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.

INTERNATIONAL LAW

"In the US's so-called War on Terror, by far the greatest and most systematic terrorization of civilians is in fact perpetrated by the US state itself. Unarmed citizens are murdered across the world as 'collateral damage', 'illegal enemy combatants' or other license of impunity. The US state conceives itself as above international law along with ally Israel, but this reality is taboo to report and so too all the killing and terrorization of civilians. One can truly say that "the historical record demonstrates the US is provably guilty of continual lawless mass murder of civilians across the world", but the truth is unthinkable within the ruling ideological regime."

John McMurtry and Kourosh Ziabari, 2014

"The invasion of Iraq is one of the most sordid and unjustifiable episodes in recent human history: a devastating attack on the rule of law."

Spanish Judge Baltasar Garzon has called for George W. Bush, Tony Blair and former Spanish prime minister Jose Maria Aznar to be prosecuted for the invasion of Iraq

"American policymakers, setting themselves up as guardians of the world system, are more inclined than ever to simply disregard international laws and conventions if they get in the way of unrivaled military supremacy. Every instance of U.S. armed intervention during the 1980s and 1990s represents a flagrant violation of regional treaties and laws, not to mention the UN Charter itself, which explicitly prohibits military attacks against sovereign nations - for example, Grenada, Nicaragua, Haiti, Panama, Serbia, and Iraq. In any event, the U.S. has consistently shown its contempt for international bodies, agreements, and procedures that might conflict with its hegemonic aspirations."

Carl Boggs

"Consider the US-led deadly civil wars and coup d'etats in Venezuela and Ukraine as well as Libya and Syria. They mass terrorize and destroy societies into defenseless dependency so that their resources, lands and markets are "free" for transnational corporate exploitation."

John McMurtry and Kourosh Ziabari, 2014

"I don't care about international law. I don't want to hear the words 'international law' again. We are not concerned with international law."

a military judge at Guantánamo

"The US record as a rogue state is unspeakable in the mass media because they are financed and advertised in by the same transnational corporations that demand the resources and territories of the world by threat of trade-investment embargo and the point of the gun of US and NATO forces. This is what the lawless but unnamed US reign of terror achieves - not only by war crimes and crimes against humanity, but by economic ruin for any society resisting transnational trade treaties and demands which recognize only foreign corporate rights to profit."

John McMurtry and Kourosh Ziabari, 2014

INTERNATIONAL MONETARY FUND (IMF)
WORLD BANK
WORLD TRADE ORGANIZATION (WTO)

"The real axis of evil is composed of the World Trade Organization, the World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund."

George Katsiaficas in the book "Masters of War"

"The IMF, the World Bank and the WTO (World Trade Organisation) are largely controlled by the rich countries so these institutions devise and implement policies that those countries want."

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

"The United States has given frequent and enthusiastic support to the overthrow of democracy in favor of "investor friendly" regimes. The World Bank, IMF, and private banks have consistently lavished huge sums on terror regimes, following their displacement of democratic governments, and a number of quantitative studies have shown a systematic positive relationship between U.S. and IMF / World Bank aid to countries and their violations of human rights."

Edward S. Herman

"The IMF and World Bank are the chief pushers of the whole scheme of structural adjustments that are designed to further open up the Third World economies for penetration and plunder by private monopoly corporations. We call for the abrogation of all loan agreements that provide for structural adjustment, public assumption of private debts and the further exposure of the Third World economies to plunder by private multinational giants."

Cebu Declaration - Philippine-Asia Jubilee Campaign Against the Debt, 1999

"When the IMF and the World Bank force a country to cut wages, lay off workers, produce for export instead of their own people, and sell off public property to cronies for less than its vallue, that's called "economic reform."

Robert Naiman, 1999

"Structural adjustment imposed by the World Bank and IMF have brought disaster to the working poor of as many as 100 countries, forced to open their markets to a flood of cheap imports while the rich refuse to abandon their subsidies, quotas and high tariffs. The result is brutal suppression of wages and living standards and elimination of social programs, the effects increasing as the programs are implemented over the past decade or more."

Noam Chomsky in his book "Year 501"

"Mexico was the star pupil. It did everything right, and religiously followed the World Bank and IMF's prescriptions. It was called another great economic miracle, and it probably was ... for the rich. But for most of the Mexican people, it's been a complete disaster."

Noam Chomsky in his book "The Common Good"

"The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which represents most of the major banks in the Western world, produced a proposal [1980s] that basically demanded that developing countries sacrifice government spending on health, education, and welfare in order to service the debt and that they increase the export of commodity or luxury goods to earn more money."

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

"The World Bank and the IMF are controlled by the governments of the world's richest countries. The G-7 together have more than 40 per cent of the directors' votes. The US holds 16.45 per cent of the votes at the World Bank and 17 per cent of those at the IMF. Since an 85-per-cent majority is required for the most important decisions, the US effectively has the power of veto."

Jeremy Seabrook in his book "World Poverty"

"We turned the World Bank, the IMF, and other "multinational" institutions into colonizing tools. We negotiated lucrative deals for U.S. corporations, established "free" trade agreements that blatantly served our exporters at the expense of those in the Third World, and burdened other countries with unmanageable debts. In effect, we created surrogate governments that appeared to represent their people but in reality were our servants."

John Perkins in his book "The Secret History of the American Empire"

"The World Bank, the IMF, and the WTO consider the ideal country to be one in which all assets and resources are owned by foreign corporations producing for export to generate foreign exchange to repay international debts. Their favored country has no public services. Power, water, education, health care, social security, and financial services are all owned and operated by foreign corporations for profit on a fee for service basis. Food and other goods for domestic consumption are all imported from abroad and paid for with money borrowed from foreign banks."

David Korten

"Never before in history have the poor financed the rich on such a scale and paid so dearly for their servitude. During the 1980s, the Third World sent to the West $220 billion more than was sent to them in any form. At the current rates of interest, it is a mathematical impossibility for most countries to pay off their debt. Many had to agree to 'structural adjustment' by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). This has often meant the end of uncertain protection for the old, young and sick and 'wage restraint' in countries where the difference between wage and peonage is slight."

John Pilger in his book "Distant Voices"

"What has to be understood is that both the [International Monetary] fund and the [World] bank are actually surrogates for the U.S. Treasury. They are both located at 19th and H Streets, Northwest, in Washington, DC, and their voting rules ensure that they can do nothing without the approval of the secretary of the Treasury."

Chalmers Johnson in his book "Sorrows of Empire"

"Beginning in the late 1970s ... the World Bank and IMF mandated a shift away from industrialization toward economies based solely on the export of raw materials and agricultural products. Loans were now to be used as leverage to impose what were called Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs)-programs that mandated slashing social spending, eliminating price subsidies and trade tariffs, and privatizing government-owned industries and services-all in order to pay down foreign debt."

Lena Weinstein, 2008

"The World Bank and IMF ... operate as global loan sharks."

Lena Weinstein, 2008

"The World Trade Organization, The World Bank, The International Monetary Fund and other financial institutions virtually write economic policy and parliamentary legislation. With a deadly combination of arrogance and ruthlessness, they take their sledgehammers to fragile, interdependent, historically complex societies and devastate them, all under the fluttering banner of 'reform'."

Arundhati Roy

INTERNATIONAL MONETARY FUND (IMF)

"Under the brunt of IMF economic medicine, imposed on developing countries, national central banks are prevented from expanding the supply of money thereby shunting the process of credit creation. Once these measures are imposed, the only way to finance public and private investment is through dollar denominated foreign loans. What this signifies is that Wall Street and the U.S. Federal Reserve control the domestic credit market of developing countries, namely the expansion of credit in domestic currency."

