BEYOND THE MEDIA MATRIX

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THE INFORMATION PRESENTED BELOW MAY ASSIST YOU IN BREAKING THROUGH THE MEDIA MATRIX TO FIND EXPLANATIONS - CLOSER TO THE TRUTH - THAT THE GLOBAL OLIGARCHY-CONTROLLED CORPORATE MEDIA TRY VERY HARD TO PREVENT YOU FROM KNOWING.

THE SUBJECTS ARE LISTED ALPHABETICALLY.

FIAT MONEY SYSTEM

"The ultimate control over the world economy is achieved through command over money creation: through fiat money, by creating money from nothing. The "long war" is intended to instate the hegemony of the U.S.-EU financial system as well as the contours of "world government"."

Michel Chossudovsky

"When you or I write a check there must be sufficient funds in our account to cover the check, but when the Federal Reserve writes a check there is no bank deposit on which that check is drawn. When the Federal Reserve writes a check, it is creating money."

"Putting it simply" Boston Federal Reserve Bank

"If all the bank loans were paid, no one could have a bank deposit, and there would not be a dollar of coin or currency in circulation. This is a staggering thought. We are completely dependent on the commercial Banks. Someone has to borrow every dollar we have in circulation, cash or credit. If the Banks create ample synthetic money we are prosperous; if not, we starve. We are absolutely without a permanent money system. When one gets a complete grasp of the picture, the tragic absurdity of our hopeless position is almost incredible, but there it is. It is the most important subject intelligent persons can investigate and reflect upon. It is so important that our present civilization may collapse unless it becomes widely understood and the defects remedied very soon."

Robert H. Hemphill, former Credit Manager of Federal Reserve Bank, Atlanta, Ga., 1935

"The modern banking system manufactures money out of nothing. The process is perhaps the most astounding piece of sleight of hand that was ever invented... Bankers own the earth. Take it away from them but leave them the power to create money, and, with a flick of a pen, they will create enough money to buy it back again... If you want to continue to be the slaves of bankers and pay the cost of your own slavery, then let bankers continue to create money and control credit."

Sir Josiah Stamp, Director of the Bank of England, 1927

"[The] creation of paper claims greater than the reserves available means that bankers were creating money out of nothing. The same thing could be done in another way, not by note-issuing banks but by deposit banks. Deposit bankers discovered that orders and checks drawn against deposits by depositors and given to third persons were often not cashed by the latter but were deposited to their own accounts. Thus there were no actual movements of funds, and payments were made simply by bookkeeping transactions on the accounts. Accordingly, it was necessary for the banker to keep on hand in actual money (gold, certificates, and notes) no more than the fraction of deposits likely to be drawn upon and cashed; the rest could be used for loans, and if these loans were made by creating a deposit for the borrower, who in turn would draw checks upon it rather than withdraw it in money, such "created deposits" or loans could also be covered adequately by retaining reserves to only a fraction of their value. Such created deposits also were a creation of money out of nothing."

Carroll Quigley, historian and Georgetown University professor, in his book "Tragedy and Hope"

"When you or I write a check there must be sufficient funds in our account to cover the check, but when the Federal Reserve writes a check there is no bank deposit on which that check is drawn. When the Federal Reserve writes a check, it is creating money."

"Putting it simply" Boston Federal Reserve Bank

"If one creates money out of thin air and then passes on what did not exist before and charges interest on it and uses physical assets as collateral, then that is in reality a model for expropriation."

Franz Hormann, University of Vienna

"The founding of the Bank of England by William Paterson and his friends in 1694 is one of the great dates in world history. For generations men had sought to avoid the one drawback of gold, its heaviness, by using pieces of paper to represent specific pieces of gold. Today we call such pieces of paper gold certificates. Such a certificate entitles its bearer to exchange it for its piece of gold on demand, but in view of the convenience of paper, only a small fraction of certificate holders ever did make such demands. It early became clear that gold need be held on hand only to the amount needed to cover the fraction of certificates likely to he presented for payment; accordingly, the rest of the gold could be used for business purposes, or, what amounts to the same thing, a volume of certificates could be issued greater than the volume of gold reserved for payment of demands against them. Such an excess volume of paper claims against reserves we now call bank notes. In effect, this creation of paper claims greater than the reserves available means that bankers were creating money out of nothing."

Carroll Quigley, historian and Georgetown University professor, in his book "Tragedy and Hope"

"In Pennsylvania in the first half of the 18th century, the provincial government not only printed its own money but owned its own bank. Colonial scrip was printed and lent to farmers at 5% interest, and this money recycled back to the government as it was repaid. The money went out and came back in a circular flow, preventing inflation... The Bank of Pennsylvania issued its fiat currency as loans for domestic use, loans on which not only the principal but the interest came back to the government. Since the provincial government had the power to issue the local scrip, it could issue some extra to meet its expenses; and this money filtered through the economy to provide the additional sums needed to cover the interest on the loans. During the time this provincial system was in place, the Pennsylvania colonists paid no taxes, there was no government debt, and price inflation did not result."

Ellen Brown, 2009

"The counterfeit option is available only if a country happens to be in the unique position of having its currency accepted as the medium of international trade, as has been the case for the United States. In that event it is possible to create money out of nothing, and other nations have no choice but to accept it... The result is that America has continued to finance its trade deficit with fiat money - counterfeit, if you will - a feat which no other nation in the world could hope to accomplish."

G. Edward Griffin

"During the Civil War, [President] Lincoln issued Greenbacks. That was a form of fiat money in an emergency situation, but what it did, partially at least, was to take the control of the U.S. debt temporarily out of the hands of London and New York banks. That displeased London to an extraordinary extent."

F. William Engdahl, 2011

FINANCIAL CAPITALISM

"The powers of financial capitalism [international bankers] had a far-reaching aim, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole. This system was to be controlled in a feudalist fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert, by secret agreements arrived at in frequent private meetings and conferences. The apex of the system was to be the Bank for International Settlements [BIS] in Basel, Switzerland, a private bank owned and controlled by the world's central banks which were themselves private corporations."

