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.

ROUND TABLE GROUPS

"At the end of the war of 1914, it became clear that the organization of this system [the Round Table Groups] had to be greatly extended... established, in England and each dominion, a front organization to the existing Round Table Group. This front organization, called the Royal Institute of International Affairs, had as its nucleus in each area the existing submerged Round Table Group. In New York it was known as the Council on Foreign Relations, and was a front for J. P. Morgan and Company in association with the very small American Round Table Group."

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

"It is one of the least understood realities of modem history that many of America's most prominent political and financial figures - then as now - have been willing to sacrifice the best interests of the United States in order to further their goal of creating a one-world government. The strategy has remained unchanged since the formation of Cecil Rhodes' society and its offspring, the Round Table Groups. It is to merge the English-speaking nations into a single political entity, while at the same time creating similar groupings for other geopolitical regions. After this is accomplished, all of these groupings are to be amalgamated into a global government, the so-called Parliament of Man."

G. Edward Griffin in his book "The Creature from Jekyll Island"

"[The Milner Group, the secret society formed by Cecil Rhodes ... founded the Royal Institute of International Affairs in 1919 and still controls it.] There were groups founded in many countries representing the same interests of the secret Milner Group, and they came to be known as the Round Table Groups, preeminent among them were the Royal Institute of international Affairs (Chatham House), the Council on Foreign Relations in the United States, and parallel groups in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and India."

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

"The vanguard of this quest for Anglo-Saxon unity was a secret society, The Round Table. It had been founded in 1891 by Cecil Rhodes, the conquistador of the mineral riches of Southern Africa, and the journalist, William T. Stead. Both had been pupils of the Oxford professor John Ruskin."

political scientist, Kees van der Piyl, University of Amsterdam

"The power and influence of the [Cecil] Rhodes-[Alfred] Milner group [Round Table] in British Imperial Affairs and in foreign policy since 1889, although not widely recognized, can hardly be exaggerated... this group dominated The Times [of London newspaper] from 1890 to 1912 and has controlled it completely since 1912 (except for the years 1919-1922)."

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

"As World War II approached, the Round Table Group was influential in seeing that Hitler was not stopped in Austria, the Rhineland, or Sudetenland - and thereby was largely responsible for precipitating the holocaust. A second world war would greatly enhance the opportunity for establishment of World Government. The financing for Adolph Hitler's rise to power was handled through the Warburg-controlled Mendelsohn Bank of Amsterdam and later by the J. Henry Schroeder Bank with branches in Frankfurt, London and New York. Chief legal counsel to the J. Henry Schroeder Bank was the firm of Sullivan and Cromwell whose senior partners included John Foster and Allen Dulles."

Gary Allen in his book "None Dare Call It Conspiracy"

"There grew up in the twentieth century a power structure between London and New York which penetrated deeply into university life, the press, and the practice of foreign policy. In England the center was the Round Table Group, while in the United States it was J. P. Morgan and Company or its local ranches in Boston, Philadelphia, and Cleveland."

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

"The Council on Foreign Relations, the Trilateral Commission and the Bilderberger Group, have prepared for and are now implementing open world dictatorship."

Dr. Johannes Koeppi, former German Defense Ministry official and adviser to NATO

"Cecil Rhodes and Alfred Milner and an elite circle of Empire strategists founded a secret society in 1910 whose purpose was to revitalize a flagging British imperial spirit. The society, many of whose members were graduates of All Souls College at Oxford University, would secretly steer the strategic policies of the British Empire up until the end of the Second World War. They called their group the Round Table. a reference to King Arthur's medieval table surrounded by his select knights."

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

"There does exist, and has existed for a generation, an international Anglophile network which operates, to some extent, in the way the radical right believes the communists act. In fact, this network which we may identify as The Round Table Groups, has no aversion to cooperating with the Communists, or any other groups, and frequently does so."

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

"In 1888 [Cecil] Rhodes made his third will leaving everything to Lord Rothschild, with an accompanying letter to form a 'secret society', which was to devote itself to the preservation and expansion of the British Empire. The central part of the secret society was established by March, 1891, using Rhodes' money. The organization [The Round Table] was run for Rothschild by Lord Alfred Milner. The Round Table worked behind the scenes at the highest levels of British government, influencing foreign policy."

Frank Aydelotte in his book "American Rhodes Scholarships"

"Beginning approximately in the early 1890s, a group of British elites, primarily from the privileged colleges of Oxford and Cambridge, formed what was to become the most influential policy network in Britain over the next half century and more. The group denied its existence as a formal group, but its footprints can be found around the establishment of a new journal of empire, the Round Table, founded in 1910.
The group argued that a more subtle and efficient system of global empire was required to extend the effective hegemony of Anglo-Saxon culture over the next century.
... In place of the costly military occupation of the colonies of the British Empire, they argued for a more repressive tolerance, calling for the creation of a British 'Commonwealth of Nations.' Members nations were to be given the illusion of independence, enabling Britain to reduce the high costs of far-flung armies of occupation from India to Egypt, and now across Africa and the Middle East as well. The term 'informal empire' was sometimes used to describe the shift.
... The idea of a Jewish-dominated Palestine, beholden to England for its tenuous survival, surrounded by a balkanized of squabbling Arab states, formed part of this group's [British Round Table Group] concept of a new British Empire.
... The Round Table group's grand design was to link England's vast colonial possessions, from the gold and diamond mines of Cecil Rhodes and Rothschild's Consolidated Gold Fields in South Africa, north to Egypt and the vital shipping route through the Suez Canal, and on through Mesopotamia, Kuwait and Persia into India in the East.
... The great power able to control this vast reach would control the world's most valuable strategic raw materials, from gold, basis of the international gold standard for world trade, to petroleum, in 1919 emerging as the energy source of the modern industrial era."

William Engdahl in his book "A Century of War"

"Lord Alfred Milner, wealthy English man and front man for the Rothschilds, served as paymaster for the international bankers during the Bolshevik Revolution. Milner later headed secret society known as The Round Table which was dedicated to establishing a world government whereby a clique of super-rich financiers would control the world under the guise of Socialism. The American subsidiary of this conspiracy is called the Council on Foreign Relations and was started by, and is still controlled by international bankers."

Gary Allen in his book "None Dare Call It Conspiracy"

"One of the most important secret societies is called the Round Table. It is based in Britain with branches across the world, and it is the Round Table that orchestrates the network of the Bilderberg Group, Council on Foreign Relations, Trilateral Commission and the Royal Institute of International Affairs."

"Tales from the Time Loop" an article by David Icke

"The Round Table Groups were semi-secret discussion and lobbying groups. The original purpose of these groups was to seek to federate the English-speaking world along lines laid down by Cecil Rhodes and William T. Stead, and the money for the organizational work came originally from the Rhodes Trust.
Since 1925 there have been substantial contributions from wealthy individuals and from foundations and firms associated with the international banking fraternity, especially the Carnegie United Kingdom Trust, and other organizations associated with J.P. Morgan, the Rockefeller and Whitney families, and the associates of Lazard Brothers and of Morgan, Grenfell, and Company."

Carroll Quigley in his book "Tragedy and Hope"

"The Round Table group of Lord Milner had been the catalyst for the propaganda drive to go to a war against Germany before 1914.
By the late 1930s, the Round Table that propagandized for a war against the German Reich, also beat the drums for accepting a German remilitarization of the Rhineland. Using their house organ, the London Times, and their own magazine, The Round Table, the same group called for non-intervention into the Spanish Civil War when Germany backed Franco's forces with arms and logistical support."

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

RULING ELITE
ESTABLISHMENT, POWER ELITE, ILLUMINATI, SHADOW GOVERNMENT, HIDDEN HAND

"The word 'Establishment' is a general term for the power elite in international finance, business, the professions and government, largely from the northeast, who wield most of the power regardless of who is in the White House. Most people are unaware of the existence of this 'legitimate Mafia'.
The power of the Establishment makes itself felt from the professor who seeks a foundation grant, to the candidate for a cabinet post or State Department job. It affects the nation's policies in almost every area."

