 1967, at a meeting of Clergy and Laity Concerned at Riverside Church in New York City
“If we continue, there will be no doubt in my mind and in the mind of the world that we have no honorable intentions in Vietnam. It will become clear that our minimal expectation is to occupy it as an American colony”
“In 1957 a sensitive American official overseas said that it seemed to him that our nation was on the wrong side of a world revolution. During the past ten years we have seen emerge a pattern of suppression which now has justified the presence of U.S. military “advisors” in Venezuela. This need to maintain social stability for our investments accounts for the counter-revolutionary action of American forces in Guatemala. It tells why American helicopters are being used against guerrillas in Colombia and why American napalm and green beret forces have already been active against rebels in Peru. It is with such activity in mind that the words of the late John F. Kennedy come back to haunt us. Five years ago he said, “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.”“
-Exceprt of the speech entitled, “Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence,” delivered by Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., on 4 April 1967, at a meeting of Clergy and Laity Concerned at Riverside Church in New York City
“I would like to talk on behalf of all those veterans and say that several months ago in Detroit we had an investigation at which over 150 honorably discharged, and many very highly decorated, veterans testified to war crimes committed in Southeast Asia. These were not isolated incidents but crimes committed on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command. ...
“They told stories that at times they had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in a fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks and generally ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam, in addition to the normal ravage of war and the normal and very particular ravaging which is done by the applied bombing power of this country.”
-John Kerry - Navy lieutenant, leader of Vietnam Veterans Against the War in testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee - 23 April 1971
“They tell how the Chilean military -- trained and financed by the United States - tortured people with electric shock, particularly on the genitals; forced victims to witness the torture of friends and relatives (including children); raped women in the presence of other family members; burned sex organs with acid or scalding water; placed rats in women's vaginas and into the mouths of other prisoners; mutilated, punctured, and cut off various parts of the body, including genitalia, eyes, and tongue; injected air into women's breasts and into veins (causing slow, painful death); shoved bayonets and clubs into the vagina or anus, causing rupture and death.”
-Victims and survivors of the fascist coup in Chile in 1973
“Indonesia plays a key role in maintaining regional stability. It is a leader in ASEAN and is a fundamental force for peace and prosperity... We did not have a discussion about East Timor.”
-Secretary of Defense William Cohen “at a press conference, January 1998, after meeting with Indonesian President Suharto who is responsible for the deaths of 500,00 - 1,000,000 people following his US-sanctioned coup against Indonesian President Sukarno in 1965, and the deaths of 200,000 during Indonesia's US-sanctioned invasion and occupation of East Timor in 1975”
“One hundred nations in the UN have not agreed with us on just about everything that's come before them, where we're involved, and it didn't upset my breakfast at all.”
-Ronald Reagan, former U.S. President, basking in the triumph that was the U.S. invasion of Grenada, 1983
“Q. “Mr. President, have you approved of covert activity to destablise the present government of Nicaragua?”
A. “Well, no, we're supporting them, the - oh, wait a minute, wait a minute, I'm sorry, I was thinking of El Salvador, because of the previous, when you said Nicaragua. Here again, this is something upon which the national security interests, I just - I will not comment”.”
-Ronald Reagan, former U.S. President, Washington press conference, 13 February 1983, as quoted by John Pilger in “Heroes”
“It should be unnecessary to point out that massive terrorism is a standard device of powerful states.... Some cases are not even controversial. Take the US war against Nicaragua, leaving tens of thousands dead and the country in ruins. Nicaragua appealed to the world court, which condemned the US for international terrorism (“the unlawful use of force”), ordering it to desist and pay substantial reparations. The US responded to the court ruling by sharply escalating the war, and vetoing a security council resolution calling on all states to observe international law. The escalation included official orders to attack “soft targets” -- undefended civilian targets, like agricultural collectives and health clinics -- and to avoid the Nicaraguan army. The terrorists were able to carry out these instructions, thanks to the complete control of Nicaraguan air space by the US and the advanced communications equipment provided to them by their supervisors.”Case Concerning The Military And Paramilitary Activities In And Against Nicaragua (Nicaragua V. United States Of America) (Merits): Judgment of 27 June 1986
-Noam Chomsky
“I will never apologize for the United States of America - I don”t care what the facts are.”
