China, Egypt, and the new alliance of China with Arab and African states
The following post entitled "China, Egypt, and the new alliance of China with Arab and African states" is authored by Jim Moore and copied here, in full, for future reference:
For some time I have been emphasizing that the Chinese are in the process of establishing deep relationships with the more authoritarian leaders in the Arab and African world. My now many months of study of the situation in Sudan has helped me see that the Chinese are powerfully exploiting the opportunity provided by an Arab world frightened of the US, and wishing to preserve its authoritarian social structures and abusive human rights practices. For China these alliances solve a big and rapidly expanding problem: how to supply itself with oil, and do so in the face of increased demand from other nations as well.
Here are two stories from Al-Alwah, the independent English-language newspaper based in Egypt. This is not a radical paper, nor is it a propaganda organ. These pieces are important to understand and absorb.
The first is a news report on the recent meeting of Arab League foreign ministers, and how all the nations are so afraid of the US, and so split in how to respond, that nothing could be done in concert at the meeting. United in fear, by Dina Ezzat
For this official and many Arab diplomats the pacific nature of this week's meeting of Arab foreign ministers, and of the meeting of Arab ministers of economy -- under the umbrella of the Arab Economic and Social Council -- which preceded it, should not be read as an indication of a new-found unity of purpose.
"Not at all. It is just that we have given up hoping to do anything, or for that matter to say anything," said one permanent representative to the Arab League. He elaborated that rather than attempt to bridge the deep chasms dividing them, the Arab states seem to have conceded that these are insurmountable.
The dividing line, he went on to explain, is delineated by the nature of relations with the US. "Some of us have more than strategic ties with the US while some others are still being viewed by the US as enemies. And at the end of the day we are all afraid of the US, either out of fear of military intervention and economic sanctions, or because of the military and security dependence that some Arab countries have on the US."
Such caving in to a regional Pax Americana is ominous, suggest a number of Arab diplomats, one described it as "disturbing and indicative of the disintegration of the Arab regional system".
Here is one of many fascinating examples of diplomatic signalling at the meeting. Syria seems to be trying to figure out how to come to positive terms with the US, or at least to be working hard to avoid provoking the US:
On the eve of the Arab foreign ministers meeting Kuwaiti Foreign Minister Mohamed Al-Sobbah, speaking on behalf of the GCC, made an unprecedented call upon Syria to pull out its troops out of Lebanon.
Jordanian Foreign Minister Marwan Al-Moashar, whose country shares the GCC's close relationship with the US, took a similar line. In a statement he made before arriving in Cairo, he said Amman was expecting Syria to respond to the demands made by UN Security Council Resolution 1559. The resolution calls on Syria to pull its troops out of Lebanon.
For their part, neither the Syrian nor the Lebanese delegations asked for the Arab foreign ministers meeting to adopt a stance against this resolution.
The joint Syrian-Lebanese demand was for an Arab resolution that indicates support for both countries in the face of any potential aggression.
Syrian diplomats were "working very hard to structure a new relationship with the US on the basis of mutual cooperation on regional security matters in Iraq on one hand and Syria- Lebanon-Palestine, on the other" said one Arab diplomat. Damascus was not expecting Arab foreign ministers to take a stance against the harsh US anti- Syrian rhetoric.
The second is an op-ed that discusses the potential of the emerging Chinese-Arab relationship as a counter to the "Zionist-American" threat. I do not put these articles up to be provacative at all, but only because I think they represent a kind of thinking, a political reality, that we need to understand as we address issues in the Arab and African world--such as the genocide in Sudan. China's message to the Arabs, by Anouar Abdel-Malek
There is light at the end of the tunnel. The ideas, sentiments, and interests of the Arabs and China have come together at last, under the auspices of the Arab League. Sino-Arab cooperation can release the potential of two of the world's greatest civilisations. The visit to Cairo by Chinese Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing has opened the way for a great partnership, one that may influence the course of our progress, one that may save us from the buffeting winds of this increasingly perilous world. But what do the Arabs and Chinese have in common? Why is it that we need to forge close ties with Asia, and particularly the Chinese? And do the ancient countries of the Silk Road have much in common?