Carroll Quigley "Tragedy and Hope"

"Financial markets acting like a global supra-government oust entrenched regimes where normal political processes could not do so. They force austerity, banking bail-outs and other major policy changes. Their influence dwarfs multilateral institutions such as the International Monetary Fund. Indeed, leaving aside unusable nuclear weapons, they have become the most powerful force on earth."

Roger Altman, former Deputy Secretary of the Treasury, Financial Times, 2011

"Since 2008, bad debt from banks, corporations, and private investors was in transferred from the balance sheets of private banks to the balance sheets of the central banks as a result of nine years of bailout via QE (quantitative easing), zero interest rate free money, and other policies of the central banks. The central banks bailed out the capitalist system in 2008-09 by shifting the bad debts to themselves. In the course of the last 9 years, the private system loaded itself up on still more debt than it had in 2007. Can the central banks, already bloated with $20 trillion bail out bankers and friends once again? That's the question. Attempting to unload the $20 trillion to make room for the next bailout-as the central banks now propose to do-may result, however, in precipitating the next crisis.
... After eight years of treating symptoms and not the disease, the global financial system has become addicted to super-low rates and to continued central bank excess liquidity provisioning. What started in 2008 as a massive, somewhat coordinated central bank lender of last resort experiment - i.e. global bank bailout - has over the past eight years evolved into a more or less permanent subsidisation of the private banking and financial systems by central banks. The system has become addicted to free money.
... What happened was an unprecedented acceleration in financial asset markets as equity and bond prices surged for eight years, high end real estate prices rose to prior levels, derivatives boomed, gold and crypto-currencies escalated in value, and income inequality soared to record levels - all fueled by the massive $10 trillion central bank liquidity injections that drove interest rates to zero or below."

Jack Rasmus , 2017

"American history over the previous century [19th century] had been driven an increasingly powerful cartel of financial elites and the large industrial trusts they controlled [The Money Trust]. Their interests, rather than the interests of the nation and the population as a whole, defined the strategic priorities of that powerful cartel. Their overwhelming control of the national media allowed their propaganda experts to portray their interests as 'America's interests.' Most Americans, wanting to think the best of their country, bought the propaganda.
... Their economic model was that of the British East India Company or, more accurately, of the Barbary pirates, looting and plundering to exhaustion one region after the next to prop up their empire, leaving behind as little of value as possible. For the Rockefellers ... the entire world was considered their 'frontier.' By portraying their mission after 1948 as a Cold War fought by 'American democracy' against 'Godless Communism' they gave the cause of advancing American interests a messianic religious cover that was astonishingly effective for decades."

F. William Engdahl in his book "Gods of Money: Wall Street and the Death of the American Century"

"Countries that do not follow the dictates of the "financial market" are punished with lower credit ratings, higher interest, speculative attacks, and in the cases of Greece and Italy in November of 2011, their democratically-elected governments are simply removed and replaced with technocratic administrations made up of bankers and economists who then push through austerity and adjustment policies that impoverish and exploit their populations... and if your elected governments do not succumb to "market discipline," they will be removed and replaced in what ­ under any other circumstances ­ is referred to as a 'coup.'"

Roger Altman, former Deputy Secretary of the Treasury, Financial Times, 2011

"The world financial system is now as addicted to drug monies as a junkie is to heroin. Without the regular flow of those monies, the system would collapse."

DOPE, INC.: the international drug cartel, money-laundering, and state power, 1992

"The U.S. monetary system is supported by the most powerful military power on earth. The dollar is backed by U.S. military might, which constitutes a means for displacing national currencies and imposing the U.S. dollar. In this regard, the Federal Reserve's overwhelming powers of money creation constitute an essential lever of an imperial monetary agenda.
... The Western banking system controls a worldwide electronic banking network. The control of money creation at a world level constitutes the ultimate instrument of economic and social domination. The creation of fiat money provides a command over the real economies of countries worldwide. The ultimate lever of the U.S.-NATO imperial design is to override and destroy national currencies."

Michel Chossudovsky in his book "The Global Economic Crisis"

"The $500 billion international narcotics trade today is second only to the world oil trade. Total world trade volume is $1.7 trillion... The question that emerges is: "How is it possible that $500 billion and up in dirty money, crisscrossing international borders, can remain outside the control of the law?" Only one possible answer can be admitted: A huge chunk of international banking and related financial operations has been created solely to manage dirty money."

DOPE, INC.: the international drug cartel, money-laundering, and state power, 1992

"Financial manipulation is an integral part of the New World Order. It constitutes a powerful means to accumulate wealth. It has contributed to destabilizing the U.S. fiscal structure. Under the present political arrangement, those responsible for monetary policy are quite deliberately serving the interests of the financiers, to the detriment of working people, leading to economic dislocation, unemployment and mass poverty.
What we are dealing with is the fraudulent confiscation of lifelong savings and pension funds and the appropriation of tax revenues to finance the bank bailouts... What is at stake is then outright criminalization of the financial system, financial theft on an unprecedented scale."

Michel Chossudovsky

"Our global system is one of state-capitalism, where the state and corporate interests are interdependent and mutually beneficial, at least for those in power."

Roger Altman, former Deputy Secretary of the Treasury, Financial Times, 2011

"Financial markets acting like a global supra-government oust entrenched regimes where normal political processes could not do so. They force austerity, banking bail-outs and other major policy changes. Their influence dwarfs multilateral institutions such as the International Monetary Fund. Indeed, leaving aside unusable nuclear weapons, they have become the most powerful force on earth. They oust entrenched regimes where normal political processes could not do so. They force austerity, banking bail-outs and other major policy changes. Their influence dwarfs multilateral institutions such as the International Monetary Fund. Indeed, leaving aside unusable nuclear weapons, they have become the most powerful force on earth."

Roger Altman, former Deputy Secretary of the Treasury under the Clinton administration in an article in the Financial Times, December 2011

"By early 2000, the process of global financial deregulation was in many regards a fait accompli. Wall Street routinely invaded country after country. The domestic banking system was put on the auction block and reorganized under the surveillance of external creditors. National financial institutions were systematically destabilized and driven out of business; mass unemployment and poverty are the invariable results."