Edith Kermit Roosevelt, 1961

"The Rockefellers, Rothschilds, and a few others - numbering less than a dozen leaders of international finance - are the real power behind the visible thrones of world government.
No major policy is formulated without their input; no major plan of action is implemented without their specific 'go' signal."

Jim Marrs in his book Rule by Secrecy

"There is a transnational ruling class, a "Superclass", that agrees on establishing a world government. The middle class is targeted for elimination, because most of the world has no middle class, and to fully integrate and internationalize a middle class, would require industrialization and development in Africa, and certain places in Asia and Latin America. The goal of the Superclass is not to lose their wealth and power to a transnational middle class, but rather to extinguish the notion of a middle class, and transnationalize a lower, uneducated, labor oriented class, through which they will secure ultimate wealth and power.
The global economic crisis serves these ends, as whatever remaining wealth the middle class holds is in the process of being eliminated, and as the crisis progresses, the middle classes of the world will suffer, while a great percentage of lower classes of the world, poverty-stricken even prior to the crisis, will suffer the greatest, most probably leading to a massive reduction in population levels, particularly in the "underdeveloped" or "Third World" states."

Andrew Gavin Marshall, 'The Global Economic Crisis: The Great Depression of the XXI Century'

"A ruling group is a ruling group so long as it can nominate its successors. The Party is not concerned with perpetuating its blood but with perpetuating itself. Who wields power is not important, provided that the hierarchical structure remains always the same."

George Orwell in his book "1984"

"Wars are started (and stopped) with no shred of coherent explanation. Political words have never matched political deeds, because the center of political power has been elsewhere than with elected and presumably responsive representatives in Washington, and this power elite has its own objectives, which are inconsistent with those of the public at large."

Antony Sutton in his book "Wall Street and the Rise of Hitler"

"World events do not occur by accident. They are made to happen, whether it has to do with national issues or commerce; and most of them are staged and managed by those who hold the purse strings."

Denis Healey, British Labour Party minister

"Fifty men have run America, and they have within their power, by reason of the wealth which they control, the ability to paralyze the whole country, for they control the circulation of currency and can create a panic whenever they will."

Joseph P. Kennedy, July 26, 1936, New York Times

"We are governed by a 'power elite' of corporate oligarchs and global bankers who dominate the decision making process through their lobbyists, control of elected officials irrespective of party affiliation and ownership of the means of communication."

internet commentator Rich Scheck

"The ruling class at present, has the schools and press, usually the Church as well, under its thumb. This enables it to organize and sway the emotions of the masses, and make its tool of them.

Albert Einstein in a 1932 letter to Sigmund Freud

"The existence of groups like the Trilateral Commission, Council on Foreign Relations, and the Bilderbergers is well documented. The only question is the extent of their control and manipulation of major world events. Members of these societies exert inordinate control over many of the largest corporations and banks in the world. These corporations, in turn, control essential minerals, energy, transportation, pharmaceuticals, agriculture, telecommunications, and entertainment - in other words, the basics of modern life."

Jim Marrs in his book Rule by Secrecy

"[The typical path of the power elite] begins in private schools, the most famous being Groton. From these they have typically proceeded to Harvard, Yale, Princeton, or Columbia, there entering exclusive fraternities, such as Yale's secretive Skull and Bones.
From academia they have customarily progressed to Wall Street, perhaps joining an international investment bank, such as Chase Manhattan, or a prominent law firm or brokerage house.
Some of the politically inclined have signed on with the establishment think tanks like the Brookings Institution and the Rand Corporation, and a few have found themselves on the boards of vast foundations.
From there they move into high positions in the federal government, which requires membership in the Council on Foreign Relations."

James Perloff "The Shadows of Power"

"The question is not how to get good people to rule; the question is how to stop the powerful from doing as much damage as they can to us."

Karl Popper

"The United States and other NATO countries are not run by their respective leaders. These nations are run by an elite cabal of wealthy individuals who prefer to operate from behind the scenes. This group has been called the Establishment, the Secret Brotherhood, the Alliance, the Invisible Government, the Shadow Government, a legal mafia, the New World Order, the Illuminati, the Insiders, the Military-industrial Complex, etc.."

Mark M. Rich, 2009

"The total result of the manipulation of society by the Establishment elite has been four major wars in sixty years, a crippling national debt, abandonment of the Constitution, suppression of freedom and opportunity, and creation of a vast credibility gulf between the man in the street and Washington, D.C. While the transparent device of two major parties trumpeting artificial differences, circus-like conventions, and the cliché of "bipartisan foreign policy" no longer carries credibility, and the financial elite itself recognizes that its policies lack public acceptance, it is obviously prepared to go it alone without even nominal public support."

Antony C. Sutton in his book "Wall Street and the Rise of Hitler"

"The global elite decide when wars should start, how long they should last, when they should end, who will and will not participate, the changes in boundaries of countries resulting from the outcome of these wars, who will lend the money to support the war efforts, and who will lend the money to rebuild the countries after they have been destroyed by war.
They own the central banks such as the Federal Reserve System in the US, and similar organizations in all major countries throughout the world, and therefore are in a position to determine what countries should receive loans (guaranteed by the taxpayers of the respective countries).
They directly or indirectly own all the major news media, and can therefore tell the public exactly what they want them to hear, and deny the public information they do not want them to see, hear, or read."

Robert Gaylon Ross, author of the book "Who's Who of the Elite"

"If the top leadership of government and business is controlled, then the activities of subservient agencies and divisions must be of little consequence. Government bureaucrats - honest and well-intentioned workers for the most part - simply follow orders and policies set by superiors."

Jim Marrs in his book Rule by Secrecy

"The elites who wish to set up their world dictatorship recognize their main enemy to be the great middle class of the United States, which, being made up of individuals who have acquired a little education, property, and independence, will fight strenuously to keep them.
The strategy of the elites is to squeeze the middle class to death by creating or exacerbating the major problems facing the society, including class warfare, crime, education, moral decay, etc., and then creating in response spurious governmental programs to "cure" the problems that they just created."

Alan B. Jones in his book How the World Really Works

"Those [in the United States] who finally rule take their signals and commands not from the electorate as a body but from a small group of men (plus a few women). This group will be called the establishment. It exists even though that existence is stoutly denied. It is one of the secrets of the American social order. A second secret is the fact that the existence of the establishment, the ruling class, is not supposed to be discussed .... A third secret is implicit in what has been said - that there is really only one political party of any consequence in the United States, one that has been called the 'Property Party.' The Republicans and the Democrats are in fact two branches of the same (secret) party."

Professor Arthur S. Miller in his book "The Secret Constitution and the Need for Constitutional Change"

"A Transnational Capitalist Class (TCC) has emerged, and this TCC is a global ruling class. It is a ruling class because it controls the levers of an emergent transnational state apparatus and of global decision making. This class has no borders, and is composed of the technocratic, media, corporate, banking, social and political elite of the world."

Andrew Gavin Marshall, Global Research

"All societies we know of are governed by the selfish interests of the ruling class or classes."

Plato

"The Elite control our courts, the Pentagon, the U.N., NATO, N.S.A., C.I.A., F.B.I., our Senate and House of Representatives, and directly or indirectly control all local law enforcement agencies."

Robert Gaylon Ross, author of the book "Who's Who of the Elite"

"The global elite control the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), but the National Security Council (NSC), Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), National Security Agency (NSA), Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (BATF), Internal Revenue Service (IRS), Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), and many others."

Jim Marrs in his book Rule by Secrecy

"Ruling elites are deadly serious about seeing that any renovation of the international system is in their interest. They use a variety of carrot and stick tactics to maintain political and economic control - domestically and internationally. Control techniques will be more vicious or less, depending on a combination of factors involving the state of the economy and, more importantly, the state of popular opposition. The more threatening and persistent the moves to counter their plans and build alternative models, the more violent will be their tactics of repression."