Later in the piece he gives his answer:
...With the Zionist-American aggression besieging, and haemorrhaging, our nations, one is tempted to think of where we have gone wrong with strategy. At a time when aggression follows aggression, when our independence and unity are at stake, one is tempted to acknowledge the message China has for Egypt and the Arab world. The message is best conveyed in the words of Sun Tzu, China's leading political and strategic writer of the fifth century BC. In The Art of War, the world's oldest military treatise, Sun Tzu has this to say: "To win one hundred victories in one hundred battles is not the acme of skill. What is of supreme importance in war is to attack the enemy's strategy."
This is the message we have to keep in mind. It is a message that is inherent to our freedom, to our quest to resist the waves of turmoil and bloodshed coming our way, to our inherent revulsion at an international order controlled by a single power. The Zionist- American quest is wreaking havoc on the Arab world, from Iraq to Palestine and beyond. And it is not armies alone that we have to worry about. It is the thinking that sent the armies, and the strategy that lies behind that thinking.
We have to remember the word of Sun Tzu, and "attack the enemy's strategy". This is what the Arabs and Chinese have in common: the need for a strategy of their own. There is great potential here and in Asia, and this potential does not have to remain unexplored. If we want to survive the Zionist-American quest we have to reformulate our own.
There is a tremendous strategic opening right now. It seems to me that on the one hand, US action--reckless though it has been--has unfrozen situations that have been static and unyielding, such as relationships with Syria, as indicated by talk at the Arab League meeting.
On the other hand, into this "unfrozen" and amorphous situation the Chinese are moving quickly, offering an alternative to the US.
And the US mechanism of unfreezing--war--has led to fear becoming the main response to the US, with respect following. On the other hand, it seems that many in the Arab and African world have a new respect for China, and do not particularly fear her. This bodes well for China in creating alliances, obviously, and not so well for the US.
I do not believe that either US presidential candidate, or either US administration, is adequately paying attention to this situation. And yet China is clearly the second most powerful nation on earth now--and gaining. The combined Arab and African worlds contain vast oil reserves. These worlds also are controlled by a number of the world's most authoritarian governments. If we care about any of the following--US economic and political leadership, US access to oil, or the promotion of democracy and human rights across the world--we need to be paying attention. All points on the political spectrum will find important issues in this situation: "nationalists," "realists," and "idealists."
Posted by James Moore on 9/17/04; 2:37:45 AM from the Economics and cybenetics dept
Further reading:
[Note to self: insert links here to Jim Moore's other posts on China and 'The Genocide Bloc']
- - -
QUOTATIONS
Courtesy of Third World Traveler
Here are some quotes, courtesy Third World Traveler. The first three are my favourites:
"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has."
Margaret Mead
- - -
"The only way to abolish war is to make peace heroic."
John Dewey, American philosopher and educator, 1859-1952
- - -
"It is only when a society shares caring values that its people can feel secure."
Michael Lerner, philosopher, psychologist, author
- - -
"Individuals have international duties which transcend the national obligations of obedience ... Therefore [individual citizens] have the duty to violate domestic laws to prevent crimes against peace and humanity from occurring."
Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal, 1950
- - -
"If we'd been born where they were born and taught what they were taught, we would believe what they believe.
A sign inside a church in Northern Ireland, explaining the origin of intolerance and hate
- - -
"Many of us regard ourselves as mildly liberal or centrist politically, voice fairly pleasant sentiments about our poor children, contribute money to send poor kids to summer camp, feel benevolent. We're not nazis; we're nice people. We read sophisticated books. We go to church. We go to synagogue. Meanwhile, we put other people's children into an economic and environmental death zone. We make it hard for them to get out. We strip the place bare of amenities. And we sit back and say to ourselves, "Well, I hope that they don't kill each other off. But if they do, it's not my fault."
Jonathan Kozol, educator and author
- - -
"The range of debate between the dominant U.S. [political] parties tends to closely resemble the range of debate within the business class."
Robert McChesney, author and media critic
- - -
"Quite simply, there can be no popular sovereignty without a real belief in the value of government. If government does not assume and carry out public responsibilities, less accountable institutions such as the corporation will do the job in their own self-interest."
Charles Derber, Corporation Nation
- - -
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
Benjamin Franklin, 1759
- - -
"If those in charge of our society - politicians, corporate executives, and owners of press and television - can dominate our ideas, they will be secure in their power. They will not need soldiers patrolling the streets. We will control ourselves."
Howard Zinn, historian and author
- - -
"The goal of conservative rulers around the world, led by those who occupy the seats of power in Washington, is the systematic rollback of democratic gains, public services, and common living standards around the world."