Michel Chossudovsky

"The small, but politically powerful, minority of financiers and industrialists is interested in various forms of economic imperialism. By a judicious use of their resources, the capitalists of highly industrialized countries stake out claims for themselves within nominally independent countries. Those claims are then represented as being the claims of the respective nations, and the quarrels between the various financial interests concerned become quarrels between states. The peace of the world has frequently been endangered, in order that oil magnates might grow a little richer."

Aldous Huxley in his book "Ends and Means", 1937

FOOD AND DRUG ADMINISTRATION (FDA)

"In 1960, Senate investigators discovered that FDA officials had been receiving financial incentives from the companies they were supposed to regulate... In 1969, a congressional study revealed that thirty-seven of forty-nine top FDA officials who left the agency took jobs with food and drug companies."

Jeffrey M. Smith in his book "Seeds of Deception", 2003

"People think the FDA is protecting them. It isn't. What the FDA is doing and what the public thinks it's doing are as different as night and day."

former FDA Commissioner Dr. Herbert Ley said in 1969

"The Food and Drug Administration is so closely linked to the biotech industry now that it could be described as their Washington branch office."

Betty Martini of the consumer group Mission Possible

"The GAO [Government Accounting Office] found that more than half of the drugs approved by the FDA between 1976 and 1985 had severe or fatal side effects that had not been detected during the agency's review and testing."

Jeffrey M. Smith in his book "Seeds of Deception", 2003

"Thimserosal used as a preservative in vaccines is likely related to the autism epidemic. This epidemic in all probability may have been prevented or curtailed had the FDA not been asleep at the switch regarding the lack of safety data regarding injected thimerosal and the sharp rise of infant exposure to his known neurotoxin. Our public health agencies' failure to act is indicative of institutional malfeasance for self-protection and misplaced protectionism of the pharmaceutical industry."

Subcommittee on Human Rights and Wellness in the House's Committee on Government Reform, May 2003

"In 1960, Senate investigators discovered that FDA officials had been receiving financial incentives from the companies they were supposed to regulate... In 1969, a congressional study revealed that thirty-seven of forty-nine top FDA officials who left the agency took jobs with food and drug companies.
... [In 1976] several FDA officials and drug company executives were convicted on corruption, racketeering, and similar charges for a bribery scheme that went on from 1989-1992. Generic drug companies paid off FDA officials to approve their drugs and block approval of competitors' drugs. The generic drug companies also withheld data and even substituted other companies' brand name drugs for evaluation, instead of risking an evaluation of their own product."

Jeffrey M. Smith in his book "Seeds of Deception", 2003

"The thing that bugs me is that people think the FDA [Food and Drug Administration]is protecting them. It isn't. What the FDA is doing and what the public thinks it's doing are as different as night and day."

former FDA Commissioner Dr. Herbert Ley, 1969

"The FDA's [Food and Drug Administration] failures have become a scientific breakdown that threatens the safety of America's food supply generally, and dairy products in particular .... As a result of [their] failure to act, the nation's milk supply - as well as products such as infant formula, ice cream, cheese and yogurt that are made from milk - is highly contaminated with unknown levels of animal-drug residues that have not been shown to be safe."

FDA chemist Joseph Settapani

"References to the unintended negative effects of bioengineering [at the FDA in the 1990s] were progressively deleted from drafts of the policy statement, and a final statement was issued claiming (a) that [GM] foods are no riskier than others and (b) that the agency has no information to the contrary."

public interest attorney Steven Druker, who has studied the FDA's internal files

"At the top [of the FDA] there are political appointees not necessarily bound by science, but often influenced by other agendas. Many pass through the agency at a rapid clip, moving from one regulated enterprise to another. At the same time, some of the finest scientists and public servants that I have ever met worked at the FDA. Unfortunately many of them are often hired away by universities, nonprofit groups, and other public health agencies, leaving a less dedicated and less competent residue of people not highly sought after outside of government."

James Turner, long-time FDA watchdog and author of the book "The Chemical Feast: The Nader Report on the Food and Drug Administration"

"There seemed to be a trend [at the FDA] toward approval at any price. It went from a university-like setting where there was independent scientific review to an atmosphere of 'approve, approve, approve... the thinking is, 'How many things can we approve this year?' Somewhere along the way they abdicated their responsibility to the public welfare."

FDA veterinarian Richard Burroughs describing what the saw at the FDA

"The [Government Accounting Office] GAO [found] that more than half of the drugs approved by the FDA between 1976 and 1985 had severe or fatal side effects that had not been detected during the agency's review and testing."

Jeffrey M. Smith in his book "Seeds of Deception", 2003

FOREIGN AID

"In 1987, [the United States] allocated $13 billion, or only 0.19 percent of its gross national product, for foreign aid, but $4.8 billion of it went for military equipment. Only $1.5 billion was for food, $3.2 billion for economic security, and $2.5 billion for development assistance. Furthermore, over half the economic and security aid was disbursed to Egypt and Israel. (In 1980, U.S. aid to Israel per capita was 120 times the U.S. aid to India.)
... In 1986, U.S. foreign aid expenditure totaled $15.9 billion, while Americans spent $10.3 billion on movies and theaters, $34.2 billion on tobacco, and $59 billion on alcohol. An expenditure of five cents per person would save the sight of 100,000 children who are blinded annually because of a vitamin A deficiency, and a mere three dollars each would immunize them against poliomyelitis, tetanus, whooping cough, diphtheria, and measles. One year's expenditure by the U.S. cosmetics industry would provide 1.6 billion people with sanitation.
In percentage of GNP given away as foreign aid, Norway tops all countries, with 1.1 percent. The Netherlands spends 0.98 percent. The United States ranks next to last out of eighteen countries, with 0.19 percent of its GNP."

Helen Caldicott in her book "If You Love this Planet"

"According to polls, Americans believe that foreign aid constitutes roughly 20 percent of the federal budget... in fact the United States provides less in foreign aid (as a percentage of GNP) than any other industrialized nation: a mere sliver of one percent."

Miriam Pemberton and John Feffer in their book "Power Trip"

"According to the United Nations, developing countries send developed countries ten times as much money through unequal trade and financial relations as they receive through foreign aid."

