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Author |
Title |
Source, date |
Excerpts |
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Regan
T. |
When
contemplating war, beware of babies in incubators
|
Christian
Science Monitor, 06.09.02 |
...The babies in the
incubator story is a classic example of how easy it is for the public and
legislators to be mislead during moments of high tension. It's also a
vivid example of how the media can be manipulated if we do not keep our
guards up...
|
| |
anonymous |
|
Zmag.org,
15.03.03 |
A list of UN resolutions vetoed by the USA
1972-2002
|
| |
Monbiot
G. |
|
The
Guardian, 25.03.03 |
...It is not hard, therefore, to see why the
US government fought first to prevent the establishment of the
international criminal court, and then to ensure that its own citizens are
not subject to its jurisdiction. The five soldiers dragged in front of the
cameras yesterday should thank their lucky stars that they are prisoners
not of the American forces fighting for civilisation, but of the
"barbaric and inhuman" Iraqis.
|
| |
Jones
T. (Monty Python) |
I'm
losing patience with my neighbours, Mr Bush
|
The
Observer, 26.01.03 |
...Like Mr Bush, I've
run out of patience, and if that's a good enough reason for the President,
it's good enough for me. I'm going to give the whole street two weeks -
no, 10 days - to come out in the open and hand over all aliens and
interplanetary hijackers, galactic outlaws and interstellar terrorist
masterminds, and if they don't hand them over nicely and say 'Thank you',
I'm going to bomb the entire street to kingdom come...
|
| |
Castro
F. |
|
The
Guardian, 06.03.03 |
...For the first time the human species
is running a real risk of extinction due to the insane behaviour of the
very same human beings, who are thus becoming the victims of this
"civilisation"...
|
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Lindorff
D. |
|
Counter
Punch, 18.02.03 |
...the American corporate media, both
print and electronic, have become virtual parrots of the Administration
line that war is necessary because Saddam Hussein is evil and a clear
threat to America...
...the major media have fallen into the hands of just a few giant
corporate holding companies, ... they have allowed themselves to be
manipulated into the role of little more than purveyors of government
press releases. |
| |
White
C. |
A
Vet on Bush's Hypocrisy on the War Against Iraq
|
Counter
Punch, 18.02.03 |
...this country has consistently used
half-truths and deception to justify bloodshed. Why should this time be
any different?
...we have to admit that the case to invade could be made in many other
countries, all of which are close U.S. allies. |
| |
Heard
L. |
|
Counter
Punch, 17.09.02 |
...the American public has fallen victim
to a gigantic propaganda/indoctrination campaign, organised by its own
government. The U.S. government and its subservient media make a great
team.
...As these suggestions permeate the public psyche, individuals may
struggle against them on a conscious level, but eventually they seep
into the realms of the subconscious until they re-emerge as the
individual's own ideas.
...The very people who believe that theirs is the world's only free
society are seemingly uncomplaining about the fact that their emails can
be scrutinised by the FBI or the CIA, and their phone calls monitored |
| |
Freedland
J. |
Rome,
AD ... Rome, DC?
|
The
Guardian, 18.09.02 |
...a
world power needs to practise both hard imperialism, the business of
winning wars and invading lands, and soft imperialism, the cultural and
political tricks that work not to win power but to keep it...It's not
togas or gladiatorial games today, but Starbucks, Coca-Cola, McDonald's
and Disney.
...it is possible to rule by remote control, using friendly client
states. This is a favourite technique for the contemporary US - no need
for colonies when you have the Shah in Iran or Pinochet in Chile to do
the job for you...the US is merely moving into what was the second phase
of Rome's imperial history, when it grew frustrated with indirect rule
through allies and decided to do the job itself |
| |
Leupp
G. |
Random
Thoughts on "Anti-Americanism" and on Good, Evil, Duck Eggs
and Warm Beer in China
|
Counter
Punch, 24.09.02 |
...People around the world distinguish
between the American people and the U.S. government, probably more so
today than at any time in recent history.
...Imagine the worldwide joy that would explode, should the planet
someday wake up to a mind-boggling change here, to a regime that
renounced aggression and arrogance and sought instead to advance the
evolving agenda-all about Power to the People---that began with the
revolution that broke out in 1776. |
| |
Tariq
A. |
|
Al
Ahram, 12.09.02 |
...Psychologically, the American empire
has constructed a new enemy: Islamic terrorism.