Michael Parenti
- - -
"To accept opinions is to gain the good solid feeling of being correct without having to think."
C. Wright Mills - from the book The Power Elite
- - -
"Propaganda is to a democracy what violence is to a dictatorship."
William Blum - Rogue State, on how governments control their citizens
- - -
"Conceit, arrogance and egotism are the essentials of patriotism.... Patriotism assumes that our globe is divided into little spots, each one surrounded by an iron gate. Those who had the fortune of being born on some particular spot, consider themselves better, nobler, grander, more intelligent than the living beings inhabiting any other spot. It is, therefore, the duty of everyone living on that chosen spot to fight, kill, and die in the attempt to impose his superiority upon all others."
Emma Goldman, American anarchist and feminist, 1869-1940
- - -
"The United States is not only number one in military power but also in the effectiveness of its propaganda system."
Edward S. Herman, political economist and author
- - -
"In the United States, both the upper levels of the Republican and Democratic Parties are in the pay of the corporate media and communication giants."
Robert McChesney and John Nichols, media critics and authors
- - -
"The most unpardonable sin in society is independence of thought."
Emma Goldman, American anarchist and feminist, 1869-1940
- - -
"For the last fifty years we've been supporting right-wing governments, and that is a puzzlement to me...I don't understand what there is in the American character... that almost automatically, even when we have a liberal President, we support fascist dictatorships or are tolerant towards them."
William Shirer, author
- - -
"No form of government, once in power, can be trusted to limit its own ambition, to extend freedom and to wither away. This means that it is up to the citizenry, those outside of power, to engage in permanent combat with the state, short of violent, escalatory revolution, but beyond the gentility of the ballot-box, to insure justice, freedom and well being."
Howard Zinn, on the need for dissent and non-violent protest
- - -
" I am astonished each time I come to the U.S. by the ignorance of a high percentage of the population, which knows almost nothing about Latin America or about the world. It's quite blind and deaf to anything that may happen outside the frontiers of the U.S."
Eduardo Galeano, Latin American writer and historian
- - -
" When everyone is thinking the same, no one is thinking."
John Wooden
- - -
"To provide its happy people with perpetual fun is now the deepest purpose of Western civilization."
Jeremy Seabrook, Third World Network
- - -
" With unfailing consistancy, U.S. intervention has been on the side of the rich and powerful of various nations at the expense of the poor and needy. Rather than strengthening democracies, U.S. leaders have overthrown numerous democratically elected governments or other populist regimes in dozens of countries ... whenever these nations give evidence of putting the interests of their people ahead of the interests of multinational corporate interests."
Michael Parenti, political scientist and author
- - -
" If an American is concerned only about his nation, he will not be concerned about the peoples of Asia, Africa, or South America. Is this not why nations engage in the madness of war without the slightest sense of penitence? Is this not why the murder of a citizen of your own nation is a crime, but the murder of citizens of another nation in war is an act of heroic virtue? "
Martin Luther King, Jr.
- - -
"The only thing worth globalizing is dissent."
Arundhati Roy, author
- - -
"There is no reason to accept the doctrines crafted to sustain power and privilege, or to believe that we are constrained by mysterious and unknown social laws. These are simply decisions made within institutions that are subject to human will and that must face the test of legitimacy. And if they do not meet the test, they can be replaced by other institutions that are more free and more just, as has happened often in the past."
Noam Chomsky, American linguist and US media and foreign policy critic
- - -
"What would have happened if millions of American and British people, struggling with coupons and lines at the gas stations, had learned that in 1942 Standard Oil of New Jersey [part of the Rockefeller empire] managers shipped the enemy's fuel through neutral Switzerland and that the enemy was shipping Allied fuel?
Suppose the public had discovered that the Chase Bank in Nazi-occupied Paris after Pearl Harbor was doing millions of dollars' worth of business with the enemy with the full knowledge of the head office in Manhattan [the Rockefeller family among others?] Or that Ford trucks were being built for the German occupation troops in France with authorization from Dearborn, Michigan? Or that Colonel Sosthenes Behn, the head of the international American telephone conglomerate ITT, flew from New York to Madrid to Berne during the war to help improve Hitler's communications systems and improve the robot bombs that devastated London? Or that ITT built the FockeWulfs that dropped bombs on British and American troops? Or that crucial balI bearings were shipped to Nazi-associated customers in Latin America with the collusion of the vice-chairman of the U.S. War Production Board in partnership with Goering's cousin in Philadelphia when American forces were desperately short of them? Or that such arrangements were known about in Washington and either sanctioned or deliberately ignored?"
