Who Rules The World? Quotes
"To the novelist, politician, and anti-Dreyfusard leader Maurice Barrès, Dreyfusards were 'anarchists of the lecture-platform.'"
"John Dewey was impressed by the great 'psychological and educational lesson' of the war."
"Not everyone toed the line so obediently. Notable figures such as Bertrand Russell, Eugene Debs, Rosa Luxemburg, and Karl Liebknecht were, like Zola, sentenced to prison."
"Those who line up in the service of the state are typically praised by the general intellectual community, and those who refuse to line up in service of the state are punished."
"The pattern of praise and punishment is a familiar one throughout history."
"The role of the masters in the political arena is not deplored, or discussed, in the Trilateral volume, presumably because the masters represent 'the national interest.'"
"The prohibition on assassination in international law traces back to a forceful denunciation of the practice by Abraham Lincoln."
"The U.S. wars in Latin America from 1960 to 1990, quite apart from their horrors, have long-term historical significance."
"The murder of the Jesuit intellectuals as the Berlin Wall fell was a final blow in defeating the heresy of liberation theology."
"After the murder of its leader (and his family), Hizbollah began to respond to Israeli crimes in Lebanon by rocketing northern Israel."
"The liberal New Republic expresses its concern that 'China sent ten warships through international waters just off the Japanese island of Okinawa.' That is indeed a provocation—unlike the fact, unmentioned, that Washington has converted the island into a major military base in defiance of vehement protests by the people of Okinawa."
"Elections have become a charade, run by the public relations industry."
"While wealth and power have narrowly concentrated, for most of the population real incomes have stagnated and people have been getting by with increased work hours, debt, and asset inflation, regularly destroyed by the financial crises."
"That government insurance is no small matter. Considering just the ability of banks to borrow at lower rates, thanks to the implicit taxpayer subsidy, Bloomberg News estimates that 'taxpayers give big banks $83 billion a year.'"
"Teachers are a particularly good target, as part of the deliberate effort to destroy the public education system from kindergarten through the universities by privatization."
"The rise of neofascist parties in much of Europe would be a frightening phenomenon even if we were not to recall what happened on the continent in the recent past."
"The astonishing feature of the federal fiscal position is that revenues are forecast to be a mere 14.4 per cent of GDP in 2011, far below their postwar average of close to 18 per cent."
"The postwar boom offered employment; a black man could get a job in a unionized auto plant, earn a decent salary, buy a house, and maybe send his children to college. That lasted for about twenty years, until the 1970s, when the economy was radically redesigned on newly dominant neoliberal principles."
"The concept of due process has been extended under the Obama administration’s international drone assassination campaign in a way that makes this core element of the Charter of Liberties (and the Constitution) null and void."
"A headline in the New York Times captured the general elite reaction when he was murdered in a drone attack, along with the usual 'collateral damage.' It read, in part: 'The West Celebrates a Cleric’s Death.'"
"The American industrial revolution created one of the major notes of American life in the 1840s and 1850s."
"The degradation suffered by the industrial worker was a loss of status and independence."
"Workers were striking not just for bread but for roses, seeking dignity and independence."
"The capitalist revolution instituted a crucial change from price to wage."
"The United States is unmatched in its global significance and impact."
"The United States invaded Panama, killing possibly thousands of people."
"The threat of instant destruction by nuclear weapons has not ranked high among the concerns of planners."
"The primary danger we face in Castro is in the impact his regime has upon the leftist movement in Latin American countries."
"The United States, the new policy insisted, must maintain its 'defense industrial base.'"
"The challenges faced by Western power at the outset of 2016 are usefully summarized within the conventional framework by Gideon Rachman, chief foreign-affairs columnist for the London Financial Times."
"Ever since the end of the Cold War, the overwhelming power of the U.S. military has been the central fact of international politics."
"The problem of world order today is that 'these security orders are now under challenge in all three regions' because of Russian intervention in Ukraine and Syria, and because of China turning its nearby seas from an American lake to 'clearly contested water.'"
"The fundamental question of international relations, then, is whether the United States should 'accept that other major powers should have some kind of zone of influence in their neighborhoods.'"
"Washington may not like Moscow's position, but it should understand the logic behind it."
"The invasion of Iraq made a substantial contribution to this process, much as intelligence agencies had predicted."
"The invasion led to the death of hundreds of thousands of people in a country where the civilian society had already been devastated by American and British sanctions."
"The invasion also generated millions of refugees, largely destroyed the country, and instigated a sectarian conflict that is now tearing apart Iraq and the entire region."
"The sledgehammer strategy has spread jihadi terror from a tiny corner of Afghanistan to much of the world, from Africa through the Levant and South Asia to Southeast Asia."
"The West sees NATO enlargement as benign. Not surprisingly, Russia, along with much of the Global South, has a different opinion."
"The West's triumphalist response to Russia's collapse was hailed as signaling 'the end of history,' the final victory of Western capitalist democracy."
"The GWOT sledgehammer strategy has spread jihadi terror from a tiny corner of Afghanistan to much of the world."
"The United States does not tolerate distant great powers deploying military forces anywhere in the Western hemisphere."
"The invasion of Iraq is the major crime of the twenty-first century."
"The best strategy would be 'a multinational, welfare-oriented and psychologically satisfying program' that would make the hatred ISIS relies upon less virulent."
"A carefully phrased apology for past transgressions would cost little and do much."
"In brief, the GWOT sledgehammer strategy has spread jihadi terror from a tiny corner of Afghanistan to much of the world."
"Terrorism specialists Peter Bergen and Paul Cruickshank estimate that the Iraq war 'generated a stunning sevenfold increase in the yearly rate of fatal jihadist attacks.'"