some quotations - food for thought

 "You should know from experience that in the Indies trade must be conducted and maintained under the protection and favour of your own arms and that these arms must be got out of the profits won from the trade, so that trade cannot be maintained without war nor war without trade"
Jan Pieterszoon Coen (1614)

 

"This presence (of 70,000 U.S. troops in Germany) is the basis of our influence in the European region and for the cooperation of allied nations whose security it enhances. ... it keeps European markets open to us. If those troops weren't there, those markets would probably be more difficult to access."
former secretary of state, White House chief of staff, and NATO supreme commander, Gen. Alexander M. Haig, Jr. (2001)

 

"Think hard about it. I'm running out of demons. I'm running out of villains."
Colin Powell (1991)

 

"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 ... I was in Guatemala in 1983 for the last coup. In 1985, I was in El Salvador; 1991, Peru; 1992, Colombia ... After reflection on my two decades plus of service, I am convinced that I only served the richest one percent of my country"
Goff S., December 22, (1999)  (Stan Goff retired from the U.S. Army in February 1996, after serving in Vietnam, Guatemala, El Salvador, Grenada, Panama, Colombia, Peru, Venezuela, Honduras, Somalia and Haiti.)

 

 "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. During those years, I had, as the boys in the back room would say, a swell racket. Looking back on it, I feel that I could have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents."
General Smedley Butler, USMC. Excerpt from a speech delivered in 1933 (from www.twf.org ). General Butler was one of the few Americans to be twice awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor

 

 "The so-called national security state of the past 40 years has meant enormous riches, and power, for those who are in the game. It has also meant population control - control of the people of this and many other countries. Bush and his team, and those they represent, will do whatever is necessary to keep the game going."
Agee, October (1990) (Philip Agee is a former CIA agent)

 

"Hitherto accepted norms of human conduct do not apply... long-standing American concepts of fair play must be reconsidered... we must learn to subvert, sabotage, and destroy our enemies by more clever, more sophisticated and more effective methods than those used against us. It may become necessary that the American people be made acquainted with, understand, and support this fundamentally repugnant philosophy."
James Doolittle explaining in a secret 1954 report to President Eisenhower why CIA covert operations were needed and what they entailed

 

"If this were a dictatorship, it would be a heck of a lot easier - so long as I'm the dictator."
George W. Bush, Dec. 19, 2000

 

"When they kill, they're terrorists. When we kill, we're striking against terror."
Solomon, "Orwellian Logic 101 - A Few Simple Lessons,"

 

"there are very few necessary conditions for war, and very many sufficient conditions"
Smith, (2001)

 

"Since trade ignores national boundaries, and the manufacturer insists on having the world as a market, the flag of his nation must follow him, and the doors of the nations which are closed against him must be battered down"
Democratic president Woodrow Wilson, about 100 years ago

 

"Natural gas is hemispheric. I like to call it hemispheric in nature because it is a product that we can find in our neighborhoods."
George W. Bush, Dec. 20, (2000)

 

"I cannot think of a time when we have had a region emerge as suddenly to become as strategically significant as the Caspian."
Dick Cheney (1998)
 
"All the conditions of life are measured by money, and what brings no money is nonsense, unpractical, idealistic bosh."
Friedrich Engels, The Condition of the Working Class in England

 

"you can't tell where Enron stops and the Bush Administration begins."
Tom J. Wright

 

 "A West at the peak of its power confronts non-Wests that increasingly have the desire, the will and the resources to shape the world in non-Western ways. (...) Those countries that for reason of culture and power do not wish to, or cannot, join the West compete with the West by developing their own economic, military and political power. They do this by promoting their internal development and by cooperating with other non-Western countries."
Huntington, S.P. (1993)

 

"The confrontation that Islam calls for with these godless and apostate regimes, does not know Socratic debates, Platonic ideals nor Aristotelian diplomacy. But it knows the dialogue of bullets, the ideals of assassination, bombing and destruction, and the diplomacy of the cannon and machine-gun"
The Al-Quaida manual, p.9, UK-BM1 translation (located by the Manchester police during a search of a member's home).

 

"Great Britain was able to govern about a quarter of the world's population and land surface - and to control nearly all of its sea lanes - without running up an especially large defense bill (an average of just 3 percent of net national product between 1870 and 1913, lower for the rest of the 19th century). And today the United States is vastly wealthier relative to the rest of the world than Britain ever was. In 1913, Britain's share of total world output was a shade over 8 percent; the equivalent figure for the United States in 1998 was just under 22 percent. Nor should anybody pretend that, at least in fiscal terms, the cost of expanding the American empire - even if it meant a great many little wars like the one in Afghanistan - would be prohibitive. Last year, American defense spending stood at just 2.9 percent of G.D.P., compared with an average for the years 1948-98 of 6.8 percent."
Ferguson, December 2, 2001

 

"Fighting for the unlimited Western hegemony and monopoly of the world's riches, camouflaged as anti-terrorism, will lead to a world-wide catastrophe"
Avnery, November 17 (2001)