Michel Chossudovsky

"The infamous `conditionalities' policy for procuring emergency IMF loans... remains in force to this day... The prospective recipient of money must convince inspectors it is implementing a "realistic rate of exchange... as defined by the IMF. The focus on the exchange rate allows the IMF to control a country's fiscal policy, government expenditure, tax policy, and public enterprise policy - in short, every aspect of national economic life... The formula is invariably the same. The debtor country is forced to slash imports, severely devalue its domestic currency (ensuring that relative dollar-denominated debt increases by multiples), and impose draconian cuts in government subsidies for food and other necessaries, while opening vital areas of the national economy to foreign takeovers on the cheap, justified as `free market reforms' by the IMF."

Executive Intelligence Review

"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"

"Unlike the formal imperialism of the British empire; the United States uses the United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, and other international bodies to legitimize imperial interventions into the political and economic systems of developing nations."

Ivan Eland in his book "The Empire Has No Clothes"

"The United States has a high degree of control in the World Bank and International Monetary Fund because of the extent of its financial contributions and the formula used for weighting votes. The IMF, in particular, imposes strict conditions on debtor nations that force them to concentrate on producing cheap exports in order to increase foreign reserves needed to pay interest on their debt. These structural adjustment programs include currency devaluation, reduced wages, cutbacks to social programs, and reliance on the market system. All of these programs benefit creditor nations such as the United States at the expense of the debtor nations."

David Mode l in his book "Lying for Empire"

"The International Monetary Fund (IMF) was the most important avenue of U.S. influence in developing countries for the past three decades. The IMF was positioned, by informal arrangement, at the top of a creditors' cartel. Governments who did not reach agreements with the Fund on various economic policies were in most cases denied credit not only from the IMF, but from the larger World Bank, other multi-lateral lenders such as the Inter-American Development Bank, the governments of rich countries, and sometimes even the private sector. This gave Washington, which has dominated the IMF since its inception in 1944, a powerful lever to promote a whole series of economic reforms in developing countries."

Mark Weisbrot, 2008

"African ruling classes deposit so much money from Africa into foreign banks, what's called capital flight, billions more have gone into those banks than has been lent to Africa. According to one study, sub-Saharan Africa experienced capital flight of $196 billion between 1970 and 1996 - whereas these countries' combined debt in 1996 stood at $178 billion. A good portion of this money comes from funds siphoned off from foreign aid and sent back to the private accounts of African rulers in Western banks. This dynamic helps explain why African ruling classes do not refuse the World Bank and IMF terms, as deadly as they are for the majority in Africa: they profit off of foreign assistance."

Lena Weinstein, 2008

WORLD BANK

"Policies imposed by the World Bank, and trade liberalization rules crafted by the World Trade Organization (WTO), are creating a sweeping culture of corporate-states all over the world.
Not only has the World Bank played a major role in the creation of water scarcity and pollution, it is now transforming that scarcity into a market opportunity for water corporations.
... The erosion of water rights is now a global phenomenon. Since the early 1990s, ambitious, World Bank-driven privatization programs have emerged in Argentina, Chile, Mexico, Malaysia, and Nigeria. The Bank has also introduced privatization of water systems in India."

Vandana Shiva in her book "Water Wars"

"Reagan used the World Bank to force countries to change their laws so that U.S. corporations would gain direct access to their oil."

Antonia Juhasz in her book "The Bush Agenda"

"There's a saying that the World Bank takes tax money from poor people in rich nations to give to rich people in poor nations."

Barron's, 1978

WORLD TRADE ORGANIZATION (WTO)

"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

"The WTO [World Trade Organization] obeys the orders of multinational corporations, which, under cover of the globalization of trade, in fact rule the world."

Marie-Monique Robin in the book "The World According to Monsanto", 2008

"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

"On New Year's Day in 1995, the World Trade Organization (WTO) was quietly born during the Uruguay round of GATT. In low-income "developing countries," the World Bank and the IMF had institutionalized the doctrine that extensive borrowing was the way forward. Thus, subject economies became enslaved to repayment schedules and loan conditions which invariably required the cutback of necessary social services and population assistance programs, whilst the loan funds found their way back to Western corporations.
... With the way clear for the WTO, the world's largest corporations are now represented by a global body with legislative and judicial power committed to protecting their rights against the intrusion of governments and the citizens to whom those governments are theoretically responsible.
... Any national law requiring imported goods to meet national health, safety, labour, or environmental standards may be declared an unfair trade practice by the WTO if the legislation requires stricter standards than the international standards accepted by the WTO."

William F. Pepper in his book "An Act of State: the Execution of Martin Luther King"

"The inauguration of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 1995 marked a new phase in the evolution of the post war economic system. A new triangular division of authority among the IMF, the World Bank and the WTO has unfolded.
... The deregulation of trade under WTO rules, combined with new clauses pertaining to intellectual property rights, enable multinational corporations to penetrate local markets and extend their control over virtually all areas of national manufacturing, agriculture and the service economy."

Michel Chossudovsky in his book "The Globalization of Poverty and the New World Order"

"The Articles of Agreement of the WTO provide what some observers have entitled a "charter of rights for multinational corporations" derogating the ability of national societies to regulate their national economies threatening national level social programs, job creation policies, affirmative action and community based initiatives. The WTO articles threaten to lead to the disempowerment of national societies as it hands over extensive powers to global corporations."

Michel Chossudovsky in his book "The Globalization of Poverty and the New World Order"

"The WTO is blatantly illegal ... a totalitarian intergovernmental body has been casually installed in Geneva, empowered under international law with the mandate to police country-level economic and social policies, derogating the sovereign rights of national governments."

Michel Chossudovsky in his book "The Globalization of Poverty and the New World Order"

"The articles of the WTO are not only in contradiction with pre-existing national and international laws; they are also at variance with "The Universal Declaration of Human Rights". Acceptance of the WTO as a legitimate organization is tantamount to an "indefinite moratorium" or repeal of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
... WTO rules provide legitimacy to trade practices which border on criminality, including: "intellectual piracy" by multinational corporations; the derogation of plant breeders rights - not to mention genetic manipulation by the biotechnology giants, and the patenting of life forms including plants, animals, micro-organisms, genetic material and human life forms under the TRIPs agreement."

Michel Chossudovsky in his book "The Globalization of Poverty and the New World Order"

"Under WTO rules, the banks and multinational corporations (MNCs) can legitimately manipulate market forces to their advantage leading to the outright re-colonization of national economies. The WTO articles provide legitimacy to global banks and MNCs in their quest to destabilize institutions, drive national producers into bankruptcy and ultimately take control entire countries."

Michel Chossudovsky in his book "The Globalization of Poverty and the New World Order"

"The TRIPS [Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property] agreement ... is under the jurisdiction of the WTO, which obeys the orders of multinational corporations like Monsanto, which, under cover of the globalization of trade, in fact rule the world."

Marie-Monique Robin in the book "The World According to Monsanto"

INTERNATIONAL REPUBLICAN INSTITUTE (IRI)
see NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR DEMOCRACY

IRAN

"Iran is being targeted as part of a war agenda built on distortions and lies for the purpose of private profit. The real aims are oil financial hegemony and global control."