Eduardo Galeano in his book "Upside Down"

"The United States is last among the industrialized nations in the amount of foreign aid we distribute per capita.
... The United States gives less than one half of one percent of our $1.6 trillion budget to foreign aid, but we are still number one in providing military aid to developing countries.

Michael Moore in his book "Downsize This"

"Total American spending on nonmilitary foreign aid in 2002 represented a mere 0.15 percent of gross domestic product, placing the United States last among twenty-one industrialized countries.
On a more comprehensive measurement, the 2003 Commitment to Development Index prepared by the Center for Global Development and Foreign Policy magazine, gauging whether twenty-one countries' aid, trade, immigration, investment, peacekeeping, and environmental policies help or hurt poor countries, the United States finished next to last."

William Schulz in his book "Tainted Legacy"

"Foreign aid has been perfected so that it subsidizes corporate U.S. agriculture while preventing poor countries from developing profitable agriculture or feeding themselves."

Nicholas Von Hoffman in his book "Hoax"

"The Council for a Livable World Education Fund reports that most U.S. aid is for the military of the recipient nations and that 90 percent of all American foreign aid has gone to the Middle East, with most of that to Israel or regimes like Egypt's, which keep their restive Islamic masses under control."

Ben Bagdikian in his book "New Media Monopoly"

"World Health Organization (WHO} report shows the share of GNP given in foreign aid by advanced countries - the United States ranks dead last."

Paul Krugman in his book "Great Unraveling"

"Americans always overestimate the amount of foreign aid we give. In recent national polls, people have guessed, on average, that between 15 and 24 percent of the federal budget goes for foreign aid. In reality, it is less than 1 percent. The U.N. has set a foreign-aid goal for the rich countries of .7 percent of gross national product. A few countries have attained that modest goal, all of them Scandinavian. The U.S. has never come close. Indeed, it comes in dead last, consistently, in the yearly totals of rich-country foreign aid as a percentage of GNP. In 2000, we gave .1 percent."

journalist William Finnegan

"Economic hit men (EHMs) are highly paid professionals who cheat countries around the globe out of trillions of dollars. They funnel money from the World Bank, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), and other foreign "aid" organizations into the coffers of huge corporations and the pockets of a few wealthy families who control the planet's natural resources. Their tools include fraudulent financial reports, rigged elections, payoffs, extortion, sex, and murder. They play a game as old as empire, but one that has taken on new and terrifying dimensions during this time of globalization."

John Perkins in his book "Confessions of Economic Hit Man"

"Foreign aid is when the poor people of a rich country give money to the rich people of a poor country."

Michael Parenti in his book "Against Empire"

"Today Israel - a country of 6.5 million people-receives 33 percent of the entire foreign-aid budget of the American empire ($3 billion a year). Another 20 percent of the budget goes to Egypt (in part as a payment for not attacking Israel), and Jordan is the third largest recipient. In short, more than half the budget concerns the security of Israel. The average African receives 10 cents a year from U.S. foreign aid. The average Israeli receives $500 a year. Only 0.2 percent of the U.S. GNP goes to foreign aid-by this measure America ranks last out of the twenty-two wealthiest countries in the world."

Cornel West in his book "Democracy Matters"

FOREIGN POLICY

"Since World War Two the United States has attempted to overthrow more than fifty foreign governments, it has dropped bombs on the people of around thirty countries, has attempted to assassinate some sixty foreign leaders, helped to suppress dozens of populist or nationalist movements, has tortured many thousands, and seriously and illegally intervened in one way or another in virtually every country on the planet, in the process of which the U.S. has caused the end of life for several million people, and condemned many millions more to a life of agony and despair."

author William Blum, in a speech at the University of Vermont, November 2, 2007

"At the end of World War II, we were militarily dominant, economically dominant, and we enjoyed a remarkable international credibility. With a modicum of restraint and self-confidence we could have laid the foundations of lasting world peace. Instead, we exaggerated the challenge of a Soviet Union which had just lost 70,000 villages, 1,710 towns, 4.7 million houses, and 20 million people in the war."

former CIA agent John Stockwell

"Which nation's leaders since 1945 have murdered, maimed, made homeless, tortured, assassinated and impoverished the largest number of civilians who were not its own citizens? I have asked this question of Americans in every walk of life since I discovered the bombing of Laos in 1969. It's a simple matter of fact, not involving judgments of right and wrong, and I remain astonished at how most answer "the Russians," "the Chinese," or just have no idea that their leaders have killed more noncitizen civilians than the rest of the world's leaders combined since 1945."

Fred Branfman

"Since the anticommunism hysteria in the years following the Second World War, a bipartisan consensus has existed on foreign policy. Meaningful political discourse has been almost absent about foreign policy issues. So many foreign policy decisions have been placed beyond public scrutiny, that almost all of what passes as official information about foreign policy is manufactured by government agencies for its propaganda effect."

Daniel Hellinger and Dennis R. Judd Brooks in their book "The Democratic Facade"

"Any organization that aspires to be heard on foreign policy knows that to touch the live wire of Israel and American Jews guarantees a quick trip to obscurity. Jewish groups and deep pocket individual donors not only control the politicians, they own and run the media and entertainment industries, meaning that no one will hear about or from the offending party ever again."

Philip Giraldi, 2017

"The so-called "defense" corporations are multinational conglomerates that have no great loyalty to the United States. They are in fact no longer U.S. corporations but transnational entities loyal only to themselves."

former CIA agent John Stockwell

"The greatest myth concerning American foreign policies is the deeply-held belief that no matter what the United States does abroad, no matter how bad it may look, no matter what horror may result, the American government means well. American leaders may make mistakes, they may blunder, they may even on the odd occasion cause more harm than good, but they do mean well. Their intentions are always honorable. Of that Americans are certain. They genuinely wonder why the rest of the world can't see how kind and generous and self-sacrificing America has been."

William Blum

"Since the Bush-Cheney Administration took office in January 2001, controlling the major oil and natural gas fields of the world had been the primary, though undeclared, priority of US foreign policy... Not only the invasion of Iraq, but also the toppling of the Taliban in Afghanistan, had nothing to do with 'democracy,' and everything to do with pipeline control across Central Asia and the militarization of the Middle East."