Charles Higham, researcher, about U.S.- Nazi collaboration during WWII
- - -
"Four sorrows ... are certain to be visited on the United States. Their cumulative effect guarantees that the U.S. will cease to resemble the country outlined in the Constitution of 1787.
First, there will be a state of perpetual war, leading to more terrorism against Americans wherever they may be and a spreading reliance on nuclear weapons among smaller nations as they try to ward off the imperial juggernaut.
Second is a loss of democracy and Constitutional rights as the presidency eclipses Congress and is itself transformed from a co-equal 'executive branch' of government into a military junta.
Third is the replacement of truth by propaganda, disinformation, and the glorification of war, power, and the military legions.
Lastly, there is bankruptcy, as the United States pours its economic resources into ever more grandiose military projects and shortchanges the education, health, and safety of its citizens."
Chalmers Johnson, Sorrows of Empire
- - -
"Corporations care very much about maintaining the myth that government is necessarily ineffective, except when it is spending money on the military-industrial complex, building prisons, or providing infrastructural support for the business sector."
Michael Lerner, philosopher, psychologist, author
- - -
" If envy were the cause of terrorism, Beverly Hills [and] Fifth Avenue ... would have become targets long ago. "
Fareed Zakaria, Newsweek
- - -
"Those in power are blind devotees to private enterprise. They accept that degree of socialism implicit in the vast subsidies to the military-industrial-complex, but not that type of socialism which maintains public projects for the disemployed and the unemployed alike."
William O. Douglas, former U.S. Supreme Court Justice, 1969
- - -
"Leaders symbolize what the country stands for. As corruption becomes routine in Washington in both parties, it trickles down as a corrupting influence in everyone's lives... Democracy is the ultimate casualty, and the sapping of democratic life is the most serious contribution of corporate ascendancy to our spiritual decline. As democracy ebbs, Americans retreat into private cocoons, feeling helpless to make a difference... In a democracy, civic participation and the belief in one's ability to contribute to the common good is the most important guarantor of public morality. When that belief fades, so too does the vision of the common good itself."
Charles Derber, Corporation Nation
For some time I have been emphasizing that the Chinese are in the process of establishing deep relationships with the more authoritarian leaders in the Arab and African world. My now many months of study of the situation in Sudan has helped me see that the Chinese are powerfully exploiting the opportunity provided by an Arab world frightened of the US, and wishing to preserve its authoritarian social structures and abusive human rights practices. For China these alliances solve a big and rapidly expanding problem: how to supply itself with oil, and do so in the face of increased demand from other nations as well.
Here are two stories from Al-Alwah, the independent English-language newspaper based in Egypt. This is not a radical paper, nor is it a propaganda organ. These pieces are important to understand and absorb.
The first is a news report on the recent meeting of Arab League foreign ministers, and how all the nations are so afraid of the US, and so split in how to respond, that nothing could be done in concert at the meeting. United in fear, by Dina Ezzat
For this official and many Arab diplomats the pacific nature of this week's meeting of Arab foreign ministers, and of the meeting of Arab ministers of economy -- under the umbrella of the Arab Economic and Social Council -- which preceded it, should not be read as an indication of a new-found unity of purpose.
"Not at all. It is just that we have given up hoping to do anything, or for that matter to say anything," said one permanent representative to the Arab League. He elaborated that rather than attempt to bridge the deep chasms dividing them, the Arab states seem to have conceded that these are insurmountable.
The dividing line, he went on to explain, is delineated by the nature of relations with the US. "Some of us have more than strategic ties with the US while some others are still being viewed by the US as enemies. And at the end of the day we are all afraid of the US, either out of fear of military intervention and economic sanctions, or because of the military and security dependence that some Arab countries have on the US."
Such caving in to a regional Pax Americana is ominous, suggest a number of Arab diplomats, one described it as "disturbing and indicative of the disintegration of the Arab regional system".
Here is one of many fascinating examples of diplomatic signalling at the meeting. Syria seems to be trying to figure out how to come to positive terms with the US, or at least to be working hard to avoid provoking the US:
On the eve of the Arab foreign ministers meeting Kuwaiti Foreign Minister Mohamed Al-Sobbah, speaking on behalf of the GCC, made an unprecedented call upon Syria to pull out its troops out of Lebanon.