Ellen Brown, author of Web of Debt

"Iran is one of only three countries left in the world whose central bank is not under control [of private banks]. Before 9-11 there were reportedly seven: Afghanistan, Iraq, Sudan, Libya, Cuba, North Korea and Iran. By 2003, however, Afghanistan and Iraq were swallowed up by the Rothschild octopus, and by 2011 Sudan and Libya were also gone."

Pete Papaherakles, americanfrepress.net, 2012

"By 1976, Amnesty International announced that Iran had the worst human rights record on Earth ... The secret police, SAVAK, trained by Israel and supplied by the U.S., were infamous for the use of torture and assassination."

Mark Zepezauer in his book "Boomerang"

"Iran, because of the great leadership of the Shah, is an island of stability in one of the troubled areas of the world. This is a great tribute to you and to your majesty and to your leadership and to the respect, admiration, and love which your people give to you."

President Jimmy Carter during a visit to Iran, New Year's Eve, 1978

"There are no competitive elections for president, for prime minister, nor for any kind of legislative body that can initiate and pass meaningful laws or make real policy in Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt, Oman, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, United Arab Emirates, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, or other autocratic governments in that region supported with American military and economic aid. Indeed, the majority of governments supported by the United States in the Middle East and Central Asia are even less democratic than Iran."

Stephen Zunes, 2005

"Iran could hold the potential to alter the balance of power in Eurasia if it were to closely ally itself with Russia or China, or both ­ giving those nations a heavy supply of oil as well as a sphere of influence in the Gulf, thus challenging American hegemony in the region."

Andrew Gavin Marshall, 2009

"The argument is made or implied that the United States and Israel are good, need [nuclear] weapons for legitimate defense, and are not likely to use them irresponsibly, whereas Iran is not good, supports terrorists, and doesn't need these weapons for legitimate defense. This is pure ideology and utter nonsense."

Edward S Herman, 2005

"The Iranians had democratically elected a president (Mossadegh) and he began to clamp down on the oil companies, insisting that they pay fair taxes so the people of Iran would be recompensed for the oil being taken out of their country. The British and the U.S. were involved there and our oil companies were very resentful of this so we decided to get rid of Mossadegh.
... Rather than sending in troops, we sent a CIA agent, Kermit Roosevelt, Teddy Roosevelt's grandson. With a few million dollars, Kermit managed to overthrow the democratically elected Mossadegh and replace him with the Shah of Iran, who we all know was a despot-and a friend of the oil companies."

John Perkins, 2005

"Brutal dictators such as the Shah of Iran in 1953, General Suharto in Indonesia in 1967, and Pinochet in Chile in 1973, were all installed in power by the CIA, and relied on American support and weapons to hold on to power. Their dependence on U.S. support all but guaranteed a friendly regime."

David Model in his book "Lying for Empire"

"The American press played an important supporting role in Operation Ajax, as the Iran coup [against democratically-elected Iranian President Mossadegh] was code-named... The New York Times regularly referred to [democratically-elected President Mossadegh] as a dictator. Other papers compared him to Hitler and Stalin. Newsweek reported that, with his help, Communists were "taking over" Iran. Time called his election "one of the worst calamities to the anti-communist world since the Red conquest of China.""

Stephen Kinzer in his book "Overthrow: America's Century of Regime Change from Haiti to Iraq"

"With the Mossadegh overthrow in Iran, the United States served notice that it was not a country to be trusted, not the defender of democracy we portrayed ourselves to be, and that our aim was not to help the Third World. We simply wanted to control resources."

John Perkins in his book "The Secret History of the American Empire"

IRAQ

"The [Iraq] sanctions, imposed for a decade largely at the insistence of the United States, constitute a violation of the Geneva Convention... For more than ten years the United States has deliberately pursued a policy of destroying the water treatment system of Iraq, knowing full well the cost in Iraqi lives."

Professor Thomas Nagy

"The United States never intended to rebuild Iraq. The United States has a long record of bombing nations, reducing entire neighborhoods, and much of cities, to rubble, wrecking the infrastructure, ruining the lives of those the bombs didn't kill. And afterward doing shockingly little or literally nothing to repair the damage."

Gen. William McCoy, Army Corps of Engineers

"Famine threatens four million people in sanctions-hit Iraq - one fifth of the population... The human situation is deteriorating. Living conditions are precarious and are at pre-famine level for at least four million people ... The deterioration in nutritional status of children is reflected in the significant increase of child mortality, which has risen nearly fivefold since 1990."

UN Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) report on the effect of U.S. sanctions on Iraq, September 1995

"Sanctions closed down the entire Iraqi economy and devastated the people. Iraqi families could not buy food or medicine or school books or basic household commodities. Children starved and died. Literacy was wiped out in a single generation. The future of the country was ravaged in all parts. It was deliberate cruelty and a mockery of the humanitarian principles embodied by the United Nations."

Susan Lindauer in her book "Extreme Prejudice"

"If a private individual were to intentionally kill innocent children, most everyone would recognize that as the epitome of evil. Yet, rarely is there an U.S. op-ed or an editorial commenting on the evil of killing Iraqi children with the sanctions that the U.S. government enforced for more than 10 years.
... During the decade Iraqi children were dying, from U.S. sanctions year after year, there were few op-eds and editorials in the U.S. mainstream press pointing out the evil in killing innocent children. It's almost as if the deaths of those children were considered to be no big deal, especially since the killings were part of an ongoing sanctions policy, which has become a well-established part of U.S. foreign policy. The notion was that killing children by sanctions was different from lining them up against a wall and shooting them or exploding a bombing within their midst.
... The sanctions on Iraq in the 1990s continued killing Iraqi children all the way through 2003, when the U.S. military, using the 9/11 attacks to garner support, invaded Iraq to achieve the regime change that the sanctions - and the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children - had failed to achieve. That regime-change invasion has resulted in another million or so dead people, including children, not to mention the number injured, maimed, tortured, assassinated, executed, or exiled or who have had their homes or businesses destroyed."

Jacob G. Hornberger, 2017

"Iraq's post invasion (2003-2007) excess under five mortality has been estimated at over one million. In Afghanistan, post invasion, at 1.9 million (2001-2007)."

Felicity Arbuthnot, Global Research, 2008

"The Israelis are also skillful at exploiting Arab rivalries and turning Arab against Arab. The Kurdish tribes, for example, inhabit the mountains of northern Iraq. Every month, a secret Israeli envoy slips into the mountains from the Iranian side to deliver $ 50,000 to Kurdish leader Mulla Mustafa al Barzani. The subsidy insures Kurdish hostility against Iraq, whose government is militantly anti-Israel."

Jack Anderson, 1972

"There was no one left to kill."

General Norman Schwartzkopf after the Basra Road bloodbath
Operation Desert Storm, 2003

"This was an insane war [Iraq] that brought us low economically, morally. ..We went to war against a guy [Saddam Hussein] who had absolutely nothing to do with 9/11. It was a total pretext. It's inexplicable, and there you go to Cheney, there you go to Bush, there you go to the Jewish neo-cons who wanted to remake the world."

journalist Carl Bernstein, speaking before a roundtable at MSNBC in 2012 about the Iraq War

"I think all foreigners should stop interfering in the internal affairs of Iraq. "

Paul Wolfowitz, U. S. Deputy Secretary of Defense, 2003

"Oil was not the only motivation for the American invasion and occupation [of Iraq] , but the other goals have already been achieved -- eliminating Saddam Hussein for Israel's sake, canceling the Iraqi use of the euro in place of the dollar for oil transactions, expansion of the empire in the Middle East with new bases.
American oil companies have been busy under the occupation, and even before the US invasion, preparing for a major exploitation of Iraq's huge oil reserves. Chevron, ExxonMobil and others are all set to go. Four years of preparation are coming to a head now. Iraq's new national petroleum law -- written in a place called Washington, DC -- is about to be implemented. It will establish agreements with foreign oil companies, privatizing much of Iraq's oil reserves under exceedingly lucrative terms. Security will be the only problem, protecting the oil companies' investments in a lawless country. For that they need the American military close by."