Holly Sklar, Trilateralism

"We must be deeply suspicious of the ruling elite of the United States, which is of course also an oligarchy, but an oligarchy which operates behind the mask of democratic institutions and formal democracy."

Webster Griffin Tarpley in his book "9/11 Synthetic Terror - made in the USA"

"The only recognizable basis for moral and political authority, in the eyes of the elite, is the attainment of material success and power. It does not matter how it is gotten."

Chris Hedges

"The real rulers in Washington are invisible, and exercise power from behind the scenes."

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter, 1952

"In every society a minority always dominated. The question was how to do it. If the minority affronted the majority, it lost influence. If discretely exercised... the minority influence could be effective and desirable."

US Secretary of State John Foster Dulles

"The global elite have consistently used a strategy of arming and funding both sides of armed conflicts. While opposing populations kill each other off, they make off with their natural resources. When they confront a government that cannot be bribed or provoked into civil or regional war, they fund brutal death squads, attempt military coups and intimidate them by giving weapons to undemocratic neighboring regimes. If all that doesn't work, they are declared a threat to national security and the US military, private contractors and NATO forces invade and occupy the country."

David Degraw in his book "Revolution or World War III"

"The highest ideal of many members of the ruling class is to create a private paradise of wealth, and they have no qualms if that goal can be achieved by buying career politicians in Congress. These people know the market value of "our two party-system," but they have never known the value of democracy. Plainly, it serves the interests of a small but immensely wealthy minority if we, the people, leave politics to politicians except on election days."

Scott Tucker, 2009

"Side by side with the international politics of each State; there exists certain obscure organizations.
... The men who take part in these councils are not professional politicians or brilliantly dressed ambassadors, but certain unknown men, high financiers who are superior to the vain ephemeral politicians who imagine that they govern the world."

Dr. Gerard Encause in his work "Mysteria", 1914

"The United States' government was overthrown by a private corporation in 1913 (the Federal Reserve was established in secret by a financial elite). Currently, supra-governmental Think Tanks such the Council on Foreign Relations, Trilateral Commission and Bilderberg group, which are interlocked with Wall Street and the tax-exempt Foundations, control America and other NATO nations.
This interlock has been called The Invisible Government and The Shadow Government. These Think Tanks are composed of multinational corporations, European royalty, international banks, and people of tremendous wealth. Despite their humane appearance, they have declared war on citizens of the planet.
They have funded dictatorships, instigated wars for profit, and have re-written history. They have also funded mind-control experiments and eugenics projects. They control mainstream media, which is their primary distribution center for lies and propaganda. Politics, industry, academia, and finance are also under their control.
The president, whether he is a democrat or republican, is their puppet. They create policy that is enacted worldwide, which is accomplished by circumventing congress and the voting public. The policy they set is filtered down into federal, state and local governments. The policy is equipped with propaganda used to promote it. It is enacted without public knowledge or approval. Influenced by convincing propaganda, there are people who carry out their policy with the best of intentions.
The policy is given an official government "stamp" which gives it the appearance of having originated from the authentic government, which the general public still believes exists."

Mark M. Rich, 2017

RUSSIA

"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

"We can only theorize on the manner in which Moscow is controlled from New York, London and Paris. Undoubtedly much of the control is economic, but certainly the international bankers have an enforcer arm within Russia to keep the Soviet leaders in line."

Gary Allen in his book "None Dare Call It Conspiracy"

'There are no political parties in the US that are funded by foreign interests. No such thing would be permitted. It would be regarded as high treason. What is surprising is that the Russian government permitted for 20 years its political opposition to be funded by Washington and still permits that today as long as the opposition registers as an American agent. The ability of Washington to fund the Russian government's political opposition and also protest groups, allows Washington free access to destabilize Russia."

Paul Craig Roberts

"[By 1927 Stalin emerged as the new strongman in Russia. Stalin's plan required that the country be industrialized at breakneck speed, whatever the waste and hardships, and must emphasize heavy industry and armaments rather than rising standards of living. This meant that the goods produced by the peasants must be taken from them, by political duress, without any economic return, and that the ultimate in authoritarian terror must be used to prevent the peasants from reducing their level of production to their own consumptive needs, as they had done in the period 1921-1923. This meant that the first step towards the industrialization of Russia required that the peasantry be broken by terror and be reorganized from a capitalistic basis of private farms to a socialistic system of collective farms." It was deemed necessary to "crush all kinds of ... resistance to the Bolshevik State, independent thought, and public discontent. These must be crushed by terror so that the whole of Russia could be formed into a monolithic structure of disciplined proletariat who would obey their leaders with such unquestioning obedience.
[Under the communists, Russia became a "despotic police state] resting on espionage and terror, in which there was a profound gulf in ideology and manner of living between the rulers and the ruled.
[Because of its peculiar and unique structure, the communist apparatus would be] based on intrigue and violence and would inevitably bring to the top the most decisive, most merciless, most unprincipled and most violent of its members."

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

"By 1998, more than 80 percent of Russian farms had gone bankrupt, and roughly seventy thousand state factories had closed, creating an epidemic of unemployment. In 1989, before shock therapy, 2 million people in the Russian Federation were living in poverty, on less than $4 a day. By the time the shock therapists had administered their "bitter medicine" in the mid-nineties, 74 million Russians were living below the poverty line, according to the World Bank. That means that Russia's "economic reforms" can claim credit for the impoverishment of 72 million people in only eight years. By 1996, 25 percent of Russians - almost 37 million people-lived in poverty described as "desperate.""

Naomi Klein in her book "The Shock Doctrine"

"Rothschild financed Lenin in 1913 to over throw the Monarch of Russia in order to centralize the banking system to his London base?
When Putin was elected president of Russia in 2000, Russia was bankrupt. The nation owed $16.6 billion to the Rothschild-run International Monetary Fund while its foreign debt to the Rothschild-controlled Paris & London Club Of Creditors was over 36 billion dollars.
But Putin took advantage of the current boom in world oil prices by redirecting a portion of the profits of Russia's largest oil producer Gazprom so as to pay off the country's debt. The continual surge in oil prices greatly accelerated Russia's capacity to restore financial sovereignty.
By 2006 Putin had paid off Russia's debt to the Rothschilds. Russia's financial dependence on the Jewish financiers was now over."

Ron Paul

"While securing corporate control over extensive oil reserves and pipeline routes along the Eurasian corridor on behalf of the AngloAmerican oil giants, Washington's ultimate objective is to eventually destabilize and then colonize both China and Russia. This means the takeover of their national financial systems and the control over monetary policy, leading eventually to the imposition of the US dollar as the national currency."

Michel Chossudovsky in his book " America's War on Terrorism"

"International bankers arranged the Bolshevik coup in Russia in 1917, and then supported the regime thereafter, both for the profit involved and, presumably, to build up a "credible enemy.""

G. Edward Griffin in his book "The Creature from Jekyll Island"

"One barrier to mature understanding of recent history is the notion that all capitalists are the bitter and unswerving enemies of all Marxists and Socialists. This erroneous idea originated with Karl Marx and was undoubtedly useful to his purposes. In fact, the idea is nonsense. There has been a continuing, albeit concealed, alliance between international political capitalists and international revolutionary socialists - to their mutual benefit."

Antony Sutton in his book "Wall Street And The Bolshevik Revolution"

"Rather than being regarded as a U.S. "partner," Russia was on the list of potential "regime change" targets. These included aggressive U.S. encirclement of Russia with new military bases on Russia's borders, encouragement of "regime change" in Georgia and the Ukraine, and the expansion of NATO into the Baltic states and Eastern Europe, in violation of a pledge to Gorbachev to refrain from any such threatening actions at the time the Soviet Union agreed to allow East Germany to join the West."

Edward S. Herman, 2008

"President Reagan reached agreements with Gorbachov, and they were good agreements, and the Russians banked on them, and they've been betrayed by every subsequent American administration. We did everything we said we wouldn't do - we brought NATO to their borders, we're putting missile systems in former parts of the Soviet Union, we're interfering in elections in former republics of the Soviet Union, including Georgia, where we managed to install a puppet government."