Jordanian Foreign Minister Marwan Al-Moashar, whose country shares the GCC's close relationship with the US, took a similar line. In a statement he made before arriving in Cairo, he said Amman was expecting Syria to respond to the demands made by UN Security Council Resolution 1559. The resolution calls on Syria to pull its troops out of Lebanon.
For their part, neither the Syrian nor the Lebanese delegations asked for the Arab foreign ministers meeting to adopt a stance against this resolution.
The joint Syrian-Lebanese demand was for an Arab resolution that indicates support for both countries in the face of any potential aggression.
Syrian diplomats were "working very hard to structure a new relationship with the US on the basis of mutual cooperation on regional security matters in Iraq on one hand and Syria- Lebanon-Palestine, on the other" said one Arab diplomat. Damascus was not expecting Arab foreign ministers to take a stance against the harsh US anti- Syrian rhetoric.
The second is an op-ed that discusses the potential of the emerging Chinese-Arab relationship as a counter to the "Zionist-American" threat. I do not put these articles up to be provacative at all, but only because I think they represent a kind of thinking, a political reality, that we need to understand as we address issues in the Arab and African world--such as the genocide in Sudan. China's message to the Arabs, by Anouar Abdel-Malek
There is light at the end of the tunnel. The ideas, sentiments, and interests of the Arabs and China have come together at last, under the auspices of the Arab League. Sino-Arab cooperation can release the potential of two of the world's greatest civilisations. The visit to Cairo by Chinese Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing has opened the way for a great partnership, one that may influence the course of our progress, one that may save us from the buffeting winds of this increasingly perilous world. But what do the Arabs and Chinese have in common? Why is it that we need to forge close ties with Asia, and particularly the Chinese? And do the ancient countries of the Silk Road have much in common?
Later in the piece he gives his answer:
...With the Zionist-American aggression besieging, and haemorrhaging, our nations, one is tempted to think of where we have gone wrong with strategy. At a time when aggression follows aggression, when our independence and unity are at stake, one is tempted to acknowledge the message China has for Egypt and the Arab world. The message is best conveyed in the words of Sun Tzu, China's leading political and strategic writer of the fifth century BC. In The Art of War, the world's oldest military treatise, Sun Tzu has this to say: "To win one hundred victories in one hundred battles is not the acme of skill. What is of supreme importance in war is to attack the enemy's strategy."
This is the message we have to keep in mind. It is a message that is inherent to our freedom, to our quest to resist the waves of turmoil and bloodshed coming our way, to our inherent revulsion at an international order controlled by a single power. The Zionist- American quest is wreaking havoc on the Arab world, from Iraq to Palestine and beyond. And it is not armies alone that we have to worry about. It is the thinking that sent the armies, and the strategy that lies behind that thinking.
We have to remember the word of Sun Tzu, and "attack the enemy's strategy". This is what the Arabs and Chinese have in common: the need for a strategy of their own. There is great potential here and in Asia, and this potential does not have to remain unexplored. If we want to survive the Zionist-American quest we have to reformulate our own.
There is a tremendous strategic opening right now. It seems to me that on the one hand, US action--reckless though it has been--has unfrozen situations that have been static and unyielding, such as relationships with Syria, as indicated by talk at the Arab League meeting.
On the other hand, into this "unfrozen" and amorphous situation the Chinese are moving quickly, offering an alternative to the US.
And the US mechanism of unfreezing--war--has led to fear becoming the main response to the US, with respect following. On the other hand, it seems that many in the Arab and African world have a new respect for China, and do not particularly fear her. This bodes well for China in creating alliances, obviously, and not so well for the US.
I do not believe that either US presidential candidate, or either US administration, is adequately paying attention to this situation. And yet China is clearly the second most powerful nation on earth now--and gaining. The combined Arab and African worlds contain vast oil reserves. These worlds also are controlled by a number of the world's most authoritarian governments. If we care about any of the following--US economic and political leadership, US access to oil, or the promotion of democracy and human rights across the world--we need to be paying attention. All points on the political spectrum will find important issues in this situation: "nationalists," "realists," and "idealists."
Posted by James Moore on 9/17/04; 2:37:45 AM from the Economics and cybenetics dept
Further reading:
[Note to self: insert links here to Jim Moore's other posts on China and 'The Genocide Bloc']
- - -
QUOTATIONS
Courtesy of Third World Traveler
Here are some quotes, courtesy Third World Traveler. The first three are my favourites:
"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has."