William Blum, 2006

"On the question of whether or not Iraq was involved in 9-11, there was never any evidence to prove that."

former Vice President Dick Cheney, on Fox News, June, 1, 2009

"Before the Persian Gulf War, Iraq was a rapidly developing country, with free education, ample electricity, modernized agriculture, and a robust middle class. According to the World Health Organization, 93 percent of the population had access to health care. The devastation of the Gulf War and the sanctions that preceded and sustained such devastation changed all that."

Joy Gordon, Harpers, 2002

"The allied bombardment had had a "near apocalyptic impact" on Iraq and had transformed the country into a "pre-industrial age nation," which "had been until January a rather highly urbanized and mechanized society."

a UN inspection team, in William Blum's book "Killing Hope"

ISLAMIC STATE
IS/ISIS/ISIL/DAESH

"ISIS constitutes NATO's mercenary expeditionary force, ravaging its enemies by proxy from Libya in North Africa to Lebanon and Syria in the Levant, to Iraq and even to the borders of Iran. Its seemingly inexhaustible supply of weapons, cash, and fighters can only be explained by multinational state sponsorship and safe havens provided by NATO."

Tony Cartalucci

"A key component of ISIS's support comes from wealthy individuals in the Arab Gulf States of Kuwait, Qatar and Saudi Arabia."

Mike Krieger

"Out of the Al Qaeda in Iraq, the Pentagon and CIA created a new, far larger Jihadist killing machine - ISIS. Its purpose was to create the preconditions needed to bring US military troops back into Iraq, into Syria, Lebanon and beyond, and to remove Russia's ally Assad in Damascus.
... The key fighters of ISIS were trained by CIA and US Special Forces Command at a secret camp in Jordan in 2012. Saudi Arabia and Qatar financed the Jordan ISIS training."

F. William Engdahl, 2016

"What we see happening on the part of what they are calling ISIS or ISIL is a reforming of borders. Parts of Syria and Iraq are becoming, if the Islamists succeed, a new state.
One of the reasons that the breakup of Iraq and Syria was not seen as a threat to Israel, was that the Israeli and the neoconservative strategists reasoned "if we break up these states and they are fighting internally, there won't be any organized government to get in Israel's way".
In place of Iraq, there will be these warring factions. In place of Syria, warring factions, just like in Libya today. And a state that has no central government is no threat to Israel. And, therefore, we favor this destruction of the political entities of these countries, because it releases us from any sort of organized government's opposition to Israel's theft of Palestine."

Paul Craig Roberts

"ISIS (Islamic State) didn't just arise out of the earth - they needed money, weapons, logistics, propaganda facilities, and international connections to reach the relatively high level of organization and lethality they seem to have achieved in such a short period of time. Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the rest of the oil-rich Gulf states have been backing ISIS all the way.
The US was in a de facto alliance with the groups that merged to form ISIS, and Washington started funding Syrian rebel groups whose composition and leadership kept changing. By funding the Free Syrian Army (FSA), our "vetted" Syrian Islamists, this administration has actively worked to defeat the only forces capable of rooting out ISIS from its Syrian nest - Assad's Ba'athist government."

Justin Raimondo

"ISIS, like its predecessor al-Qaeda, is a joint American-Saudi-Israeli project to destabilize and fracture the Middle East and North Africa by thrusting criminal malcontents against Libya, Syria, Lebanon, Iran and other countries not presently under Western/ Israeli control."

Brandon Martinez, 2015

"Since 2003, Anglo-American power has secretly and openly coordinated direct and indirect support for Islamist terrorist groups linked to al-Qaeda across the Middle East and North Africa. This ill-conceived patchwork geostrategy is a legacy of the persistent influence of neoconservative ideology, motivated by longstanding but often contradictory ambitions to dominate regional oil resources, defend an expansionist Israel, and in pursuit of these, re-draw the map of the Middle East."

investigative journalist Nafeez Ahmed

"There are striking similarities between ISIS and Zionists, not only in the formulation and expression of their radical views but also in the deep-seated belief that the assertion of their ideology entails the destruction and negation of all others. Moreover, both groups operate on the same political plane and both advocate territorial expansion and political absorption."

Catherine Shakdam

"After the fall of the Soviet Union, the superpowers began to fight over control of Central Asia, particularly the oil and gas wealth, as well as the strategic value of the region.
Given the history, and the distrust of the West, the US realized that it couldn't get direct control, and therefore would need to use a proxy to gain control quickly and effectively. Turkey was the perfect proxy; a NATO ally and a puppet regime. Turkey shares the same heritage/race as the entire population of Central Asia, the same language (Turkic), the same religion (Sunni Islam), and of course, the strategic location and proximity.
This started more than a decade-long illegal, covert operation in Central Asia by a small group in the US intent on furthering the oil industry and the Military Industrial Complex, using Turkish operatives, Saudi partners and Pakistani allies, furthering this objective in the name of Islam.
These illegal covert operations by the Turks and certain US persons dates back to 1996, and involves terrorist activities, narcotics, weapons smuggling and money laundering, converging around the same operations and involving the same actors."

Sibel Edmonds, 2008

"Saudi Arabia remains a critical financial support base for al-Qa'ida, the Taliban, and other terrorist groups.
What destabilised Iraq from 2011 on was the revolt of the Sunni in Syria and the takeover of that revolt by jihadis, who were often sponsored by donors in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait and United Arab Emirates."

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton - in December 2009 in a cable released by Wikileaks

"The reason ISIS is in Iraq and Syria is that the US equipped ISIS and sent ISIS to overthrow Assad when the British Parliament and the Russian government blocked Obama's planned invasion of Syria. ISIS is Washington's creation, just as is Al Qaeda."

Paul Craig Roberts, 2017

"The so-called "Islamic State" (ISIS) is supplied not by "black market oil" or "hostage ransoms" but billions of dollars worth of supplies carried into Syria across NATO member Turkey's borders via hundreds of trucks a day.
Since at least as early as 2011, NATO member Turkey has allowed a torrent in supplies, fighters, and weapons to cross its borders to resupply ISIS positions inside of Syria.
The supplies trucks stream across the border from Ankara, various ports used by NATO, and NATO's Incirlik Air Base.
It is a certainty that Turkey is not only aware of this, but directly complicit."

Tony Cartalucci, 2014

"The policy paper [by the Israeli Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies] advocated a strategy that bears startling resemblance to the chaos unfolding in the wake of the expansion of the 'Islamic State' - Israel would 'shape its strategic environment' by first securing the removal of Saddam Hussein. Jordan and Turkey would form an axis along with Israel to weaken and "roll back" Syria.' This axis would attempt to weaken the influence of Lebanon, Syria and Iran by 'weaning' off their Shi'ite populations."

investigative journalist Nafeez Ahmed, 2014 - about a 1996 paper published by the Israeli Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies, co-authored by former Pentagon official Richard Perle

"Substantial and sustained funding from private donors in Saudi Arabia and Qatar has played a central role in the ISIS surge into Sunni areas of Iraq... The tribal and communal leadership in Sunni majority provinces is much beholden to Saudi and Gulf paymasters, and would be unlikely to cooperate with ISIS without their consent.
Western governments traditionally play down the connection between Saudi Arabia and its Wahhabist faith, on the one hand, and jihadism, whether of the variety espoused by Osama bin Laden and al-Qa'ida or by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi's ISIS, but there is nothing conspiratorial or secret about these links: 15 out of 19 of the 9/11 hijackers were Saudis, as was Bin Laden and most of the private donors who funded the operation."