... The leaders of the United States wish to be judged by their choice
of enemies rather than the actual state of the world, leave alone the
concrete results of the 'war against terrorism'. |
| |
Fisk
R. |
Europe
Must Stop Parroting The US Script In The Middle East
|
The
Independent, 20.02.02 |
...Mr Bush continues to give the Israeli
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon a green light to "strike against
terror" while at the same time demanding democracy for all Muslim
countries in the Middle East, especially Iran and Iraq. But not, of
course, for allies like Saudi Arabia and Egypt.
...An Israeli officer tells his colleagues, according to the Israeli
daily newspaper Ha'aretz, that they must "study how the German Army
operated in the Warsaw Ghetto".
...you might wonder why the Pentagon wishes to create its absurd
"Office of Strategic Influence (OSI)" to peddle truth and lies
to the press. US journalists are so gutless so quick to adopt the
government line that it is surely unnecessary to plunder the $10bn
supplement to the Pentagon budget to sell this kind of trash. |
| |
Fisk
R. |
America's
morality has been distorted by 11 September
|
The
Independent, 7.3.02 |
...I'm beginning to suspect that 11 September is turning into a curse
far greater than the original bloodbath of that day, that America's
absorption with that terrible event is in danger of distorting our
morality. Is the anarchy of Afghanistan and the continuing slaughter in
the Middle East really to be the memorial for the thousands who died on
11 September? |
| |
Turnipseed
T. |
Bush
Mimics Reagan and the Corporate Stranglehold on U.S. Media Tightens
|
Zmag.org,
23.2.02 |
...More corporate consolidation in media
will further enhance the Bush administration's ability to mesmerize and
manipulate U.S. citizens with malignant militarism and pernicious
patriotism.
...In the wonderful-world-of-never-ending-war, the Bush administration
unilaterally broadens the conflict and blatantly admits an intent to
lie.
...I reckon journalistic integrity will have to take a back seat for now
as lying and killing are essential to waging war against "evil
ones" and "evil empires." |
| |
Fisk
R. |
Promises,
promises
|
The
Independent, 17.10.01 |
...Vain promises have ever been a part of
our conflict. In the 1914-18 war another struggle against
"evil", we should remember it was the British who made the
promises. To the Jews of the world, we promised our support for a Jewish
homeland in Palestine. To the Arabs, Lawrence of Arabia promised
independence... In the end, we imposed an Anglo-French military
occupation on the Arabs who had helped us and, three decades later gave
the Jews only half of Palestine.
...By 1990, after the invasion of Kuwait, we wanted the Arab and Muslim
world on our side against Iraq. President Bush Senior promised a
"New World Order" in which Middle East would live in an oasis
of peace. Once the Iraqis were driven out, however, we called a
short-lived "Middle-East" summit in Madrid and then sold more
missiles, tanks and jet fighters to the Arabs and Israelis than in the
preceding 30 years. Israel's nuclear power was never mentioned. |
| |
Steel
M. |
Good
grief - they've cancelled bin Laden's credit card
|
The
Independent, 04.10.01 |
...We're told the war won't be fought
against the "Afghan people". So why are they all fleeing,
then? They're just getting all uptight and panicking unnecessarily, are
they? Perhaps they're aware that they won't be targets in the same way
that Serb shoppers in market places and Iraqis hiding in bomb shelters
weren't targets either.
The trouble is that there's a layer of society that accepts the military
tells reams of lies during wartime, on the condition it's a war that
ended a few years ago. |
| |
Parenti
M. |
Monopoly
Media Manipulation
|
|
...The most effective propaganda relies
on framing rather than on falsehood. By bending the truth rather than
breaking it, using emphasis and other auxiliary embellishments,
communicators can create a desired impression without resorting to
explicit advocacy and without departing too far from the appearance of
objectivity.
...If we are to believe the media, stuff just happens. Consider
"globalization," a pet label that the press presents as a
natural and inevitable development. In fact, globalization is a
deliberate contrivance of multinational interests to undermine
democratic sovereignty throughout the world. International "free
trade" agreements set up international trade councils that are
elected by no one, are accountable to no one, operate in secrecy without
conflict of interest restrictions, and with the power to overrule just
about all ...laws and regulations in all signatory nations.