F. William Engdahl

"The major function of secrecy in Washington is to keep the U.S. people from knowing what the nation's leaders are doing."

former CIA agent John Stockwell

"The United States became the target of terrorists on 9/11 not because of the country's freedom and democracy, but because U.S. Middle East policy has had nothing to do with freedom and democracy."

Stephen Zunes

"From 1945 to 2003, the United States attempted to overthrow more than 40 foreign governments, and to crush more than 30 populist-nationalist movements fighting against intolerable regimes. In the process, the US bombed some 25 countries, caused the end of life for several million people, and condemned many millions more to a life of agony and despair."

William Blum in his book "Killing Hope"

"The United States is cast in the role of Praetorian Guard, protecting the interests of the global financial order against fractious elements in the Third World."

former CIA agent John Stockwell

"In the last decades of the twentieth century, self-interest, sovereignty and taking care of number one became the primary criteria for any serious provision of support or resources to the globe's trouble spots. If the country in question is of any possible strategic value to the world powers, then it seems that everything from covert operations to the outright use of overwhelming force is fair game. If it is not, indifference is the order of the day."

former Lieutenant-General Romeo Dallaire who commanaded the UN peacekeping force in Rwanda in 1993-1994

"Our leaders are cruel because only those willing to be inordinately cruel and remorseless can hold positions of leadership in the foreign policy establishment. People capable of expressing a full human measure of compassion and empathy toward faraway powerless strangers do not become president of the United States, or vice president, or secretary of state, or national security adviser."

William Blum

"The U.S. has over 200 incidents in which it have put our troops into other countries to force them to our will."

former CIA agent John Stockwell

"Mass graves and cemeteries everywhere are filled with people which have been killed instead of helped, and the US will never again be regarded as benevolent: the world has seen enough and knows the US is a bully."

Seymour Hersh, 2005

"Do American leaders really believe the utterances that emanate from their mouths? When the words "god" and "prayer" are regularly invoked in their talks, while American Hellfire missiles are sent screaming into a city center or a village marketplace teeming with life ...when they carry on endlessly about democracy and freedom, while American soldiers are smashing down doors, dragging off the men, humiliating the women, traumatizing the children... when they proclaim the liberation of a people and the bringing forth of a better life, while vast quantities of American depleted uranium are exploding into a fine vapor which will poison the air, the soil, the blood, and the genes forever."

William Blum in is book "Freeing the World to Death"

"Short, successful military adventures are as effective as the Super Bowl in diverting people's attention from unpleasant truths."

former CIA agent John Stockwell

"U.S. leaders have nothing against those they regularly kill and impoverish... But they are products of a system that is indifferent to the fate of the "unpeople", whether in the Shah's Iran, Somoza's Nicaragua, Suharto's Indonesia or the many other dictatorial regimes that enjoyed [US] support."

Fred Branfman

"Doing the right thing is not a principle of American foreign policy, not an ideal or a goal of policy in and of itself. If it happens that doing the right thing coincides with, or is irrelevant to, Washington's overriding international ambitions, American officials have no problem walking the high moral ground. But this is rarely the case. ... the engine of 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."

William Blum in his book "Rogue State"

"Over the long haul, since World War II, oil interests have dictated the general disposition of U.S. foreign policy."

Peter Dale Scott

"American leaders are perhaps not so much immoral as they are amoral. It's not that they take pleasure in causing so much death and suffering. It's that they just don't care ... the same that could be said about a sociopath. As long as the death and suffering advance the agenda of the empire, as long as the right people and the right corporations gain wealth and power and privilege and prestige, as long as the death and suffering aren't happening to them or people close to them ... then they just don't care about it happening to other people, including the American soldiers whom they throw into wars and who come home-the ones who make it back alive-with Agent Orange or Gulf War Syndrome eating away at their bodies. American leaders would not be in the positions they hold if they were bothered by such things."

William Blum in his book "Killing Hope"

"U.S. leaders have nothing against those they regularly kill and impoverish. On the contrary, they often exhibit compassion for them. But they are products of a system that is indifferent to the fate of the "unpeople" in the dictatorial regimes that enjoyed their support."

Fred Branfman

"Enemies are necessary for the wheels of the US military machine to turn."

former CIA agent John Stockwell

"The engine of American foreign policy has been fueled not by a devotion to any kind of morality, but rather by the necessity to serve other imperatives, which can be summarized as follows: making the world safe for American corporations; enhancing the financial statements of defense contractors at home who have contributed generously to members of congress; preventing the rise of any society that might serve as a successful example of an alternative to the capitalist model; extending political and economic hegemony over as wide an area as possible, as befits a "great power."

William Blum, 1999

"Tallying only the death toll inflicted by US. armed forces or U.S.-backed surrogate forces around the world, the estimates are as follows: 3,000,000 in Vietnam, 1,000,000 in Cambodia, 1,000,000 in Mozambique, 500,000 to 1,000,000 in Indonesia, 600,000 in Angola, 300,000 in Laos, 250,000 in East Timor, 200,000 in Iraq, 200,000 in Afghanistan, 150,000 in Guatemala, 100,000 in Nicaragua, 90,000 in El Salvador, and tens of thousands in Chile, Argentina, Zaire, Iran (under the Shah), Colombia, Bolivia, Brazil, Panama, Somalia, South Yemen, Western Sahara, and other countries."

Michael Parenti in his book " Dirty Truths"

"American foreign-policy makers are exquisitely attuned to the rise of a government, or a movement that might take power, that will not lie down and happily become an American client state, that will not look upon the free market or the privatization of the world known as "globalization", that will not change its laws to favor foreign investment, that will not be unconcerned about the effects of foreign investment upon the welfare of its own people, that will not produce primarily for export, that will not allow asbestos, banned pesticides and other products restricted in the developed world to be dumped onto their people, that will not easily tolerate the International Monetary Fund or the World Trade Organization inflicting a scorched-earth policy upon the country's social services or standard of living, that will not allow an American or NATO military installation upon its soil... Given the proper pretext, such bad examples have to be reduced to basket cases, or, where feasible, simply overthrown."

William Blum in his book "Rogue State"

"History is the history of war, of leaders of countries finding reasons and rationales to send the young people off to fight."

former CIA agent John Stockwell

"In foreign policy administrations from Truman to Bush were all habitually interventionist, brutal, fanatically anti-communist, concerned mainly with making the world safe for US multinational corporations, and unconcerned about human rights."