Patrick Cockburn

"Israel has actively worked toward the balkanization of the Middle East with the view of asserting its own political supremacy."

Catherine Shakdam

"To undermine Iran, which is predominantly Shiite, the George W. Bush Administration has decided, in effect, to reconfigure its priorities in the Middle East. In Lebanon, the Administration has coöperated with Saudi Arabia's government, which is Sunni, in clandestine operations that are intended to weaken Hezbollah, the Shiite organization that is backed by Iran. The U.S. has also taken part in clandestine operations aimed at Iran and its ally Syria. A by-product of these activities has been the bolstering of Sunni extremist groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam and are hostile to America and sympathetic to Al Qaeda (including ISIS/Islamic State)."

Seymour Hersh in his article "The Redirection: Is the Administration's new policy benefiting our enemies in the war on terrorism?" (2007)

"The fact that ISIS has not moved against Israel and instead focused on killing Muslims actually says a lot about this organization's real mission."

Dr. Kevin Barrett, a Ph.D. Arabist-Islamologist

"ISIS is an operation by the West to create the greater Israel."

James Henry Fetzer

ISRAEL

"Following the War [World War I] Britain and France carved up the Middle East... Britain obtaining protectorate status over Palestine (Israel) and the important oil-producing areas, especially Iraq. Their protectorate over Palestine set the stage for their planned later creation in that area of a Jewish homeland, which intent was proclaimed to British Zionists in a letter from Britain's Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour to Walter Lord Rothschild, representing the English Federation of Zionists. The letter became known as the Balfour Declaration, which was not implemented until after World War 2. The British intent was to project their control into the oil laden Middle East by creating a Jewish-dominated Palestine, beholden to Britain for survival, and surrounded by a pack of squabbling, balkanized Arab states."

F William Engdahl in his book "A Century of War"

"The Balfour Declaration justified the seizure of Palestinian lands for the post-WWII establishment of Israel. Israel would serve, not as some high-minded "Jewish homeland", but as linchpin in Rothschild/Eight Families control over the world's oil supply. Baron Edmond de Rothschild built the first oil pipeline from the Red Sea to the Mediterranean to bring BP Iranian oil to Israel. He founded Israeli General Bank and Paz Oil. He is considered by many the father of modern Israel."

Dean Henderson in his book "Big Oil & Their Bankers In The Persian Gulf"

"The dissolution of Syria and Iraq into ethnically or religiously unique areas such as in Lebanon is Israel's primary target on the Eastern front... Its dissolution is even more important for us than that of Syria. Iraq is stronger than Syria. In the short run, it is Iraqi power which constitutes the greatest threat to Israel.

An Iraqi-Iranian war will tear Iraq apart and cause its downfall at home even before it is able to organize a struggle on a wide front against us. Every kind of inter-Arab confrontation will assist us in the short run and will shorten the way to the more important aim of breaking up Iraq into denominations as in Syria and Lebanon.

In Iraq, a division into provinces along ethnic/religious lines as in Syria during Ottoman times is possible. So, three (or more) states will exist around the three major cities: Basra, Baghdad and Mosul and Shiite areas in the South will separate from the Sunni and Kurdish north."

Oded Yinon, an Israeli journalist, in an 1982 article for a publication of the World Zionist Organization in which he outlined Israel's strategy in the Middle East

"Estimates of the Israeli nuclear arsenal range from a minimum of 200 to a maximum of about 500. Whatever the number, there is little doubt that Israeli nukes are among the world's most sophisticated, largely designed for "war fighting" in the Middle East. A staple of the Israeli nuclear arsenal are "neutron bombs," miniaturized thermonuclear bombs designed to maximize deadly gamma radiation while minimizing blast effects and long term radiation - in essence designed to kill people while leaving property intact."

Michel Chossudovsky, 2012

"We have this powerful Israeli lobby, and the people who finance them are a very wealthy, highly influential group of people who happen to be Jewish. They've accumulated this power and wealth, and we are now in a position where we effectively have an elite few who can dictate our foreign policy. It's a foreign policy that's trying to advance the interests of another country - Israel.
... The ruling Jewish elites in America - big powerful Jewish elites with literally billions of dollars in their control - are using that influence because of their desire to advance the state of Israel. These people do not care how many American kids get butchered in Iraq. They do not care. This is of absolutely no concern to them. They are fully ready to get us into a war against Iran, against Syria. They know that American kids will be cannon fodder, and their kids won't be."

Michael Collins Piper

"Israel is simply a fiefdom of the Rothschilds - they created it, they own it, they control it, and they have used that little sliver of land in the Middle East to be the point of conflict with so many other countries."

David Icke, 2016

"Fourteen percent of Israel's industrial labor force is employed in its arms industry. If the armed forces are included, the number rises to 25 percent According to the latest CIA estimates, Israel is the fifth largest exporter of arms in the world, up from its seventh place ranking in 1980. Israel remains the largest supplier of arms to sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America."

Clarence Lusane

"Israel controls the U.S. Senate. The Senate is subservient, much too much; we should be more concerned about U.S. interests rather than doing the bidding of Israel. The great majority of the Senate of the U.S. - somewhere around 80% - is completely in support of Israel; anything Israel wants; Israel gets. This has been demonstrated time and again, and this has made foreign policy difficult for our government."

Senator J. William Fulbright told CBS Face the Nation on April 15, 1973

"Critically thinking Israelis ­ a negligible minority ­ already know the pattern: no matter how extreme our new prime minister is, it won't take more than a couple of months for the media to portray him as the sane, moderate, and pragmatic leader of the political center."

Ran HaCohen, 2009

"Israel is expected to eventually join the European Union. The E.U.'s enlargement is tied into the process of NATO expansion. Israel and the E.U. will both manage, from an economic and political standpoint, the western outer periphery of the "Arc of Instability" under the framework of a Mediterranean Union."

Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya, 2008

"The U.S.-NATO-Israel axis constitutes the most powerful military alliance in world history. America's allies are the NATO member states, NATO associate member States and partners under the Istanbul Initiative (including Israel), the Mediterranean Dialogue, the Partnership for Peace, and various other bilateral agreements (New Zealand, Australia, Colombia, Mongolia, Singapore). All in all, the U.S.-NATO-Israel military axis includes more than fifty countries."

Michel Chossudovsky in the book "The Global Economic Crisis"

"The real reason why American politicians are so deferential [to Israel] is the political power of the Israel lobby. The lobby is a loose coalition of individuals and organizations that actively works to move U.S. foreign policy in a pro-Israel direction. It is not a single, unified movement with a central leadership, and it is certainly not a cabal or conspiracy that "controls" U.S. foreign policy. It is simply a powerful interest group, made up of both Jews and gentiles, whose acknowledged purpose is to press Israel's case within the United States and influence American foreign policy in ways that its members believe will benefit the Jewish state.
The Israel lobby is the antithesis of a cabal or conspiracy; it operates out in the open and proudly advertises its own clout. In its basic operations, the Israel lobby is no different from interest groups like the farm lobby, steel and textile workers, and a host of ethnic lobbies, although the groups and individuals who comprise the Israel lobby are in an unusually favorable position to influence U.S. foreign policy. What sets it apart, in short, is its extraordinary effectiveness."

