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Rogue State

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Often, the United States actually does want to cause the suffering, hoping that it will lead people to turn against the government. This was a recurrent feature of the bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999. — location: 128 ^ref-19265

Such a policy fits very well into the FBI definition of international terrorism, which speaks of the use of force or violence against persons or property "to intimidate or coerce a government, the civilian population, or any segment thereof, in furtherance of political or social objectives." — location: 132 ^ref-5742

if in fact the September 11 attacks were an act of war, as the world has been told repeatedly by George W. Bush and his minions, then the casualties of the World Trade Center were clearly civilian war casualties. — location: 141 ^ref-21355

Perhaps if the September 11 terrorists had dropped some hot pastrami sandwiches on downtown Manhattan before their hijacked planes hit the World Trade Center... — location: 160 ^ref-6259

Do you enjoy being ruled by the Republican-Democratic Party? Are you proud to live a life of fear, insecurity and panic? Are you happy to see the place your family has owned for generations taken away by a bank? Do you want a regime that is turning the United States into a police state and giving Christianity a bad name? Are you proud to live under a government that harbors hundreds of terrorists in Miami.? — location: 170 ^ref-31950

The fruit of the foregoing is a police state, not the worst police state in the world to be sure, but a police state nonetheless; the War on Drugs had made it such even before September 11. — location: 247 ^ref-47058

in virtually every case in which the FBI has prevented a terrorist attack, success depended on long-term investigations, whose hallmarks were patience and letting terrorist plots go forward. "You obviously want to play things out so you can fully identify the breadth and scope of the conspiracy. Obviously, the most efficient and effective way to do that is to bring it down to the last stage." — location: 269 ^ref-9737

For 70 years, the United States convinced much of the world that there was an international conspiracy out there. An International Communist Conspiracy, seeking no less than control over the entire planet, for purposes which had no socially redeeming values. — location: 315 ^ref-9230

The moral of this little slice of history is simple: If the United States government does not care about the health and welfare of its own soldiers, if our leaders are not moved by the prolonged pain and suffering of the wretched warriors enlisted to fight the empire's wars, how can it be argued, how can it be believed, that they care about foreign peoples? At all. — location: 361 ^ref-12626

the US began aiding the Islamic fundamentalist Moujahedeen six months before the Russians made their move, even though he believed—and told this to Carter—that "this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention". — location: 369 ^ref-58563

the defeat of a government committed to bringing the extraordinarily backward nation into the 20th century; the breathtaking carnage; Moujahedeen torture that even US government officials called "indescribable horror" — location: 375 ^ref-8826

what kind of person is it who takes a job appointment knowing full well that she will be an integral part of such ongoing policies and will be expected to defend them without apology? Not long afterwards, Albright was appointed Secretary of State. — location: 389 ^ref-16711

"I think," he wrote, "the economic logic behind dumping a load of toxic waste in the lowest-wage country is impeccable and we should face up to that." — location: 394 ^ref-39493

he put great pressure on South Africa, threatening trade sanctions if the government didn't cancel plans to use much cheaper generic AIDS drugs, which would cut into US companies' sales. — location: 401 ^ref-63138

Patriotism is indeed the last refuge of a scoundrel, though Gore's and Albright's words don't quite have the ring of "Deutschland über alles" or "Rule Britannia". — location: 407 ^ref-19068

our leaders are cruel because only those willing and able to be inordinately cruel and remorseless can hold positions of leadership in the foreign policy establishment; it might as well be written into the job description. — location: 412 ^ref-49860

Perhaps we can postulate that in a foreign policy estab-lishment committed to imperialist domination by any means necessary, employees tend to rise to the level of cruelty they can live with. — location: 416 ^ref-1101

put the following words to paper: "What the United States is doing in Vietnam is the most significant example of philanthropy extended by one people to another that we have witnessed in our times." — location: 431 ^ref-47842

Lawrence responded with a full page letter, at the heart of which was: "I think a careful reading of it [the pamphlet] will prove the point I was trying to make—namely that primitive peoples with savagery in their hearts have to be helped to understand the true basis of a civilized existence." — location: 434 ^ref-39716

It is assumed a priori that our leaders mean well by the foreign people involved—no matter how much death, destruction and suffering their policies objectively result in. — location: 443 ^ref-62277

In this new situation they are asked much more; they are asked to believe that their country has been evil. And nobody wants to believe that." — location: 449 ^ref-43674

NPR, which can be thought of as the home service of the Voice of America, has never met an American war it didn't like. It was inspired to describe the war against Yugoslavia as Clinton's "most significant foreign policy success." — location: 465 ^ref-13858

Is it any wonder that countless Americans—bearing psyches no less malleable than those of other members of the species—are only dimly conscious of the fact that they even have the right to be unequivocally opposed to a war effort and to question the government's real reasons for carrying it out, without thinking of themselves as (horror of horrors) "unpatriotic"? — location: 467 ^ref-14850

Propaganda is to a democracy what violence is to a dictatorship. — location: 470 ^ref-32944

America took this a step further. The best and the brightest have assured us that United States interventions—albeit rather violent at times—are not only in the natural order of things, but they're actually for the good of the natives. — location: 475 ^ref-25204