Margaret Mead
- - -
"The only way to abolish war is to make peace heroic."
John Dewey, American philosopher and educator, 1859-1952
- - -
"It is only when a society shares caring values that its people can feel secure."
Michael Lerner, philosopher, psychologist, author
- - -
"Individuals have international duties which transcend the national obligations of obedience ... Therefore [individual citizens] have the duty to violate domestic laws to prevent crimes against peace and humanity from occurring."
Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal, 1950
- - -
"If we'd been born where they were born and taught what they were taught, we would believe what they believe.
A sign inside a church in Northern Ireland, explaining the origin of intolerance and hate
- - -
"Many of us regard ourselves as mildly liberal or centrist politically, voice fairly pleasant sentiments about our poor children, contribute money to send poor kids to summer camp, feel benevolent. We're not nazis; we're nice people. We read sophisticated books. We go to church. We go to synagogue. Meanwhile, we put other people's children into an economic and environmental death zone. We make it hard for them to get out. We strip the place bare of amenities. And we sit back and say to ourselves, "Well, I hope that they don't kill each other off. But if they do, it's not my fault."
Jonathan Kozol, educator and author
- - -
"The range of debate between the dominant U.S. [political] parties tends to closely resemble the range of debate within the business class."
Robert McChesney, author and media critic
- - -
"Quite simply, there can be no popular sovereignty without a real belief in the value of government. If government does not assume and carry out public responsibilities, less accountable institutions such as the corporation will do the job in their own self-interest."
Charles Derber, Corporation Nation
- - -
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
Benjamin Franklin, 1759
- - -
"If those in charge of our society - politicians, corporate executives, and owners of press and television - can dominate our ideas, they will be secure in their power. They will not need soldiers patrolling the streets. We will control ourselves."
Howard Zinn, historian and author
- - -
"The goal of conservative rulers around the world, led by those who occupy the seats of power in Washington, is the systematic rollback of democratic gains, public services, and common living standards around the world."
Michael Parenti
- - -
"To accept opinions is to gain the good solid feeling of being correct without having to think."
C. Wright Mills - from the book The Power Elite
- - -
"Propaganda is to a democracy what violence is to a dictatorship."
William Blum - Rogue State, on how governments control their citizens
- - -
"Conceit, arrogance and egotism are the essentials of patriotism.... Patriotism assumes that our globe is divided into little spots, each one surrounded by an iron gate. Those who had the fortune of being born on some particular spot, consider themselves better, nobler, grander, more intelligent than the living beings inhabiting any other spot. It is, therefore, the duty of everyone living on that chosen spot to fight, kill, and die in the attempt to impose his superiority upon all others."
Emma Goldman, American anarchist and feminist, 1869-1940
- - -
"The United States is not only number one in military power but also in the effectiveness of its propaganda system."
Edward S. Herman, political economist and author
- - -
"In the United States, both the upper levels of the Republican and Democratic Parties are in the pay of the corporate media and communication giants."
Robert McChesney and John Nichols, media critics and authors
- - -
"The most unpardonable sin in society is independence of thought."
Emma Goldman, American anarchist and feminist, 1869-1940
- - -
"For the last fifty years we've been supporting right-wing governments, and that is a puzzlement to me...I don't understand what there is in the American character... that almost automatically, even when we have a liberal President, we support fascist dictatorships or are tolerant towards them."
William Shirer, author
- - -
"No form of government, once in power, can be trusted to limit its own ambition, to extend freedom and to wither away. This means that it is up to the citizenry, those outside of power, to engage in permanent combat with the state, short of violent, escalatory revolution, but beyond the gentility of the ballot-box, to insure justice, freedom and well being."
Howard Zinn, on the need for dissent and non-violent protest
- - -
" I am astonished each time I come to the U.S. by the ignorance of a high percentage of the population, which knows almost nothing about Latin America or about the world. It's quite blind and deaf to anything that may happen outside the frontiers of the U.S."
Eduardo Galeano, Latin American writer and historian
- - -
" When everyone is thinking the same, no one is thinking."
John Wooden
- - -
"To provide its happy people with perpetual fun is now the deepest purpose of Western civilization."