Paul Craig Roberts, , 2008

"The NATO encirclement of Russia, the Color Revolutions across Eurasia, and the war in Iraq, were all aspects of one and the same American geopolitical strategy: a grand strategy to de-construct Russia once and for all as a potential rival to a sole US Superpower hegemony."

F. William Engdahl in his book "Full Spectrum Dominance"

SANCTIONS

"It is prohibited to attack, destroy, remove or render useless objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population, such as foodstuffs, agricultural areas for the production of foodstuffs, crops, livestock, drinking water installations and supplies such as irrigation works (denying them) to the civilian population or to the adverse Party ... for any motive."

Protocol 1, Additional to the Geneva Convention of 1977

"When strong governments wish to impose their will on weaker regimes, they often resort to sanctions."

Brian Cloughley, 2010

"Because economic sanctions result in shortages of food and medical supplies, their most severe consequences are often felt by the persons who are least culpable and most vulnerable."

Dr. Michèle Barry in "Annals of Internal Medicine"

"The immediate consequence of eight years of sanctions [U.S.-backed UN Security Council Resolution 687 established sanctions [which were begun in 1990] against the Iraqi people[ after Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1991] has been a dramatic fall in living standards, the collapse of the infrastructure, and a serious decline in the availability of public services."

Brian Cloughley, 2010

"The death of some 5-6,000 children a month [under the U.S.-backed UN Security Council-established sanctions which were begun in 1990] is mostly due to contaminated water, lack of medicines and malnutrition. The US and UK governments' delayed clearance of equipment and materials is responsible for this tragedy, not Baghdad."

Dennis Halliday, head of the UN's humanitarian program in Iraq

"Prior to 1990, 95 percent of urban households in Iraq had access to potable water, as did three quarters of rural households. Soon after the Persian Gulf War, there were widespread outbreaks of cholera and typhoid-diseases that had been largely eradicated in Iraq-as well as massive increases in child and infant dysentery, and skyrocketing child and infant mortality rates. By 1996 all sewage-treatment plants had broken down."

Joy Gordon, Harpers, 2002

SAUDI ARABIA

"The United States handled the quadrupling of oil prices in the 1970s by arranging, by means of secret agreements with the Saudis, to recycle petrodollars back into the U.S. economy. The first of these deals assured a special and ongoing Saudi stake in the health of the U.S. dollar; the second secured continuing Saudi support for the pricing of all OPEC oil in dollars. These two deals assured that the U.S. economy would not be impoverished by OPEC oil price hikes."

Peter Dale Scott, 2003

"We worked out a deal whereby the House of Saud would reinvest petrodollars in U.S. treasury securities.
... Part of the agreement also was for Saudi Arabia to maintain the price of oil at a level acceptable to us and we would agree to keep the House of Saud in power."

John Perkins, 2005

"The United States balances its payments by secret agreements with Saudi Arabia to recycle petrodollars to the United States and to ensure that OPEC sales all over the world are denominated in U.S. dollars. These arrangements to ease pressure on the U.S. currency have helped, as an inevitable consequence, to create debt crises all over the Third World."

Peter Dale Scott in his book "Drugs, Oil, and War"

"Saudi Arabia ... is governed by a family dictatorship which tolerates no opposition and severely punishes human rights advocates and political dissidents. Hundreds of billions in oil revenues are controlled by the royal despotism and fuel speculative investments the world over. The ruling elite relies on the purchase of Western arms and US military bases for protection. The wealth of productive nations is syphoned to enrich the conspicuous consumption of the Saudi ruling family. The ruling elite finances the most fanatical, retrograde, misogynist version of Islam, "Wahhabi" a sect of Sunni Islam.
... Faced with internal dissent from repressed subjects and religious minorities, the Saudi dictatorship perceives threats and dangers from all sides... In response it has turned toward financing, training and arming an international network of Islamic terrorists who are directed toward attacking, invading and destroying regimes opposed to the Saudi clerical-dictatorial regime."

James Petras

"The price of oil suddenly quadrupled in 1974. That highly suspicious rise occurred soon after an oil deal was engineered by U.S. interests with the royal family of Saudia Arabia, the largest oil producer in OPEC (the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries). The deal was evidently brokered by U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. It involved an agreement by OPEC to sell oil only for dollars in return for a secret U.S. agreement to arm Saudi Arabia and keep the House of Saud in power. The U.S. dollar, which had formerly been backed by gold, was now "backed" by oil."

Ellen Brown in her book "Web of Debt"

"The dollar's current strength is supported by the requirement of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), secured originally by a secret agreement between the United States and Saudi Arabia, that all OPEC oil sales be denominated in dollars."

Peter Dale Scott in his book "The Road to 9/11"

"The Saudi royal family, and especially the brand of religion that it believed in, the Wahabi faith, represented a tiny number of people in Saudi Arabia. So they used the strength they gained first from their deals with the British Empire and subsequently with the United States in order to preserve their stranglehold over their own people and to impose this particular religion on the people in Saudi Arabia, who really didn't share it."

Tariq Ali interviewed by Oliver Stone, 2011

"With 261 billion barrels of crude oil lying beneath its soil, Saudi Arabia remains the lynchpin in the international oil grab presided over by the Four Horsemen [Shell, Chevron. British Petroleum, Exxon].
... ARAMCO [Arabian American Oil Company] now controls over one-quarter of the world's crude oil reserves.
... As of 1990 ARAMCO produced over 8 million barrels of crude oil a day, ensuring the Saudi role as "swing producer". During the 1991 Gulf War ARAMCO underwent another expansion and now cranks out an unprecedented 10 million barrels a day."

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

SCIENCE

"A poll of 500 scientists working in either government or recently privatized research institutes in the UK revealed that 30 percent had been asked to change their research conclusions by their sponsoring customer."

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

"With less research money available from public sources, more and more scientists in the U.S. and Europe are dependent on corporate sponsors, and hence, corporate acceptance of their research and results. Among Britain's top research universities, for example, dependence on private funds often amounts to 80 to 90 percent of the total research budget."

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

"A study of major research centers in the field of engineering found that 35 percent would allow corporate sponsors to delete information from papers prior to publication."

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

"Research in the Journal of the American Medical Association revealed that studies of cancer drugs funded by non-profit groups were eight times more likely to reach unfavorable conclusions as the studies funded by the pharmaceutical companies."

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

SECRET SOCIETIES
KNIGHTS OF MALTA, FREEMASONS, OPUS DEI,, KNIGHTS OF ST. JOHN OF JERUSALEM, SKULL AND BONES, ETC.

"The Knights of Malta is reportedly one of the most powerful of the modern secret societies, with members reaching into the highest levels of Catholicism, governments, and intelligence agencies. These Knights survived medieval persecution by allying themselves with the Vatican and even participating in the persecution of its enemies. Likewise, many of Europe's royal families, themselves usurpers of the thrones of the Merovingians and others, worked in partnership with the Vatican to maintain the status quo. These royals are referred to as the "Black Nobility."
With the papal condemnation of the Knights Templar beginning in 1307, many Templars simply doffed their distinctive red-cross mantles and secreted themselves within other orders, such as the Knights of Christ, the Teutonic Knights, or the Hospitallers, an order that mutated into the Knights of Malta.
The (Knights Hospitaller/Knights of St. John Hospitaller) Hospitallers began about 1070 when a group of Italian merchants established a hospital in Jerusalem dedicated to Saint John long before the First Crusade. After Crusaders took the city in 1099, the Hospitallers reorganized as an order and a Grand Master was selected. While not initially a military order, the Knights of St. John became more militant as the Templars rose to prominence. After the destruction of the Templars, the Hospitallers acquired much of their property, which only increased their already prosperous and powerful order. With the loss of the Holy Land, the Hospitallers fell back to Cyprus along with the Templars. Later they were forced to retreat to Rhodes. When a third siege by the Turks finally took the island in 1522, the order relocated to the island of Malta, where they would become the Sovereign and Military Order of Malta, or simply the Knights of Malta."