John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, 2007

"The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) is a Thought Police. It is designed to prevent anyone from saying anything critical about the state of Israel, unless it's approved by the ADL in advance. Anyone who even dares to mention the fact that the Israelis have immense power in this country is considered anti-Semitic. So that's what the ADL is. It is a Thought Police."

Michael Collins Piper

"There cannot be the slightest doubt that a state of mind very much like that of Israel now prevails among American Jews. There is a fanatical certainty abroad that there is only one truth and that Israel is the sole custodian of it. No distinction is made between the Jews of the world and Israel, and not even between the Israeli government and Israel. Israeli statesmen and their policies are assumed to be inviolate and above criticism. There is a frightening intolerance of opinions differing from those of the majority, a complete disregard of reason, and a yielding to the emotions of a stampeding herd."

William Zukerman, Jewish Newsletter, 1955

"By what means has America (and the entire West) been brought to the state that no public man aspires to office, or editor feels secure at his desk, until he has brought out his prayer-mat and prostrated himself to Zion? How have presidents and prime ministers been led to compete for the approval of this faction like bridesmaids for the bride's bouquet? Why do leading men suffer themselves to be paraded at hundred-dollar-a-plate banquets for Zion, or to be herded on to Zionist platforms to receive "plaques" for services rendered?
The power of money and the prospect of votes have demonstrably been potent lures, but in my judgment by far the strongest weapon is this power to control published information; to lay stress on what a faction wants and to exclude from it all that the faction dislikes, and so to be able to give any selected person a "good" or a "bad" press."

Douglas Reed in his book "The Controversy of Zion" - published in the 1950s

KENNEDY, JOHN

"JFK, in opposition to nearly all his advisers, consistently opposed the use of force in U.S. foreign policy.
In 1961, despite the Joint Chief's demand to put troops into Laos, Kennedy bluntly insisted otherwise as he ordered Averell Harriman, his representative at the Geneva Conference, "Did you understand? I want a negotiated settlement in Laos. I don't want to put troops in."
Also in 1961, he refused to concede to the insistence of his top generals to give them permission to use nuclear weapons in Berlin and Southeast Asia. Walking out of a meeting with top military advisors, Kennedy threw his hands in the air and said, "These people are crazy."
He refused to bomb and invade Cuba as the military wished during the Cuban missile crisis in 1962. Afterwards he told his friend John Kenneth Galbraith that "I never had the slightest intention of doing so."
Then in June 1963 he gave an incredible speech at American University in which he called for the total abolishment of nuclear weapons, the end of the Cold War and the "Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war," and movement toward "general and complete disarmament."
A few months later he signed a Limited Test Ban Treaty with Nikita Khrushchev.
In October 1963 he signed National Security Action Memorandum 263 calling for the withdrawal of 1,000 U. S. military troops from Vietnam by the end of the year and a total withdrawal by the end of 1965."

Edward Curtin, 2017 [reviewing James Douglass' book' JFK and the Unspeakable]

"Israel's Mossad was a primary (and critical) behind the scenes player in the conspiracy that ended the life of JFK. Through its own vast resources and through its international contacts in the intelligence community and in organized crime, Israel had the means, it had the opportunity, and it had the motive to play a major frontline role in the crime of the century - and it did."

Michael Collins Piper in his book "Final Judgment"

"As President, [John] Kennedy earned many powerful enemies during his few months in office, from the head of US Steel to CIA chief Allen Dulles and the Pentagon. Perhaps no one opposed Kennedy more strongly than the powerful bankers of Wall Street.
... Five months before his assassination by what was decades later revealed to have been a CIA hit team," Kennedy issued an all-but unknown proclamation which may have cost him his life.
Much as Abraham Lincoln did when he avoided dependence on London bank loans to finance the Civil War and instead issued interest-free US Treasury notes, Greenbacks, to finance the war, President Kennedy issued Executive Order 11110 on June 4, 1963. Kennedy's EO 11110, which did not require a vote of Congress, mandated the US Treasury "to issue silver certificates against any silver bullion, silver, or standard silver dollars in the Treasury."
This meant that for every ounce of silver in the US Treasury's vault, the government could introduce new money into circulation. In all, Kennedy brought nearly $4.3 billion in US notes into circulation in $2 and $5 denominations. The $10 and $20 United States Notes were just in the process of being printed by the Treasury Department when Kennedy was assassinated. They were never circulated. It was the first time since Lincoln that a President had issued interest free money and the first time a President had challenged the sole money power of the private Federal Reserve.
... After JFK's death, E011110 was put into abeyance, no more silver certificates were issued and those that had been issued were removed from circulation. The very existence of E011110 was hidden from the public, and forgotten or ignored by most historians."

F. William Engdahl in his book "Gods of Money"

"Our citizen denial provides the ground for the government's doctrine of "plausible deniability". John F. Kennedy's assassination is rooted in our denial of our nation's crimes in World War II that began the Cold War and the nuclear arms race. As a growing precedent to JFK's assassination by his own national security state, we U.S. citizens supported our government when it destroyed whole cities (Hamburg, Dresden, Tokyo, Hiroshima, Nagasaki), when it protected our Cold War security by world-destructive weapons, and when it carried out the covert murders of foreign leaders with "plausible deniability" in a way that was obvious to critical observers."

James Douglass in his book book "JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters"

"President John Kennedy was murdered because he turned to peace. He was going to work with Khrushchev to end the Cold War. He refused the CIA US air cover for the Bay of Pigs invasion. He rejected the Joint Chiefs' Operation Northwoods, a plan to conduct false flag attacks on Americans that would be blamed on Castro to justify regime change. He refused to reappoint General Lyman Lemnitzer as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. He told US Marine commandant General David Shoup that he was taking the US out of Vietnam. He said after his reelection he was going to "break the CIA into 1,000 pieces." All of this threatened the power and profit of the military/security complex and convinced military/security elements that he was soft on communism and a threat to US national security."

Paul Craig Roberts, 2017

"By the end of 1962, the national security establishment in Washington D.C., which had quickly come to know JFK as a skeptic during 1961, had come to view him as a heretic; and by November of 1963, the month he was assassinated, they no doubt considered him an apostate, for he no longer supported most of the so-called "orthodox" views of the Cold War priesthood.
... The national security establishment wanted to turn the Cold War against the USSR into a hot war, so that the U.S. could inflict punishing and fatal blows upon its Communist adversaries on the battlefield. It was this desire for hot war by so many within the national security establishment - their belief that conventional proxy wars with the Soviet Bloc were an urgent necessity, and that nuclear war with the USSR was probably inevitable - to which President Kennedy was so adamantly opposed. And it was JFK's profound determination to avoid nuclear war by miscalculation, and to avoid combat with conventional arms unless it was truly necessary, that separated him from almost everyone else in his administration from 1961 throughout 1963."

Douglas P. Horne, 2014

"Lyndon Baines Johnson had John Fitzgerald Kennedy murdered in Dallas to become president himself and to avert the precipitous political and legal fall that was about to beset him.
Lyndon Johnson would use power from his personal connections in Texas, from the underworld, and from the government-including elements of the CIA, organized crime, and right-wing Texas oilmen desperate to retain the oil-depletion allowance, which JFK wanted to repeal-to escape an untimely end in politics and to seize even greater power. Lyndon Baines Johnson was the driving force behind a conspiracy to murder John Fitzgerald Kennedy on November 22, 1963."