Jeremy Seabrook, Third World Network
- - -
" With unfailing consistancy, U.S. intervention has been on the side of the rich and powerful of various nations at the expense of the poor and needy. Rather than strengthening democracies, U.S. leaders have overthrown numerous democratically elected governments or other populist regimes in dozens of countries ... whenever these nations give evidence of putting the interests of their people ahead of the interests of multinational corporate interests."
Michael Parenti, political scientist and author
- - -
" If an American is concerned only about his nation, he will not be concerned about the peoples of Asia, Africa, or South America. Is this not why nations engage in the madness of war without the slightest sense of penitence? Is this not why the murder of a citizen of your own nation is a crime, but the murder of citizens of another nation in war is an act of heroic virtue? "
Martin Luther King, Jr.
- - -
"The only thing worth globalizing is dissent."
Arundhati Roy, author
- - -
"There is no reason to accept the doctrines crafted to sustain power and privilege, or to believe that we are constrained by mysterious and unknown social laws. These are simply decisions made within institutions that are subject to human will and that must face the test of legitimacy. And if they do not meet the test, they can be replaced by other institutions that are more free and more just, as has happened often in the past."
Noam Chomsky, American linguist and US media and foreign policy critic
- - -
"What would have happened if millions of American and British people, struggling with coupons and lines at the gas stations, had learned that in 1942 Standard Oil of New Jersey [part of the Rockefeller empire] managers shipped the enemy's fuel through neutral Switzerland and that the enemy was shipping Allied fuel?
Suppose the public had discovered that the Chase Bank in Nazi-occupied Paris after Pearl Harbor was doing millions of dollars' worth of business with the enemy with the full knowledge of the head office in Manhattan [the Rockefeller family among others?] Or that Ford trucks were being built for the German occupation troops in France with authorization from Dearborn, Michigan? Or that Colonel Sosthenes Behn, the head of the international American telephone conglomerate ITT, flew from New York to Madrid to Berne during the war to help improve Hitler's communications systems and improve the robot bombs that devastated London? Or that ITT built the FockeWulfs that dropped bombs on British and American troops? Or that crucial balI bearings were shipped to Nazi-associated customers in Latin America with the collusion of the vice-chairman of the U.S. War Production Board in partnership with Goering's cousin in Philadelphia when American forces were desperately short of them? Or that such arrangements were known about in Washington and either sanctioned or deliberately ignored?"
Charles Higham, researcher, about U.S.- Nazi collaboration during WWII
- - -
"Four sorrows ... are certain to be visited on the United States. Their cumulative effect guarantees that the U.S. will cease to resemble the country outlined in the Constitution of 1787.
First, there will be a state of perpetual war, leading to more terrorism against Americans wherever they may be and a spreading reliance on nuclear weapons among smaller nations as they try to ward off the imperial juggernaut.
Second is a loss of democracy and Constitutional rights as the presidency eclipses Congress and is itself transformed from a co-equal 'executive branch' of government into a military junta.
Third is the replacement of truth by propaganda, disinformation, and the glorification of war, power, and the military legions.
Lastly, there is bankruptcy, as the United States pours its economic resources into ever more grandiose military projects and shortchanges the education, health, and safety of its citizens."
Chalmers Johnson, Sorrows of Empire
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"Corporations care very much about maintaining the myth that government is necessarily ineffective, except when it is spending money on the military-industrial complex, building prisons, or providing infrastructural support for the business sector."
Michael Lerner, philosopher, psychologist, author
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" If envy were the cause of terrorism, Beverly Hills [and] Fifth Avenue ... would have become targets long ago. "
Fareed Zakaria, Newsweek
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"Those in power are blind devotees to private enterprise. They accept that degree of socialism implicit in the vast subsidies to the military-industrial-complex, but not that type of socialism which maintains public projects for the disemployed and the unemployed alike."
William O. Douglas, former U.S. Supreme Court Justice, 1969
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"Leaders symbolize what the country stands for. As corruption becomes routine in Washington in both parties, it trickles down as a corrupting influence in everyone's lives... Democracy is the ultimate casualty, and the sapping of democratic life is the most serious contribution of corporate ascendancy to our spiritual decline. As democracy ebbs, Americans retreat into private cocoons, feeling helpless to make a difference... In a democracy, civic participation and the belief in one's ability to contribute to the common good is the most important guarantor of public morality. When that belief fades, so too does the vision of the common good itself."
Charles Derber, Corporation Nation
posted by Ingrid J. Jones at Friday, September 17, 2004
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