...Media people have a trained incapacity for the whole truth. Their job
is not to inform but disinform, not to advance democratic discourse but
to dilute and mute it. Their task is to give every appearance of being
conscientiously concerned about events of the day, saying so much while
meaning so little, offering so many calories with so few nutrients. |
| |
Hume M. |
How
did we get from Manhattan to Kabul?
|
Sp!ked,
16.11.01 |
...Remember how all of this began, after
the devastating terrorist attacks of 11 September, with a disoriented
President Bush emerging from his bunker first to swear that America
would get 'those folks' responsible, and then to announce that the USA
was 'at war' with persons unknown. The unusual step of first declaring
war, and then looking for somebody to fight a war against, set the tone
for a campaign where war aims seem to have been made up as we go along,
with the script being repeatedly rewritten. |
| |
Parenti
M. |
The
Terrorism Hype
|
|
...There are countries that do not want
to be an integrated part of the global free market system. They do not
want to open their land, labor, markets, and natural resources to U.S.
investors, saying in effect, "Come on in, it's all yours... You
make this society safe for the likes of us, and we will open it
completely to you." The nations that refuse this contract with
America run the risk of being targeted as "terrorist states."
...With the overthrow of most communist states, U.S. leaders face a
shortage of adversaries needed to justify U.S. global interventionism.
"Fighting terrorism" now takes the place of "fighting
communism" as the rationale for a huge military state and a
repressive national security apparatus at home and abroad, the real
function of which is to keep the world safe for those who own it. The
real danger we face is not from terrorism but from what is being done in
the pretense of fighting it. |
| |
leading
article |
Beware
the new form of McCarthyism in the West
|
The
Independent, 08.12.01 |
...the cavalier way in which the Bush
administration has treated the principles of civil liberty on which the
US was founded sets a depressing precedent.
...the rhetoric of the "war against terrorism" has given
licence to authoritarian rulers the world over to define their own
dissidents as terrorists.
...A new form of oppressive McCarthyism is sweeping not just America but
the whole world. |
| |
Monbiot G. |
Collateral
Repair -How to Win the War with Peace
|
The
Guardian, 25.09.01 |
...The
Taliban, possibly the most brutal and barbaric regime on earth, was
requesting evidence before considering Osama Bin Laden's extradition:
they insisted that he was innocent until proven guilty. The West,
in the name of civilisation, was insisting that Bin Laden was guilty,
and it would find the evidence later.
...The presumption of innocence is just one of the human rights both Mr
Hain and Mr Bush appear prepared to abandon in response to the attacks.
Operation Infinite Justice begins with the renunciation of justice. The
force Bush and Blair have mobilised is a gigantic death squad,
dispatched to enact extrajudicial executions. |
| |
Roy A. |
The
algebra of infinite justice
|
The
Guardian, 29.9.01 |
...America is at war
against people it doesn't know, because they don't appear much on TV.
Before it has properly identified or even begun to comprehend the nature
of its enemy, the US government has, in a rush of publicity and
embarrassing rhetoric, cobbled together an international coalition
against terror', mobilised its army, its air force, its navy and its
media, and committed them to battle.
The trouble is that once America goes off to war, it can't very well
return without having fought one. If it doesn't find its enemy, for the
sake of the enraged folks back home, it will have to manufacture one.
Once war begins, it will develop a momentum, a logic and a justification
of its own, and we'll lose sight of why it's being fought in the first
place. |
| |
Blum W. |
A
Brief History of United States Interventions, 1945 to the Present |
zmag.org |
...The
saddest part of this is that the world will never know what kind of
society Cuba could have produced if left alone, if not constantly under
the gun and the threat of invasion, if allowed to relax its control at
home. The idealism, the vision, the talent, the internationalism were
all there. But we'll never know.
...Salvador Allende was the worst possible scenario for a Washington
imperialist. He could imagine only one thing worse than a Marxist in
power -- an elected Marxist in power, who honored the constitution, and
became increasingly popular.
...how many people know that during the late 1970s and most of the
1980s, Afghanistan had a government committed to bringing the incredibly
backward nation into the 20th century, including giving women equal
rights? |
| |
Shalom S.