Jim Marrs in his book 'The Illuminati'

"The Knights of Malta are the most powerful group known to man. If you think Illuminati and Freemasons are the ones ruling our world, then you better check your real history books again. Who are Knights of Malta? They are your CIA, your politicians, your lobbyists, your previous, present and future presidents. Medici family, which produced four popes for the Vatican church are not just powerful, they are the family related to the Black Pope. Black pope is the most powerful pope in the world. If you think your regular [pope] is the main pope, then you are missing it big. If the white pope, your regular media pope is the CEO, then the Black Pope is the President of the company, who has the authority to fire the CEO."

Illuminati whistleblower Leo Zagami

"Today, the Knights of Malta are headquartered in Rome under the direct supervision of the pope and are recognized by more than forty countries as a sovereign nation. A British offshoot, known as the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem, is a Protestant order headquartered in London and headed by the queen.
The Knights of Malta are believed to be one of the primary channels of communication between the Vatican and the CIA.
The Knights of Malta, Hospitallers, Knights of St. John, Freemasonry, and the Rosicrucians, and perhaps others, all trace their lineage to the Knights Templar."

Jim Marrs in his book 'The Illuminati'

"Pope John Paul II granted the Opus Dei sect recognition as a "personal prelature." This status ensured that the secret society would answer only to the pope and the pope alone. No local bishop could discipline or sanction it. Overnight, Opus Dei emerged as a global ecclesiastical movement without a specific diocese. No organization within the history of the Roman Catholic Church, save the Society of Jesus, had been granted such power.
... Founded in 1928 by Josemaría Escrivá, a Spanish priest and lawyer, Opus Dei is a movement in which members adhere to "the Way," a rigorous daily order prescribed by Escrivá that includes Mass, devotional readings, private prayer, and physical mortification (self-flagellation with whips and chains) to subdue the flesh.
... Like Freemasonry. Opus Dei does not publish its membership list and members, according to the movement's 1950 constitution, are forbidden to reveal their adherence to the movement without the express permission of their superiors.
... Much of what is known about the sect comes from John Roche, a professor at Oxford University, who left the order and broke his pledge of secrecy. In an essay titled "The Inner World of Opus Dei," Roche writes, "Internally, it is totalitarian and imbued with fascist ideas turned to religious purposes, ideas which were surely drawn from the Spain of its early years. It is virtually occult in spirit, a law unto itself, totally self-centered, grudgingly accepting Roman authority because it still considers Rome orthodox."
... By 1984, Opus Dei had become a $3 billion enterprise, controlling six hundred newspapers, fifty-two radio and television stations, twelve film companies, and thirty-eight news agencies. Prominent Americans who became affiliated with the movement included CIA director William Casey, William Simon of Citicorp, Francis X. Stankard of Chase Manhattan, and Sargent Shriver (a former Democratic candidate for vice president).
... Because Opus Dei was vehemently anticommunist, in 1971 the CIA began to funnel millions into its coffers to thwart the growth of liberation theology in Latin America. Much of this money ended up at the Chilean Institute for General Studies (IGS), an Opus Dei think tank.
... The coup against the democratically elected regime of Salvatore Allende was planned within the corridors of the Opus Dei think tank. After the coup, IGS technocrats became the new cabinet ministers. Throughout the 1980s, the CIA made use of Opus Dei's milites Christi ("soldiers of Christ") as a primary force in Poland.
... Plans got underway for Opus Dei to take control of the Vatican's finances in order to ward off a future debacle.
The reorganization of the Vatican finances under Opus Dei got underway in 1989.
... The finances of Holy Mother Church were now in the hands of a secret Catholic society that remained in the service of the CIA and a clandestine group of global economists."

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

SEDITION ACT - 1918
see ESPIONAGE ACT

SKULL AND BONES
America's Secret Establishment

"There is a group within the Council of Foreign Relations (CFR) which belongs to a secret society, which more or less controls the CFR.
... These members are in 'The Order' [Yale University's Skull and Bones]. Their membership in The Order can be proven. Their meetings can be proven. Their objectives are plainly unconstitutional. And this Order has existed for 150 years in the United States."

Antony Sutton in his book "America's Secret Establishment: An Introduction to the Order of Skull and Bones", 1983

"The Order of Skull and Bones is merely the Illuminati in disguise, since Masonic emblems, symbols, the German slogan, even the layout of their initiation room - all are identical to those found in Masonic lodges in Germany associated with the Illuminati."

Jim Marrs in his book 'The Illuminati'

"The British secret society, known as "The Group" was founded at Oxford University, much as "The Order" [Skull and Bones] was founded at Yale University.
... The Group's objective is recorded in Cecil Rhodes' will:
'The extension of British rule throughout the world, the perfecting of a system of emigration from the United Kingdom and of colonization by British subjects of all lands wherein the means of livelihood are attainable by energy, labour and enterprise ... and the ultimate recovery of the United States of America as an integral part of the British Empire.'
... Both The Group and The Order are unwilling or unable to bring about a global society by voluntary means, so they opted for coercion. To do this they have created wars and revolutions, they have ransacked public treasuries, they have oppressed, they have pillaged, they have lied - even to their own countrymen.
... The activities of The Order are directed towards changing our society, changing the world, to bring about a New World Order. This will be a planned order with heavily restricted individual freedom, without Constitutional protection, without national boundaries or cultural distinction."

Antony Sutton in his book "America's Secret Establishment: An Introduction to the Order of Skull and Bones", 1983

"Skull & Bones is an entry point into the Illuminati."

Fritz Springmeier author of 'Bloodlines of the Illuminati'

"We can trace the foundation of three secret societies - the most influential three secret societies that we know about - to universities. "The Illuminati" was founded at University of Ingolstadt. "The Group" was founded at All Souls College, Oxford University in England, and "The Order" [Skull and Bones] was founded at Yale University in the United States."

Antony Sutton in his book "America's Secret Establishment: An Introduction to the Order of Skull and Bones", 1983

"While secrecy is a vital part of Illuminati theology, it is not the ultimate goal, which is keeping the whole plan "unbelievable" to the public."

Jim Marrs in his book 'The Illuminati'

"'The Order' in the United States, 'The Group' in England, the 'Illuminati' in Germany, and the 'Politburo' in Russia - for these elitists the State is supreme and a self-appointed elite running the State acts indeed as God on earth."

Antony Sutton in his book "America's Secret Establishment: An Introduction to the Order of Skull and Bones", 1983

"Skull and Bones is a significant part of the so-called Establishment.
... The "prominent" men in the Skull and Bones Society are really immature juveniles at heart. The horrible reality is that these little boys have been dominant in their influence in world affairs. No wonder we have wars and violence."

Jon Rappoport, 2017

"Communist China will be a "superpower" built by American technology and skill. It is presumably the intention of The Order [Skull and Bones] to place this power in a conflict mode with the Soviet Union."

Antony Sutton in his book "America's Secret Establishment: An Introduction to the Order of Skull and Bones", 1983

"The left-right political spectrum to [is used] to neutralize unwelcome facts and ideas or just condition citizens to think along certain lines.
The "left" leaning segment of the press in the US can always be relied upon to automatically assault ideas and information from the "right" and vice versa. In fact, media outlets have been artificially set up just for this purpose: both Nation and New Republic on the "left" were financed by Willard Straight, using Payne Whitney (The Order) funds. On the "right" National Review published by William Buckley (The Order) runs a perpetual deficit, presumably made up by Buckley.
Neither the independent right nor the independent left sees the trap. They are so busy firing at each other; they've mostly forgotten to look behind the scenes. And The Order smugly claims control of the 'moderate" center."