William Blum in his book "Freeing the World to Death"

FREE MARKET AND FREE TRADE

"The greater percentage of global trade is controlled by powerful multinational enterprises. Within such a context, the notion of free trade on which the rules of the WTO [World Trade Organization] are constructed is a fallacy. The net result is that for certain sectors of humanity -- particularly the developing countries of the South -- the WTO is a veritable nightmare."

United Nations Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights, June 2000

"Manufacturing, not trade, is the main source of prosperity."

Ravi Batra in his book "The Pooring of America"

"The increased concentration of corporate farming and the dismantling of state programs that sustained the agricultural sector have driven small farmers out of business all over the planet, while making many of those who remain ever more dependent on expensive chemical pesticides, fertilizer, and seeds. For instance, as a result of the North American Free Trade Agreement, Mexico lost 1.3 million agricultural jobs, forcing many desperate small farmers to cross into the United States as migrant workers. Even more strikingly, the continent of Africa went from a net exporter of food in the late 1960s to a net importer today -- thanks to the World Bank and the WTO riding roughshod through the continent in the same cavalry unit as the four horsemen of the apocalypse. The Bank's "structural adjustment programs" and the WTO's "tariff reductions" don't quite have the ring of war, pestilence, famine, and death, but they have been just as devastating."

John Feffer, 2008

"Washington's idealized picture of how free markets operate (as if such a thing ever existed) promised that countries outside the United States would get rich faster, approaching U.S.-style living standards if they let global investors buy their key industries and basic infrastructure. For half a century, this neoliberal model has been a hypocritical exercise in poor policy at best, and deception at worst, to convince other economies to impose self-destructive financial and tax policies, enabling U.S. investors to swoop in and buy their key assets at distress prices."

Michael Hudson and Jeffrey Sommers, 2008

"Free trade has done to America what even the Great Depression could not do. Even during the economic cataclysm of the 1930s, earnings rose with productivity because the United States was still a closed economy with high tariffs. But since 1973, earnings have declined while productivity has continued to rise. Eventually, free trade could be more devastating than even the Great Depression."

Ravi Batra in his book "The Pooring of America"

"The U.S. economy rose to dominance as a result of Progressive Era regulatory reforms prior to World War I, reinforced by popular New Deal reforms put in place in the Great Depression. Neoliberal economics was promoted as a means of undoing these reforms. By undoing them, the Washington Consensus would deny to foreign countries the development strategy that has best succeeded in creating thriving domestic markets, rising productivity, capital formation and living standards."

Michael Hudson and Jeffrey Sommers, 2008

"Practically all of today's developed countries, including Britain and the US, the supposed homes of the free market and free trade, have become rich on the basis of policy recipes that go against the orthodoxy of neo-liberal economics.
Today's rich countries used protection and subsidies, while discriminating against foreign investors - all anathema to today's economic orthodoxy and now severely restricted by multilateral treaties, like the WTO Agreements, and proscribed by aid donors and international financial organizations (notably the IMF and the World Bank)."

Ha-Joon Chang in his book "Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism"

"Today, there are certainly some people in the rich countries who preach free market and free trade to the poor countries in order to capture larger shares of the latter's markets and to preempt the emergence of possible competitors."

Ha-Joon Chang in his book "Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism"

"Neo-liberal economic orthodoxy: in order to fit into it, a country needs to privatize state-owned enterprises, maintain low inflation, reduce the size of government bureaucracy, balance the budget (if not running a surplus), liberalize trade, deregulate foreign investment, deregulate capital markets, make their currency convertible, reduce corruption and privatize pensions."

Ha-Joon Chang in his book "Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism"

"Practically all of today's rich countries used nationalistic policies (e.g., tariffs, subsidies, restrictions on foreign trade) to promote their infant industries.
... The two champions of free trade, Britain and the US, were not only not free trade economies, but had been the two most protectionist economies among rich countries until they each in succession became the world's dominant industrial power."

Ha-Joon Chang in his book "Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism"

"The elite economists backed free trade in full knowledge that it creates poverty in America."

Ravi Batra in his book "The New Golden Age", 2007

"The TRIPS (Trade-related Intellectual Property Rights) agreement, strengthened the protection of patents and other intellectual property rights. Unlike trade in goods and services, where everyone has something to sell, this is an area where developed countries are almost always sellers and developing countries buyers. Therefore, increasing the protection for intellectual property rights means that the cost is mainly borne by the developing nations."

Ha-Joon Chang in his book "Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism"

GENETICALLY-ENGINEERED FOOD
genetically-modified organisms (GMO)

"The hope of the biotech industry is that over time, the market is so flooded that there's nothing you can do about it. You just sort of surrender."

a biotech consultant - in the book "Seeds of Deception" by Jeffrey M. Smith

"The project of making GMO crops the dominant basic crops on the world agricultural market was the creation of a new enforcement institution which would stand above national governments. That new institution, which opened its doors in 1995 was to be called the World Trade Organization (WTO)."

F. William Engdahl

"Dr. Arpad Pusztai, the world's expert on lectins, found that rats which were fed GM potatoes suffered damaged immune systems... Compared to rats fed a non-GM control diet, some of the GM-fed rats had smaller, less developed brains, livers, and testicles. Other rats had enlarged tissues, including the pancreas and intestines. Some showed partial atrophy of the liver. What's more, significant structural changes and a proliferation of cells in the stomach and intestines of GM-fed rats may have signaled an increased potential for cancer.
... In the end only the rats that ate the GM potatoes suffered the serious negative effects. From the evidence, it was clear that the lectins were not the major cause of the health damage. Rather, there was some effect from the process of genetic engineering itself that caused the damaged organs and immune dysfunction of the adolescent rats.
... Pusztai knew that his results strongly suggested that the GM foods already approved and being eaten by hundreds of millions of people every day might be creating similar health problems in people, especially in children.
... Furthermore, if human beings developed problems similar to his rats, it could take years to appear and it would be highly unlikely for anyone to suspect GM foods as the cause.