Roger Stone in his book "The Man Who Killed Kennedy - The Case Against LBJ", 2013

"In the summer of 1963, the leaders of the military-industrial complex could see storm clouds on their horizon. After JFK's American University address and his quick signing of the Test Ban Treaty with Khrushchev, corporate power holders saw the distinct prospect in the not distant future of a settlement in the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union.
... In the direction of U.S.-Soviet disarmament lay the diminished power of a corporate military system that for years had controlled the United States government. In his turn toward peace, Kennedy was beginning to undermine the dominant power structure that Eisenhower had finally identified and warned against so strongly as he left the White House."

James Douglass in his book book "JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters"

"Intelligence, government, and organized crime interests are intimately connected and operate outside the law (and public scrutiny) to preserve and promote their self-interests. Regrettably, they all joined forces in 1963 to eliminate the last American president who wasn't bought, sold, and controlled by the Globalist money interests."

Michael Collins Piper

"Nearly a century after Lincoln was assassinated for issuing Greenbacks, President John F. Kennedy found himself in the crosshairs. Kennedy had announced a crackdown on off-shore tax havens and proposed increases in tax rates on large oil and mining companies. He supported eliminating tax loopholes which benefit the super-rich. His economic policies were publicly attacked by Fortune magazine, the Wall Street Journal and both David and Nelson Rockefeller. Even Kennedy's own Treasury Secretary Douglas Dillon, who came from the UBS Warburg-controlled Dillon Read investment bank, voiced opposition to the JFK proposals.
Kennedy's fate was sealed in June 1963 when he authorized the issuance of more than $4 billion in United States Notes by his Treasury Department in an attempt to circumvent the high interest rate usury of the private Federal Reserve international banker crowd."

Dean Henderson in his book "Big Oil & Their Bankers In The Persian Gulf"

"To the power brokers of the system that President Kennedy ostensibly presided over, his and Khrushchev's turn toward peace was, a profound threat... As the Cold War elite knew, Kennedy was already preparing to withdraw from Vietnam. They feared he would soon be able to carry out a U.S. withdrawal from the war with public support, as one part of a wider peacemaking venture with Khrushchev (and perhaps even Castro)."

James Douglass in his book book "JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters"

"The final judgment is inescapable ... Israel was indeed the driving force behind the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. The role of Israel was the unsuspected "missing link" in the JFK assassination conspiracy.
... This is our final judgment: the government of Israel, through its secret spy agency, the Mossad, orchestrated the conspiracy that ended the life of John F. Kennedy.
Through its own vast resources and through its international contacts in the intelligence community and in organized crime, Israel had the means, it had the motive, and it had the opportunity to carry out the crime of the century - and did.
... Israel's worldwide connections-particularly with the anti-Kennedy forces within the CIA and the CIA-linked Lansky crime empire, along with the French OAS rebels and Charles DeGaulle's enemies within his own intelligence service - made possible the network through which the plan to kill JFK was carried out. Permindex was in the center of it all."

Michael Collins Piper in his book "Final Judgment"

"In his deepening alienation from the CIA, the Pentagon, and big business, John Kennedy was moving consciously beyond the point of no return. Kennedy knew well the complicity that existed among the Cold War's corporate elite, Pentagon planners, and the heads of 'intelligence agencies'."
... We have no evidence as to who in the military-industrial complex may have given the order to assassinate President Kennedy. That the order was carried out by the Central Intelligence Agency is obvious. The CIA's fingerprints are all over the crime and the events leading up to it."

James Douglass in his book book "JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters"

KENNEDY. ROBERT
see ASSASSINATIONS

KING, MARTIN LUTHER JR.

"The greatest purveyor of violence on earth is my own government."

Martin Luther King, Jr.

"The only trial ever held for for Martin Luther King's murder took place in Memphis, Tennessee, only a few blocks from the Lorraine Motel where King was killed. In a wrongful death lawsuit initiated by the King family, seventy witnesses testified over a six-week period. They described a sophisticated government plot that involved the FBI, the CIA, the Memphis Police, Mafia intermediaries, and an Army Special Forces sniper team. The twelve jurors, six black and six white, returned after two and one-half hours of deliberation with a verdict that King had been assassinated by a conspiracy that included agencies of his own government."

James Douglass in his book book "JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters"

"In December of 1963, less than a month after the Kennedy assassination, FBI officials met in Washington to explore ways to "neutralize [Martin Luther] King as an effective Negro leader". In spite of that material in their files the House Select Committee declared that the FBI played no role in the assassination."

William Pepper, in his book "An Act of State, The Execution of Martin Luther King", 2003

"We must mark [Martin Luther King] now as the most dangerous Negro in the future of this Nation."

William C. Sullivan, Assistant Director of FBI wrote to J. Edgar Hoover, 1963

"Governmental agencies caused Martin Luther King to be assassinated. They used other foot soldiers. They caused this whole thing to happen. And they then proceeded with the powerful means at their disposal to cover this case up."

William Pepper, in his book "An Act of State, The Execution of Martin Luther King", 2003

"From the moment that he formally opposed the war [Vietnam], followed by his commitment to the Poor People's Campaign, Martin King ... became locked in a deadly struggle with the behemoth of transnational corporate colonialism and the awesome power of its steward state, the United States of America."

William F. Pepper in his book "An Act of State: the Execution of Martin Luther King"

"[Martin Luther King] was involved ... in attempting to confront the core issue of economic injustice in American society, which went hand in hand with waging a costly war and the growth of militarism. This new struggle brought him into direct conflict with the federal government and its numerous agency surrogates whose mission it was to serve and protect American corporate interests at home and abroad."

William F. Pepper in his book "An Act of State: the Execution of Martin Luther King"

"The blame for the initiation planning conspiracy, and execution of the killing [of Martin Luther King] should be laid squarely on the shoulders of agents of the government of the United States in collaboration with Memphis operatives of the Marcello criminal organization.
As horrifying as that fact is, it gets worse when one realizes the extent of the military's involvement, from the coordination of the flow of events down to the last detail, including the selection of the back-up team by the head of the 902nd Military Intelligence Group. Even prior to the assassination, the use of military intelligence to spy on Dr King and other Americans, leading to other army sharpshooter actions against targeted civilians, makes it clear that for a half century or more the military have been heavily involved in the domestic affairs and life of the nation. Very few people at the time knew, or even now know, the extent of this involvement. It is only in retrospect that we begin to get a glimpse of how widespread this activity was in the 1960s."

William F. Pepper in his book "An Act of State: the Execution of Martin Luther King"

"When Martin King began to crusade against the [Vietnam] war, he would cast a long shadow over the economic forces of America. Little wonder that they shuddered at the possibility that his efforts might result in the tap of the free-flowing profits being turned off. Should the American people come to demand an end to the war and should the war end, the losses were not something they could accept.
Perhaps it was for this reason alone that King had to be stopped."

William F. Pepper in his book "An Act of State: the Execution of Martin Luther King"

"The wealthy, powerful interests across the nation ... knew that it was not going to be possible for the Congress to satisfy the demands of the multitude of poor, alienated Americans led by Dr King, and they believed that the growing frustration could well lead to violence. In such a situation with the unavailability of sufficient troops to control that mass of people, the capital could be overrun. Nothing less than a revolution might result. This possibility simply could not be allowed to materialize."