Antony Sutton in his book "America's Secret Establishment: An Introduction to the Order of Skull and Bones", 1983

SOCIOPATHS
see PSYCHOPATHS

SOROS, GEORGE

"George Soros is not only one of the world's leading megaspeculators; throughout his entire life he has served as an "errand boy" for the Anglo-American monetarist establishment, running looting operations against the nations of Eastern Europe, as well as attacks against the sovereignty of nations.
... Through his Open Society Foundations, George Soros positioned himself, long before communism fell, as the man who, on behalf of Anglo-American banking interests and the IMF, tried to put into place the mechanism for the economic and political "transition" to occur in the Eastern European countries.
Soros became a staunch advocate of the policy of "shock therapy," which was approved by British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and her close associate George HW Bush, after the Berlin Wall had fallen."

Executive Intelligence Review, April 1997

"George Soros is merely the visible face of a vast network of private financial interests, controlled by the leading aristocratic and royal families of Europe."

William Engdahl , Executive Intelligence Review, 1997

"The Club of the Isles provides capital for George Soros' Quantum Fund NV - which made substantial financial gains in 1998-99 following the collapse of currencies of Thailand, Indonesia and Russia. Soros was a major shareholder at George W. Bush's Harken Energy. The Club of Isles is led by the Rothschilds and includes Queen Elizabeth II and other wealthy European aristocrats and Nobility."

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

"George Soros is part of a circle which includes Marc Rich of Zug, Switzerland and Tel Aviv, the indicted metals and commodity speculator and fugitive; Shaul Eisenberg, the secretive Israeli arms and commodities dealer; and "Dirty Rafi" Eytan - both linked to the financial side of the Israeli Mossad, and to the family of Jacob Lord Rothschild.
Understandably, Soros and the Rothschild interests prefer to keep their connection hidden far from public view, so as to obscure the powerful friends Soros can claim in the City of London, the British Foreign Office, Israel, and the U.S. financial establishment."

William Engdahl, 2007

"In 1992, George Soros and his giant hedge fund Quantum Group backed by Citibank and other powerful institutional speculators, used derivatives to collapse the currencies of Great Britain and Italy in a single day. The European Monetary System was taken down with them."

Ellen Hodgson Brown in her book "Web of Debt"

"The National Endowment for Democracy (NED), the George Soros Open Society Institute, Freedom House and Gene Sharp's Albert Einstein Institution, a US intelligence asset [are] used to spark "non-violent" regime change around the world on behalf of the US strategic agenda."

William Engdahl, 2007

"Mikhail Saakashvili a 36-year-old U.S.-educated lawyer, took over the presidency of Georgia in a rose revolution [2004]. The latter was supported by Washington and the Soros Foundation."

William Engdahl in his book "A Century of War"

"The US State Department admits to supporting the activities of the NED [National Endowment for Democracy] in Myanmar. The NED is a US government-funded "private" entity whose activities are designed to support US foreign policy objectives, doing today what the CIA did during the Cold War... the NED funds [George] Soros' Open Society Institute in fostering regime change in Myanmar. "

F. William Engdahl

STATE TERRORISM

"When we get to the level of spectacular international terrorism of the type represented by 9/11, it is clear that only skilled professionals have the physical ability to produce the effects observed.
... Expert professionals are the well-trained, well-equipped operatives who really do have the technical, physical, and mental ability to bring about the terrorist acts which the public sees. They are the ice-cold technocrats of death who were able to direct the aircraft into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The expert professionals are the persons who can accomplish the amazing feats which the media attribute to the pathetic patsies.

Webster Griffin Tarpley in his book "9/11 Synthetic Terror - made in the USA"

"Far from being the terrorists of the world, the Islamic peoples have been its victims, principally the victims of U.S. fundamentalism, whose power, in all its forms-military, strategic, and economic - is the greatest source of terrorism on Earth.... People are neither still nor stupid. They see their independence compromised, their resources and land and the lives of their children taken away, and their accusing fingers increasingly point north: to the great enclaves of plunder and privilege. Inevitably, terror breeds terror and more fanaticism. But how patient the oppressed have been. Their distant voices of rage are now heard; the daily horrors in faraway brutalized places have at last come home."

John Pilger, in his book "Hidden Agendas"

"While "wanton destruction of towns, cities and villages" is a war crime of long standing, the bombing of cities from airplanes goes not only unpunished but virtually unaccused. Air bombardment is state terrorism, the terrorism of the rich. It has burned up and blasted apart more innocents in the past six decades than have all the anti-state terrorists who ever lived. Something has benumbed our consciousness against this reality. In the United States we would not consider for the presidency a man who had once thrown a bomb into a crowded restaurant, but we are happy to elect a man who once dropped bombs from airplanes that destroyed not only restaurants but the buildings that contained them and the neighborhoods that surrounded them."

C. Douglas Lummis, political scientist

"September 11 had a terrible shock effect on the millions of Americans who get all their news from the corporate media and who were secure in the belief that everyone in the world secretly wants to be an American. They believed that America was universally loved and admired because the United States was more prosperous, nobler, and more generous than other countries. Very few Americans know about victims of US terrorism abroad. Relatively few are aware that whole societies have been shattered by US bombings or US monetary and trade policies.
... What changed on September 11 was people's perception of themselves and of America's place in the world. Many felt shocked, smaller, not respected, less secure, less powerful, and confused. Some even wondered if there were things that they had not been told.
... Almost all of America know next to nothing about how US supported terrorists have taken millions of lives in scores of other countries. The media have little to say about those acts of terrorism, and so the general public knows relatively little about them."

Michael Parenti in his book "The Terrorism Trap"

"Large-scale terrorism of the 9/11 type is generally conducted, not so much by identifiable institutions, but rather by a network or faction of like-minded plotters which cuts across the institutions. It is not the visible, elected government which plots terrorism, but rather the parallel, invisible, or secret government, and that secret government is hidden inside the public and elected one.
The essence of this phenomenon is a private network which has ensconced its operatives in decisive, influential positions, from which entire bureaucracies can be controlled, manipulated, or paralyzed.
... The secret, private network at the higher levels of the US government which was behind 9/11 has been around for some time.
... It is an aggressive, imperialistic, murderous network, restlessly seeking to preserve itself through conflict and confrontation.

Webster Griffin Tarpley in his book "9/11 Synthetic Terror - made in the USA"

"The State is a soulless machine. It can never be weaned from violence to which it owes its very existence."

Mahatma Gandhi

"America has clearly emerged as the greatest purveyor of state terrorism on the planet. If there is any doubt one only has to consider, amongst others, the incidents of American intervention in Guatemala, Iran, Nicaragua, Panama, Cuba (ongoing for 43 years), Chile, Uruguay, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, and, most recently, Venezuela."

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

"The record of US international violence just in the last decade is greater than anything that any socialist nation has ever perpetrated in its entire history. US forces or proxy mercenary forces wreaked massive death and destruction upon Iraq, Mozambique, Angola, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala, East Timor, Libya, and other countries. In the span of a few months, President Clinton bombed four countries: Sudan, Afghanistan, Iraq repeatedly, and Yugoslavia massively. At the same time, the US national security state was involved in proxy wars in Angola, Mexico (Chiapas), Colombia, East Timor, and various other places. And US forces occupied Macedonia, Bosnia, Kosovo, and Afghanistan, and were deployed across the globe at some 300 major overseas bases- all in the name of peace, democracy, national security, counter-terrorism, and humanitarianism."

Michael Parenti, 2002

"Every socialist experiment of any significance in the twentieth century-without exception-has either been crushed, overthrown, or invaded, or corrupted, perverted, subverted, or destabilized, or otherwise had life made impossible for it, by the United States. Not one socialist government or movement-from the Russian Revolution to the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, from Communist China to the EMLN in [El] Salvador-not one was permitted to rise or fall solely on its own merits; not one was left secure enough to drop its guard against the all-powerful enemy abroad and freely and fully relax control at home."

William Blum in the book "Masters of War"

"The vast majority of international terrorism conducted on a spectacular scale is indeed state-sponsored terrorism."

Webster Griffin Tarpley in his book "9/11 Synthetic Terror - made in the USA"

"US leaders have been the greatest purveyors of terrorism throughout the world."