Jeffrey M. Smith in his book "Seeds of Deception", 2003

"Population reduction and genetically engineered crops were clearly part of [a] broad strategy: the drastic reduction of the world's population. It was in fact a sophisticated form of what the Pentagon termed biological warfare, promulgated under the name of "solving the world hunger problem."

F. William Engdahl

"Researchers at Cornell University announced that monarch butterflies died when they came into contact with pollen from corn engineered to create its own pesticide."

Jeffrey M. Smith in his book "Seeds of Deception", 2003

"One long-standing project of the US Government has been to perfect a genetically-modified variety of corn, the diet staple in Mexico and many other Latin American countries. The corn has been field tested in tests financed by the US Department of Agriculture along with a small California bio-tech company named Epicyte. The purpose of the Epicyte gene is to render anyone who eats the corn unable to reproduce. The corn was test grown in open fields in Southern California, and we know from other contaminations that pollen does not stay in those test fields. If that Epicyte gene has broken into the wild, eventually all corn will be exposed, and all humans eating that corn will be sterile. While apparently intended for third world countries to reduce their population, the plummeting birth rates in the US suggest this particular Frankenstein's Produce has turned on its creator."

World Fertility Report by the United Nations, 2009

"In Europe, nearly the entire food manufacturing and retail industry has banned GM ingredients, and the majority of the world's population are covered by restrictions on the sale and use of GM crops."

Jeffrey M. Smith in his book "Seeds of Deception", 2003

"Spermicides hidden in GMO corn provided to starving Third World populations through the generosity of the Gates Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation and Kofi Annan's AGRA or vaccines that contain undisclosed sterilization agents are just two documented cases of using vaccines or GMO seeds to "reduce population"."

www.exohuman.com/

"The World Health Organization, the World Bank, the UN environmental department, the UN Population Fund, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation are closing in on all of humanity with mass-scale vaccination programmes and genetically engineered food."

Jurriaan Maessen, 2012

"In the last four or five years ... I became very concerned. The problems with GM foods may be irreversible and the true effects may only be seen well in the future.
The situation is like the tobacco industry. They knew about it but they suppressed that information. They created misleading evidence that showed that the problem wasn't so serious. And all the time they knew how bad it was. Tobacco is bad enough. But genetic modification, if it is going to be problematic, if it is going to cause us real health problems, then tobacco will be nothing in comparison with this. The size of genetic modification and problems it may cause us are tremendous.
If we injure the health prospects of humanity in this and the next and the next generation, then I think those people should be made accountable for the crimes they committed."

Dr. Arpad Pusztai, researcher and the world's expert on lectins

"Genetically modified organisms (GMO) which are used to create new food seeds and crops, are being tied to use as a potential biological weapon in creating infertility in places around the world.
... The international organization Codex, which is seeking to regulate every food, mineral, and herb in the world used for consumption, does not consider GMO created products as food, and thus they are being placed in a separate sphere of attributes that can be used for alternative functions, including birth control and creating infertility in a nation or population.
... Creating a food source or seed meant to be eaten by man as a dietary staple which has been modified to bring sterility or outright birth control is in essence, creating and distributing a biological weapon for the sole purpose of lowering birth rates and populations in one or more locations. Since GMO based products are not considered food according to the UN Codex, but are being allowed into the world's diet as a consumable, creates many questions as to the real purpose of expanding GMO use into the food supply."

www.examiner.com

"GM foods are a regular part of the U.S. diet. Approximately 80 percent of the soy and 38 percent of the corn planted in the U.S. in 2003 is genetically engineered. Derivatives from these two crops are found in about 70 percent of processed foods. In addition, 70 percent of the cotton crop and more than 60 percent of the canola crop, both used for cooking oil, are also genetically modified. About 75 percent of these crops are engineered to withstand otherwise deadly applications of an herbicide, 17 percent produce their own insecticide, and 8 percent are engineered to do both. There are also hundreds of foods produced with genetically engineered cooking agents, food additives, and enzymes, as well as varieties of GM squash and papaya. And there are dairy products from cows injected with a GM bovine growth hormone. All these are sold without labels identifying them as GMOs."

Jeffrey M. Smith in his book "Seeds of Deception", 2003

"We have a hothouse filled with corn plants that make anti-sperm antibodies."

Epicyte president Mitch Hein, 2001

"Research on GMOs is now taboo. You can't find money for it. We tried everything to find more financing, but we were told that because there are no data in the scientific literature proving that GMOs cause problems, there was no point in working on it. People don't want to find answers to troubling questions. It's the result of widespread fear of Monsanto and of GMOs in general."

Manuela Malatesta, researcher at he University of Pavia, 2006

"The introduction of GMOs into Argentina came about with no public or even parliamentary debate. There is still no law regulating their marketing... After they were authorized in 1996, [Monsanto's] RR soybeans spread through Argentina at an absolutely unprecedented speed in the history of agriculture: an average of more than two million acres a year. We now have a veritable green desert devouring one of the world's breadbaskets."

Walter Pengue, an agricultural engineer at the University of Buenos Aires

"In Europe, nearly the entire food manufacturing and retail industry has banned GM ingredients.
... Because of the difficulty of segregating GM crops from non-GM crops, many overseas buyers have simply rejected all corn, soy, canola, and cotton from the U.S. and Canada. Since these four GM crops and their derivatives are found in most processed foods in the U.S., American-made packaged foods are also off-limits in many markets."

Jeffrey M. Smith in his book "Seeds of Deception", 2003

"GE-corn, GE-soy, GE-cotton seed oil, GE-canola, are in most processed foods in the US.
Consumers have little idea they are there, little means to distinguish them from other items, and they were never tested for safety for human consumption. Yet studies in animals repeatedly show severe organ damage and infertility/sterility."

C. Stone, http://rense.com

GENOCIDE

"In going over the battleground the next day, I did not see a body of a man, woman or child but was scalped and in many instances their body was mutilated in the most horrible manner - men, women and children's privates cut out, &c. I heard one man say he had cut out a woman's private parts and had them for exhibition on a stick; I heard another man say that he had cut the fingers off an Indian to get the rings on the hand; according to the best of my knowledge and belief, these atrocities were committed with the knowledge of J. M. Chivington, and I do not know of his taking any measures to prevent them; I heard one instance of a child a few months old being thrown in the feedbox of a wagon, and after being carried some distance left on the ground to perish; I also heard of numerous instances in which men had cut out the private parts of females and stretched them over the saddle-bows, and wore them over their hats while riding in the ranks."