R. |
The
US & Middle East: Why Do "They" Hate Us?
|
zmag.org,
22.09.01 |
...The
list below presents some specific incidents of U.S. policy in the Middle
East... |
| |
Herman E.
S. |
Antiterrorism
as a cover for terrorism
|
zmag.org |
...The
rule is that terrorism is what the U.S. government says it is--if it or
its allies or clients do precisely the same thing as the named
terrorists, that is not terrorism, by rule of affiliation.
...the propaganda system works extremely well, providing Big
Brother-quality results under a system of "freedom." |
| |
Gowans S. |
Milosevic's
arrest occasion for more NATO lies and hypocrisy
|
Media
Monitors Network, 03.04.01 |
...One
hundred thousand Kosovars were said to have been killed by Milosevic's
forces, a number later revised downward to 10,000, and then, after
pathologists rushed to Kosovo at the end of NATO's 78-day air war ready
to inspect dozens of alleged mass graves, was revised downward further
still, when pathologists failed to uncover what NATO darkly warned the
world they'd find. Fewer than 2,000 autopsies were performed. Bodies
were found buried alone or in pairs -- not in the mass graves Cook says
he visited or Bush remembers chilling images of. Whether the corpses
were Serb or Albanian, indeed whether they met their deaths at the hands
of Serb security forces or KLA guerillas, was never certain. |
|
Monbiot G. |
America's
Imperial War |
The Guardian, 12.02.02 |
...Over the past few
weeks, the men who run the military-industrial complex have shoved aside
the government of the Philippines, despatched 16 Black Hawk helicopters
to Colombia, arrested the Cuban investigators seeking to foil a bomb
plot in Miami, alarmed Russia and China by scrambling for central Asia,
begun developing a new tactical nuclear weapon, and all but declared war
on three nations. Yet still the armchair warriors who supported their
bombing of Afghanistan cannot understand that these people now present a
threat not just to terrorism but to the world. |
|
Parenti
M. |
Making
The World Safe For Hypocrisy |
|
...This
enormous gap between what the United States does in the world and what
Americans think their nation is doing is one of the great propaganda
accomplishments of the dominant political mythology.
...our rulers cannot ask the U.S. public to sacrifice their tax dollars
and the lives of their sons for Exxon and Chase Manhattan, for the
profit system as such, so they tell us that the interventions are for
freedom and national security and the protection of unspecified
"U.S. interests."
...a matter of putting the masses of people at home and abroad back in
their place, divested of any aspirations for a better world because they
are struggling too hard to survive in this one. |
|
Beaumont P. & Vulliamy E. |
Armed
to the teeth |
The Observer, 10.02.02 |
... the US now spends more
each year than the next nine largest national defence budgets combined.
Indeed America is responsible for about 40 per cent of the world's
military spending.
...Central Asia is splattered with new American fortresses; the Pacific
and Indian oceans are patrolled by aircraft carriers and accompanying
fleets of awesome size.
...And the aim of this power? 'The war on terrorism,' says Professor
Paul Rogers, of Bradford University's Department of Peace Studies, 'is
simply a euphemism for extending US control in the world, whether it is
by projecting force through its carriers or building new military bases
in central Asia.' |
|
Parenti
M.
|
The
Rational Destruction of Yugoslavia |
|
...In
the span of a few months, President Clinton bombed four countries:
Sudan, Afghanistan, Iraq repeatedly, and Yugoslavia massively. At the
same time, the U.S. was involved in proxy wars in Angola, Mexico
(Chiapas), Colombia, East Timor, and various other places. And U.S.
forces are deployed on every continent and ocean, with some 300 major
overseas support bases -- all in the name of peace, democracy, national
security, and humanitarianism.
...There are more opposition parties in the Yugoslav parliament than in
any other European parliament. Yet the government is repeatedly labeled
a dictatorship. Milosevic was elected as president of Yugoslavia in a
contest that foreign observers said had relatively few violations. As of
the end of 1999, he presided over a coalition government that included
four parties. Opposition groups openly criticized and demonstrated
against his government. Yet he was called a dictator.
...they destroyed much of what was left of Yugoslavia, turning it into a
privatized, deindustrialized, recolonized, beggar-poor country of cheap
labor, defenseless against capital penetration, so battered that it will
never rise again, so shattered that it will never reunite, not even as a
viable bourgeois country. |
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