Michael Parenti in his book "The Terrorism Trap"

STOCKWELL, JOHN
former CIA agent and whistleblower

"It is the function of the CIA to keep the world unstable, and to propagandize and teach the American people to hate, so we will let the Establishment spend any amount of money on arms."

former CIA agent John Stockwell

"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

"It isn't only Gestapo maniacs who do inhuman things to people. The CIA is responsible for doing inhuman things on a massive scale to people all over the world."

former CIA agent John Stockwell

"The CIA had been running thousands of operations over the years... there have been about 3,000 major covert operations and over 10,000 minor operations... all designed to disrupt, destabilize, or modify the activities of other countries... But they are all illegal and they all disrupt the normal functioning, often the democratic functioning, of other societies. They raise serious questions about the moral responsibility of the United States in the international society of nations."

former CIA agent John Stockwell

"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

"The CIA had developed a program to assassinate Congolese President Patrice Lumumba, The program they developed, the operation, didn't work. They didn't follow through on it. It was to give poison to Lumumba. And they couldn't find a setting in which to get the poison to him successfully in a way that it wouldn't appear to be a CIA operation. And so, they gave up on it. They got cold feet. And instead, they handled it by the chief of station talking to Mobutu about the threat that Lumumba posed, and Mobutu going out and killing Lumumba, having his men kill Lumumba."

former CIA agent John Stockwell

"The owners of the Washington Post long ago acknowledged that the Post is the government's voice to the people. In 1981, Katherine Graham, who owns the Post and Newsweek announced that her editors would "cooperate with the national security interests. "National security in this context means "CIA."

former CIA agent John Stockwell

"Mounting numbers of victims, the millions of people whose lives have been trampled or splattered by CIA operations are increasingly cynical of America. Because of the CIA the world is a more dangerous place. Americans have reduced credibility. Worst of all, by retaining the CIA we are accepting ourselves as a harsh and ruthless people. It's the wrong game for a great nation."

former CIA agent John Stockwell

"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

"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 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 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

"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

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

former CIA agent John Stockwell

"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

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

former CIA agent John Stockwell

STRUCTURAL ADJUSTMENT

"The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund began to tie loans to "structural adjustment" programs, which channeled more of the debtor country's financial and productive resources toward debt repayment.
... Structural adjustments were originally imposed on an ad hoc basis upon individual nations when it appeared that they could not keep up with existing debt payments. By 1985, fifteen debtor nations had been subjected to SAPs, and by 1991, a quarter of the World Bank's total lending was tied to structural adjustment in 54 nations. As more of the "debtor" nations' dwindling resources went to debt service, new loans were simply used to repay previous loans, and the total debt of the low income nations more than quadrupled from $100 to $473 billion between 1980 and 1992. World Bank and IMF "reforms" continued, and by the mid-1990s, more than a hundred countries and 80 percent of the world's population had been "structurally adjusted." The average developing nation's debt payments were a third of its gross national product.
... When no more money or exports can be squeezed from the poor, selling state-owned companies to Northern corporations becomes an option... Once again, a handful of multinational corporations are the beneficiaries.
Structural adjustment proved to be such a useful tool for leveraging corporate power that it was time to make it a permanent part of the global economy, and that is just what the international trade treaties of the 1990s have done - codified the elements of structural adjustment into international law."

George Draffan in his book "The Elite Consensus"

"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, May 18, 1999, Cebu City, Philippines

"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

"The debt is used as a justification to maintain neoliberal policies, including what are known as structural adjustment programs, as institutional mechanisms to perpetuate a state of dependence. Bail-out programs by creditors, with the support of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank have only served to ensure the continuity for mechanisms to keep countries deep in debt."

Tegucigalpa Declaration, Latin American and Caribbean Jubilee 2000 Platform, Tegucigalpa, Honduras, January 27, 1999

"By the 1980s, U.S. policymakers were rejecting the view that a more prosperous, economically independent Third World would serve the interests of U.S. capitalism. And once there no longer was a competing socialist world to which Third World leaders might threaten to turn, the United States felt freer than ever to undo any kind of autonomous development in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. One rollback weapon is the debt. In order to meet payments and receive new credits from the US-dominated World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF), Third World governments have had to agree to merciless "structural adjustment programs," including reductions in social programs, cuts in wages, the elimination of import controls, the removal of restrictions on foreign investments, the privatization of state enterprises, and the elimination of domestic food production in favor of high profit export crops."

Michael Parenti

"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."

Noam Chomsky in his book "Year 501"

"The IMF 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 Model in his book "Lying for 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

"The United States is now the world's largest debtor nation, yet has avoided the pain of "structural adjustments" imposed on other debtor economies. US interest-rate and tax reductions in the face of exploding trade and budget deficits are seen as the height of hypocrisy in view of the austerity programs that Washington forces on other countries via the IMF and other Washington vehicles.
The United States tells debtor economies to sell off their public utilities and natural resources, raise their interest rates and increase taxes while gutting their social safety nets to squeeze out money to pay creditors."

economist Michael Hudson

"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

"During the 1970s and 1980s, the U.S. used the dictatorship of Baby Doc Duvalier to impose what the International Monetary Fund calls a "structural adjustment program." Haitians called it "the plan of death." Duvalier opened up the Haitian economy to heavily subsidized U.S. agricultural exports, especially rice, which undermined the ability of Haitian peasants to compete on the market."

Ashley Smith

"When the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund lend money to debtor countries, the money comes with strings attached. These strings come in the form of policy prescriptions called 'structural adjustment policies.' These policies require debtor governments to open their economies to penetration by foreign corporations, allowing access to the country's workers and environment at bargain basement prices. Structural adjustment policies mean across-the-board privatization of public utilities and publicly owned industries. They mean the slashing of government budgets, leading to cutbacks in spending on health care and education. And, as their imposition in country after country in Latin America, Africa, and Asia has shown, they lead to deeper inequality and environmental destruction."

Global Exchange

"Fiscal austerity [structural adjustment] will imply massive cuts in social spending, which will do to the developed world what they did to the 'developing' world: health, education and social services will be cut, with public employees in those and other sectors fired, creating a massive new wave of unemployed people. Simultaneously, taxes will be dramatically increased, particularly on the middle and lower classes, which would then be more impoverished than ever before."

Andrew Gavin Marshall

"Since the 1980s, it is mainly the Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs) of the World Bank and the IMF that act as the enforcers of neoliberalism. These programs are levied against the countries of the South which can be extorted due to their debts. Meanwhile, numerous military interventions and wars help to take possession of the assets that still remain, secure resources, install neoliberalism as the global economic politics, crush resistance movements, and facilitate the lucrative business of reconstruction."

Claudia von Werlhof

"SUPPORT OUR TROOPS"

"The point of public relations slogans like "Support our troops" is that they don't mean anything. That's the whole point of good propaganda. You want to create a slogan that nobody's going to be against, and everybody's going to be for. Nobody knows what it means, because it doesn't mean anything. Its crucial value is that it diverts your attention from a question that does mean something: Do you support our policy? That's the one you're not allowed to talk about."

Noam Chomsky

"The call to "support our troops," or "our boys," is really an appeal to support the war in which the troops are engaged... The proper support of our troops is to oppose the war and fight to get our boys (and girls) out before they can kill or be killed while participating in such a criminal enterprise."

Edward S. Herman

"'Our boys' are not noble warriors protecting democracy, rescuing maidens, and righting wrongs. They are, like all soldiers, obedient and amoral killers. Pilots bombing Iraq or Syria know they are killing civilians. They do not care. If ordered to bomb Switzerland, they would do it. This is the nature of all armies. Glamorizing this most reprehensible of trades is just a means of usefully stimulating the pack instinct which we often call patriotism."

Fred Reed, 2018

"We should think carefully about the reality of war. Most of us have been conditioned to regard military combat as exciting and glamorous - an opportunity for men to prove their competence and courage. Since armies are legal, we feel that war is acceptable; in general, nobody feels that war is criminal or that accepting its criminal attitude. In fact, we have been brainwashed. War is neither glamorous nor attractive. It is monstrous. It's very nature is one of tragedy and suffering."