The great masses of the people in the very bottom of their hearts tend to be corrupted rather than consciously and purposely evil...therefore, in view of the primitive simplicity of their minds, they more easily fall a victim to a big lie than to a little one, since they themselves lie in little things, but would be ashamed of lies that were too big. — location: 479 ^ref-14678

the Japanese had been trying for many months to surrender and that the US had consistently ignored these overtures. — location: 483 ^ref-31792

The "yellow rain", it turned out, was pollen-laden feces dropped by huge swarms of honeybees flying far overhead. — location: 491 ^ref-4131

governments lie, that great powers lie greater, that the world's only superpower has the most to lie about, i.e., cover up? — location: 493 ^ref-22925

American foreign policy has been fueled not by a devotion to any kind of morality, nor even simple decency, but rather by the necessity to serve other masters, which can be broken down to four imperatives: — location: 510 ^ref-10582

What kind of omnipresent, omnipotent, monolithic, evil international conspiracy bent on world domination would allow its empire to completely fall apart, like the proverbial house of cards, without bringing any military force to bear upon its satellites to prevent their escaping? And without an invasion from abroad holding a knife to the empire's throat? — location: 528 ^ref-10809

America cherishes her enemies. Without enemies, she is a nation without purpose and direction. — location: 532 ^ref-27158

That is very distressing to the military establishment, especially when you are trying to justify the existence of your organization and your systems. — location: 538 ^ref-38451

Longstanding and repeated Soviet offers to dissolve the Warsaw Pact if NATO would do the same were ignored. After one such offer was spurned, — location: 541 ^ref-27714

the average American, reading Cohen's announcement, must have found it very difficult to believe that one of their "leaders" could just step forward and publicly proclaim a crazy tale. They assume there must be something to what the man is saying. — location: 563 ^ref-41352

a survey showed that six times as many young South Koreans feared the United States as feared North Korea.38 — location: 568 ^ref-51166

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence, clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary. — location: 618 ^ref-30670

Witness the remarkably long shelf life of the International Communist Conspiracy. It's still a highly saleable commodity. — location: 634 ^ref-41630

Skepticism should apply equally to official and unofficial information. — location: 638 ^ref-36176

The First Watergate Law of American Politics states: "No matter how paranoid or conspiracy-minded you are, what the government is actually doing is worse than you imagine." — location: 644 ^ref-51873

"Don't believe anything until it's been officially denied." — location: 646 ^ref-24905

it was not about containing an evil, expansionist communism after all; it was about American imperialism, with "communist" merely the name given to those who stood in its way. — location: 658 ^ref-53378

if the Cold War is seen not as an East-West struggle, but rather a "North-South" struggle, as an American effort—as mentioned above—to prevent the rise of any society that might serve as a successful example of an alternative to the capitalist model, and to prevent the rise of any regional power that might challenge American supremacy, then that particular map with the pins stuck in it still hangs on the wall in the Pentagon's War Room. — location: 676 ^ref-23405

The current manifestation of this continuum, by whatever name, can be viewed as yet another chapter in the never-ending saga of the war of the rich upon the poor. — location: 681 ^ref-62232

On the other hand, the desire for world hegemony, per se, is not necessarily irrational, whatever else one may think of it. Michael Parenti has pointed out that US foreign policy "may seem stupid because the rationales offered in its support often sound unconvinc-ing, leaving us with the impression that policymakers are confused or out of touch. But just because the public does not understand what they are doing does not mean that national security leaders are themselves befuddled. That they are fabricators does not mean they are fools." — location: 713 ^ref-17545

the establishment media (whose ideology is a belief that it doesn't have any ideology). — location: 720 ^ref-56994

None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe — location: 3521 ^ref-61608

Prisoners in a state correctional facility who staged a peaceful demonstration against the transfer of other inmates to out-of-state gulags against their will, are being punished with up to a year of solitary, and their time in solitary will not count toward their sentences, according to the Department of Corrections. — location: 3659 ^ref-32262

Hundreds of political prisoners are rotting away in American prisons. As US-based human rights groups have testified before the Human Rights Commission of the United Nations in Geneva, these people are being held "as a direct result of actions under-taken in furtherance of a political or social vision". They go back to the black liberation struggles of the 1960s and 1970s, particularly members of the Black Panthers; others are native American activists, anti-nuclear activists, opponents of US interventionist policies in Puerto Rico, Central America and elsewhere. — location: 3675 ^ref-43664

If the usual sentence for such an act in a particular court or state is 10 years, at the beginning of year 11— certainly by year 15—these people are political prisoners. It is often not the "worst" prisoners who are thrown into solitary confinement, but rather these political prisoners, as well as the jailhouse lawyers and prisoner activists. — location: 3683 ^ref-50713

"If you want freedom of the press, you have to own one.") — location: 3817 ^ref-59327

from 1991 to 1999, the number of people in US prisons rose by more than 50 percent. — location: 3876 ^ref-12277

In place of civil rights agitators, the Authority Juggernaut now zooms in on youth gangs, immigrants, environmentalists, welfare recipients, prisoners and a host of other folks with a glaring deficit of political power. — location: 3879 ^ref-49398

What keeps most Americans from being shocked by the shredding of the Bill of Rights is that they have yet to feel the consequences, either personally or through someone close to them. It would appear, however, that they only have to wait. America's foreign groupies, in the meantime, remain blissfully ignorant of the above and in need of a reality transplant. — location: 3881 ^ref-17928