William F. Pepper in his book "An Act of State: the Execution of Martin Luther King"

"In December 1963, less than a month after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, bureau [FBI] officials met in Washington to explore ways of "neutralizing King as an effective Negro leader.
... A massive [FBI] campaign was under way from 1964 aimed at destroying [Martin Luther King] through dirty tricks and media manipulation.
... In January 1979, the House Select Committee published its final report on the assassinations of John F. Kennedy and Martin King. It found no evidence or complicity on the part of the CIA, the FBI, or any other government agency in the assassination of Martin King."

William F. Pepper in his book "An Act of State: the Execution of Martin Luther King"

"Warren and Murphy [aliases of Army Special Forces soldiers] ... were part of an eight-man "Operation Detachment Alpha 184 team - a Special Forces field training team in specialized civilian disguise.
... Warren and Murphy stated that the team was specifically briefed before departing from Camp Shelby for Memphis at 4:30 AM on the morning of April 4 1968. During the half-hour session the team was left in no doubt as to its mission. On the order they were to shoot to kill - "body mass" (center, chest cavity) - Dr Martin Luther King Jr and the Reverend Andrew Young.
They were shown "target acquisition photos" of the two men and the Lorraine Motel. The team's pep talk stressed how they were enemies of the United States who were determined to bring down the government. Warren said that no one on the team had any hesitancy about killing the two "sacks of shit."
... Warren recognized his target, Andrew Young, putting on his coat, and took aim, holding him in his sights... Warren kept Andy Young in the cross hairs of his scope, and then, he said, a shot rang out.
It sounded like a military weapon, and Warren assumed that the other sniper unit had jumped the gun and fired too soon because the plan was always for a simultaneous shooting [of Martin Luther King and Andrew Young]... the team leader came on and ordered the team to disengage in an orderly fashion and follow the egress routes assigned to them out of South Memphis."

William F. Pepper in his book "An Act of State: the Execution of Martin Luther King"

"In 1999, the [Martin Luther] King family brought a wrongful death lawsuit in a Tennessee Circuit Court. A nearly month-long trial ensued. Seventy witnesses were called. It took the jury only two and a half hours to come back with a verdict that Dr. King was assassinated by a conspiracy that included agencies of his own government."

Jesse Ventura in the book "American Conspiracies"

"In 1999, the King family took the case of Martin Luther King's assassination to civil court. They proved, and the jury verdict confirmed, that Martin Luther King had been assassinated by a conspiracy of the FBI, military intelligence, and the Memphis Poiice Department. The decision to assassinate King was decided upon because he had begun speaking out against the Vietnam War, against the American empire, and against poverty in the form of his massive national antipoverty campaign."

Andrew Gavin Marshall

KISSINGER, HENRY

"Henry Kissinger is the greatest living war criminal in the world today, with the blood of millions of people in Vietnam and Cambodia and Laos and Chile and East Timor on his hands."

George Galloway

"Today, Americans would be outraged if UN troops entered Los Angeles to restore order; tomorrow, they will be grateful. This is especially true if they were told there was an outside threat from beyond, whether real or promulgated, that threatened our very existence. It is then that all people of the world will plead with world leaders to deliver them from this evil. The one thing every man fears is the unknown. When presented with this scenario, individual rights will be willingly relinquished for the guarantee of their well-being granted to them by their world government."

Henry Kissinger

"It is Henry Kissinger's belief that by controlling food one can control people, and by controlling energy - especially oil - one can control nations and their financial systems. By placing food and oil under international control along with the world's monetary system, Kissinger is convinced a loosely knit world government can become a reality."

Washington columnist Paul Scott, 1976

"Depopulation should be the highest priority of foreign policy towards the third world."

Henry Kissinger

" Henry Kissinger was the high priest of imperialism and neocolonialism, animated by an instinctive hatred for nationalist world leaders.
... Kissinger was a Zionist, dedicated to economic, diplomatic and military support of Israeli aggression and expansionism to keep the Middle East in turmoil, so as to prevent Arab unity and Arab economic development."

Webster Griffin Tarpley and Anton Chaitkinin their book "George Bush : The Unauthorized Biography"

"I happen to believe that Henry Kissinger was one of the most destructive Secretaries of State in the modern history of this country. I am proud to say that Henry Kissinger is not my friend. I will not take advice from Henry Kissinger. And in fact, Kissinger's actions in Cambodia, when the United States bombed that country, overthrew Prince Sihanouk, created the instability for Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge to come in, who then butchered some three million innocent people, was one of the worst genocides in the history of the world. So count me in as somebody who will not be listening to Henry Kissinger."

Senator Bernie Sanders

"The illegal we do immediately, the unconstitutional takes a little longer."

Henry Kissinger

"Henry Kissinger, together with his international political directorate known as Kissinger Associates, is the individual who stands at the intersection point of every one of these networks: the back-channel with the Soviet Union, the drug and terror networks from Italy to Ibero-America, and the highest levels of finance - including his directorship in American Express, the entity into which has merged a major portion of Dope, command structure."

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

"The issues are much too important for the Chilean voters to be left to decide for themselves.
... I don't see why we need to stand by and watch a country go Communist due to the irresponsibility of its own people.

Henry Kissinger, about Chile under Salvador Allende

"Political satire became obsolete when Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize [in 1973]."

American songwriter Tom Lehrer

"Oil is much too important a commodity to be left in the hands of the Arabs."

Henry Kissinger

"I refuse to believe that a little fourthrate power like North Vietnam does not have a breaking point."

Henry Kissinger

"If you control the oil, you control entire nations. If you control the food, you control the people. If you control the money, your control the entire world."

Henry Kissinger

"Jimmy Carter is not the President of the United States. The Trilateral Commission is the President of the United States; I represent the Trilateral Commission."

Henry Kissinger

"The kingpins of the U.S. branch of the drug cartel [are] led by Henry Kissinger and the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai Brith."

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

"Although [Henry] Kissinger has been historically a close ally of the most rabid factions inside Israel and within the Zionist establishment in the United States, his primary allegiance through-out his political career has been to the British Crown and its intelligence and financial tentacles."

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

"if we can't control Latin America, how can we dominate the world?"

Henry Kissinger, 1970s

"The CIA and the US State Department remained primary sponsors of the Argentine military junta, which was led by General Jorge Videla. On February 16, 1976, six weeks before the coup, Robert Hill, the US ambassador to Argentina, reported to Secretary of State Henry Kissinger that the plans for the coup were underway and that a public relations campaign had been mounted that would cast the new military regime in a positive light."

Paul L. William in his book "Operation Gladio", 2015

"While Kissinger's 1973 oil shock had a devastating impact on world industrial growth, it had an enormous benefit for certain established interests - the major New York and London banks, and the Seven Sisters oil multinationals of the United States and Britain. By 1974, Exxon had overtaken General Motors as the largest American corporation in gross revenues. Her sisters, including Mobil, Texaco, Chevron and Gulf, were not far behind.
The bulk of the OPEC dollar revenues, Kissinger's 'recycled petrodollars,' was deposited with the leading banks of London and New York, the banks which dealt in dollars as well as international oil trade. Chase Manhattan, Citibank, Manufacturers Hanover, Bank of America, Barclays, Lloyds, Midland Bank - all enjoyed the windfall profits of the oil crisis."

William Engdahl in his book "A Century of War"

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