-former President George Herbert Walker Bush in1988 [“Bush was demonstrating his patriotism by excusing an act of cold-blooded mass-murder by the U.S. Navy. On 3 July 1988 the U.S. Navy warship Vincennes shot down an Iranian commercial airliner. All 290 civilian people in the aircraft were killed. The plane was on a routine flight in a commercial corridor in Iranian airspace. The targeting of it by the U.S. Navy was blatantly illegal. That it was grossly immoral is also obvious. Except to a patriot.”]
“The U.S.A. has supplied arms, security equipment and training to governments and armed groups that have committed torture, political killings and other human rights abuses in countries around the world.”
-Amnesty International [“United States of America - Rights for All” in October 1998]
“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.”
-Air Force Brigadier General William Looney - head of the US Central Command's Airborne Expeditionary Force, which directs operations keeping Iraqi planes from flying south of the 32nd parallel. (Excerpt of an article by Kathy Kelly in the Spring 2000 Arab-American University Graduates, AAUG, Monitor).
Other source: (Interview The Washington Post, August 30, 1999)
[Referring, in reality, to the brutal mass-murder of hundreds of civilian Iraqi men, women and children during 10,000 sorties by US/UK war criminals in the first eight months of 1999]
“Strikes at population targets (per se) are likely not only to create a counterproductive wave of revulsion abroad and at home, but greatly to increase the risk of enlarging the war with China and the Soviet Union. Destruction of locks and dams, however - if handled right - might offer promise. It should be studied. Such destruction does not kill or drown people. By shallow-flooding the rice, it leads after time to widespread starvation (more than a million) unless food is provided - which we could offer to do “at the conference table”.”
-John McNaughton, U.S. State Department Vietnam policy, as quoted in an article entitled, “The Mentality of the Backroom Boys,” by Noam Chomsky, 1973.
“U.S. war planners considered Iraqi electrical plants to be high priority targets.... Destruction of electricity, nonetheless, proved devastating for the civilian population... the civilian life-support systems of air conditioning, refrigeration, and water purification were destroyed. Collateral damage had a new definition. ... Almost a third of all cruise missiles fired were aimed at electrical power.”
-Excerpted from an article/page entitled, “Bomb Now, Die Later,” in the The Washington Post.
“This week, we also learned from legitimate UN sources in Iraq that the recent, wag the camel, “precision” bombing of defenseless Iraq destroyed at least thirteen schools, an important food storehouse, and the municipal water system of Baghdad”s Karrada suburb, leaving 300,000 people without clean drinking water.
“During the 1991 Gulf War, US bombing wrecked Baghdad's water and sewage systems, creating a grave health crisis for millions of Iraqi civilians.”
-Excerpted from a column entitled, “It's Time to Put Away the Big Stick” [11 January 1999] by Eric Margolis.
“It's really not a number I'm terribly interested in.”Top
-General Colin Powell [“When asked about the number of Iraqi people who were slaughtered by the USA in the 1991 “Desert Storm” terror campaign (200,000 people!)”]
“Leslie Stahl: “We have heard that a half million children have died (as a result of sanctions against Iraq). I mean, that is more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?”
“Madeleine Albright: “I think this is a very hard choice, but the price, we think the price is worth it.”
-From a CBS Sixty Minutes interview between Leslie Stahl and U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, on 12 May 1996.
“Wake Up Everybody” by Harold Melvin
“Wake up everybody no more sleepin in bed
No more backward thinkin time for thinkin ahead
The world has changed so very much
From what it used to be so
there is so much hatred war an' poverty
Wake up all the teachers time to teach a new way
Maybe then they”ll listen to whatcha have to say
Cause they”re the ones who's coming up and the world is in their hands
when you teach the children teach em the very best you can.
Chorus
The world won't get no better if we just let it be
The world won't get no better we gotta change it yeah, just you and me.
Wake up all the doctors make the ol” people well
They're the ones who suffer an” who catch all the hell
But they don't have so very long before the Judgement Day
So won”tcha make them happy before they pass away.
Wake up all the builders time to build a new land
I know we can do it if we all lend a hand
The only thing we have to do is put it in our mind
Surely things will work out they do it every time.
Repeat Chorus.”
-From “Wake Up Everybody“