Lieutenant James Connor, soldier who fought in the Sand Creek, Colorado massacre, November, 1864

"The United States had never in its history intervened to stop genocide and had in fact rarely even made a point of condemning it as it.
... U.S. policymakers knew a great deal about the crimes being perpetrated [during specific genocides]... The United States did have countless opportunities to mitigate and prevent slaughter. But time and again, decent men and women chose to look away.
...[The U.S.'s] consistent policy of nonintervention in the face of genocide offers sad testimony not to a broken American political system but to one that is ruthlessly effective. The system, as it stands now, is working! No US. president has ever made genocide prevention a priority, and no US. president has ever suffered politically for his indifference to its occurrence. It is thus no coincidence that genocide rages on.

Samantha Power in her book "A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide"

"Since the invasion of Iraq 655,000 Iraqis had died as a direct result of the invasion... the figure was equal to the figure for deaths in the Fordham University study of the Rwandan genocide."

John Pilger, 2007

"Coming to grips with U.S./CIA activities in broad numbers and figuring out how many people have been killed in the jungles of Laos or the hills of Nicaragua is very difficult. But, adding them up as best we can, we come up with a figure of six million people killed-and this is a minimum figure. Included are: one million killed in the Korean War, two million killed in the Vietnam War, 800,000 killed in Indonesia, one million in Cambodia, 20,000 killed in Angola ... and 22,000 killed in Nicaragua. These people would not have died if U.S. tax dollars had not been spent by the CIA to inflame tensions, finance covert political and military activities and destabilize societies."

former CIA agent John Stockwell

"There seems to be a systematic plan to crush the Armenian race [by the Turkish government].
... Persecution of Armenians assuming unprecedented proportions. Reports from widely scattered districts indicate systematic attempt to uproot peaceful Armenian populations and through arbitrary arrests, terrible tortures, whole-sale expulsions and deportations from one end of the Empire to the other accompanied by frequent instances of rape, pillage, and murder, turning into massacre, to bring destruction and destitution on them. These measures are not in response to popular or fanatical demand but are purely arbitrary and directed from Constantinople in the name of military necessity.
... It is difficult for me to restrain myself from doing something to stop this attempt to exterminate a race, but I realize that I am here as Ambassador and must abide by the principles of non-interference with the internal affairs of another country.

Henry Morganthau Sr., U.S. Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, in a July 10, 1915 cable to Washington

"Researchers from Johns Hopkins University and a professional survey company in Great Britain, Opinion Research Business (ORB) report that the United States is directly responsible for over one million Iraqi deaths since our invasion over six and half years ago. In a January 2008 report, ORB reported that, "survey work confirms our earlier estimate that over 1,000,000 Iraqi citizens have died as a result of the conflict which started in 2003. We now estimate that the death toll between March 2003 and August 2007 is likely to have been of the order of 1,033,000." A 2006 Johns Hopkins study confirmed that US aerial bombing in civilian neighborhoods caused over a third of these deaths and that over half the deaths are directly attributable to US forces. Iraqi civilian death levels in the fall of 2009 likely now exceed 1.2 million."

Peter Phillips, Global Research, 2009

"Sanctions do not impact on governance effectively and instead [they damage] the innocent people of the country. For me what is tragic, in addition to the tragedy of Iraq itself, is the fact that the United Nations Security Council member states ... are maintaining a program of economic sanctions deliberately, knowingly killing thousands of Iraqis each month. And that definition fits genocide."

Denis Halliday, former United Nations coordinator of the Iraq Oil-for-Food Program

"U.S. military forces were directly responsible for about 10 to 15 million deaths during the Korean and Vietnam Wars and the two Iraq Wars.
In proxy wars for which the United States is also responsible there were between nine and 14 million deaths in Afghanistan, Angola, Democratic Republic of the Congo, East Timor, Guatemala, Indonesia, Pakistan and Sudan.
The United States most likely has been responsible since WWII for the deaths of between 20 and 30 million people in wars and conflicts scattered over the world."

James A. Lucas, 2015

"The Third World War is a war that has been fought by the United States against the Third World. It began when the CIA was founded in 1947 and continues today. As wars go, it has been the second or third most destructive of human life in all of history, after World War I and World War II."

former CIA agent John Stockwell

"It was knowingly and lightheartedly that Genghis Khan sent thousands of women and children to their deaths. History sees in him only the founder of a state... The aim of war is not to reach definite lines but to annihilate the enemy physically. It is by this means that we shall obtain the vital living space that we need. Who today still speaks of the massacre of the Armenians?"

Adolf Hitler to his military chiefs, August 1939

"Men, fourteen to sixty years old, were driven to a single place, a square or a cemetery, where they were slaughtered or shot by machine guns or killed by hand grenades. They had to dig their own graves. Children in orphanages, inmates in old-age homes, the sick in hospital were shot, women were killed in the streets. In many towns the Jews were carried off to "an unknown destination" and killed in adjacent woods."

Jewish Socialist Bund in Poland, May 1942

"It takes centuries and sometimes thousands of years to create a natural culture, but Genocide can destroy a culture instantly, like fire can destroy a building in an hour."

Rafael Lemkin, in his book 'Axis Rule'

"The Nuremberg court treated aggressive war ("crimes against peace"), or the violation of another state's sovereignty, as the cardinal sin and prosecuted only those crimes against humanity and war crimes committed after Hitler crossed an internationally recognized border. Nazi defendants were tried for atrocities they committed during but not before World War II. By inference, if the Nazis had exterminated the entire German Jewish population but never invaded Poland, they would not have been liable at Nuremberg. States and individuals who did not cross an international frontier were still free under international law to commit genocide."

Samantha Power in her book "A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide"

"[The dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki] was mass murder. The people in these cities were overwhelmingly non-combatants. The bombings were not necessary for ending the war. The Japanese were ready to surrender and President Harry Truman knew it."

Daniel Jonah Goldhagen

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