Dalai Lama

"US Empire has been using the expression "support our troops" to brainwash Americans and justify its wars and violence for far too long.
Supporting our troops has resulted in the United States being the most warring, aggressive nation on earth. Our ultraviolent country has been killing other human beings somewhere on this planet for 223 out of the last 240 total years the US has been in existence. That's 93% of our time as a nation-turned-Empire we've been destroying human life. That's certainly nothing to be proud of. Yet it's "our troops" who've been the murdering culprit.
America's entire domestic and foreign history has been made of genocidal killing, enslaving, stealing and subjugating other darker-skinned races into death and submission. Given this context, "supporting our troops" is really supporting mass murder around the world."

Joachim Hagopian, 2017

"Soldiers are paid killers. Young men and women are suckered into a life of evil through propaganda and the labeling of heroic to a man in costume who kills for money and the life of honor by accepting ordered killings for money, prestige, and pensions.
... These poor young men and woman propagandized into an undead ethical status lied to about what is noble, virtuous, courageous, honorable, decent, and good to the point that they're rolling hand grenades into children's rooms and the illusion that, that is going to make the world a better place. We have to stare this in the face if we want to remember why these people died. They did not die to set us free. They did not die to make the world a better place. They died because we are ruled by sociopaths."

Stefan Molyneux, Canadian blogger

"We are told that we are fighting terrorists, but the real terrorist was me, and the real terrorism was this occupation (of Iraq).
... Those who send us to war do not have to pull the trigger or lob a mortar round. They don't have to fight the war; they merely have to sell the war. They need a public that is willing to send their soldiers into harm's way. They need soldiers willing to kill and be killed without question.
... The billionaires, the "ruling class" that profit from human suffering, care only about expanding their wealth, controlling the world's economy, understand that their power lies only in their ability to convince us that war, oppression, and exploitation are in our interests. They understand that their wealth is dependent on their ability to convince the "working class" to die to control the wealth of another country. And convincing us to kill and die is based on their ability to make us feel that we are somehow superior.
... Poor and working people in this country are sent to kill poor and working people in another country to make the rich richer. Without racism, soldiers would realize they have more in common with the Iraqi people than with the billionaires that send us to war.
... Our real enemies are not in some distant land whose names we don't know and cultures we don't understand. The enemy is people that we know very well, and people that we can identify. The enemy is a system that wages war when it's profitable. The enemy is the CEOs who lay us off our jobs when it's profitable, it's the insurance companies who deny us health care when it's profitable, it's the banks who take away our homes when it's profitable.
... Our enemy is not five thousand miles away. They are right here at home. If we organize we can stop this war, we can stop this government, and we can create a better world."

Mike Prysner, former U.S. Soldier

"Winning wars is not in the interest of the Pentagon and those who feed on it. Wars generate profitable contracts for all manner of supplies and equipment. Either winning or losing ends the gravy train. For example, the war on Afghanistan of almost two decades has become an entitlement program for the arms industry, accomplishing nothing, killing countless peasants, and lacking purpose other than maintaining an unneeded empire and funneling money to the Complex."

Fred Reed, 2018

"Working-class voters perceive America's military as a profoundly working-class institution. Indeed, the armed forces is one of the most homogeneously working-class institutions in America.
This intense identification with the members of the armed forces leads working people to feel that there is only one legitimate point of view on issues of war and peace: that of the ordinary soldier.
The identification with the troops also generates an emotional need for working people to believe that the armed forces are doing the right thing. This easily extends to a need to believe that their political and military leaders are following the right path. They therefore tend to adopt the ethos of the armed forces themselves, an ethos that places a very high value on following orders and trusting superior officers.
Working-class voters see their patriotic support for the troops as inextricably linked to support for the war in general."

Andrew Levison

"The implicit demand in the "support the troops" rhetoric was - and likely will be in future wars - that even if I am against the war, once troops are in the field I should shift my focus from opposition to the war to support for my fellow Americans who are doing the fighting. But to support the troops is, for all practical purposes, to support the war. Asking people who oppose a war to support the troops in that war is simply a way of asking people to drop their opposition. If I had believed this war would be wrong before it began, and if none of the conditions on which I based that assessment had changed, why should I change my view simply because the war had started?"

Robert Jensen

"When our military is no longer committing war crimes, when we are in compliance with basic standards of human rights and social justice, then we can break out the bumper stickers and ribbons that say "Support Our Troops". Until then, every American, as well as our military, are guilty of crimes against peace."

Joe Mowrey

"If there's any question as to what "The Hunger Games" is an allegory for I will tell you. It is the powers-that-be in the United States of America. It's profiteers. War is for profit. It's not 'to save the world for democracy' or 'for king and country'. No. It's for the profit of the top 10%. And the young people who see this film must recognize that, as Bruce Springsteen said, 'blind faith in their leaders will get you dead'."

Donald Sutherland, the actor who played President Coriolanus Snow, discussing the underlying meaning in "The Hunger Games"

"Since World War II, 90 percent of the casualties of war are unarmed civilians, a third of them children. Our victims have done nothing to us. From Palestine to Afghanistan to Iraq to Somalia to wherever our next target may be, their murders are not collateral damage. They are the nature of modern warfare. They don't hate us because of our freedoms. They hate us because every day, we are funding and committing crimes against humanity.
The so-called 'War on Terror' is a cover for our military aggression to gain control of the resources for Western nations. This is sending the poor of this country to kill the poor of those Muslim countries. This is trading blood for oil. This is genocide, and to most of the world, we are the terrorists.
... Our soldiers don't sacrifice for duty, honor, and country. They sacrifice for Kellogg, Brown, and Root. They don't fight for America-they fight for their lives and their buddies beside them because we put them in a war zone. They're not defending our freedoms-they are laying the foundations for permanent military bases to defend the freedoms of ExxonMobil and British Petroleum. They're not establishing democracy; they're establishing the basis for an economic occupation to continue after the military occupation has ended."

Dr. Dahlia Wasfi, in a speech to the Congressional Progressive Caucus, April 27, 2006

"The sentiment expressed by "support our troops" ... has become little more than a patriotic platitude on par with "God Bless America" and a euphemism for "support our war." As a balm to the national conscience for once again consigning our troops to the killing field, it is the battle cry that leads and sustains our country in an unjust war [Iraq].
... Yellow ribbon patriots have an opportunity to support our troops in a meaningful way. They can begin by removing their magnetic yellow ribbon bumper stickers, by listening to the troops and helping to get them home, and by demanding that those who took the country to war with lies and deception be held to account."

Robert Weitzel

"The American citizenry has no say over the military-industrial complex, which is autonomous and out of control. If the Complex wants war with Russia or China, we will have war with Russia or China."

Fred Reed, 2018

"Washington DC warmongers are ever-at-the-ready to send young men and women from America's lower class into harm's way fighting dirty little secret wars in multiple combat zones around the world that the public never even hears about. Yet you'll see next to none of their own sons or daughters fighting in some far off war."

Joachim Hagopian, 2017

"All Americans are left responsible, regardless of whether we supported or opposed the war. When we pull out, our hands will drip with the blood of the tens of thousands of American casualties and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi dead.
Of course we can continue to compartmentalize ourselves from the truth, remove the troops and blame the rubble on the Iraqis. We can feed the collective fantasy that our good intentions and heroic efforts were thwarted by the cowardice and incompetence of others. But if that's what we take from our experience in Iraq, we will never learn the true lessons and we will be condemned to repeat the same mistakes.
The inability to admit a mistake and assume responsibility is not just a morally bankrupt way to walk through life; it is a dangerous and deadly way to lead a nation."

former Senator Mike Gravel

"There are many people who say they support the troops, and they really mean it. But what does it mean to support the troops? It needs to mean more than putting a sticker on the back of your car.
I don't think we actually support the troops. We the people. What we the people do is we contract out the business of national security to approximately 0.5 percent of the population. About a million and a half people that are on active duty.
And then we turn away. We don't want to look when they go back for two or three or four or five combat tours. That's not supporting the troops. That's an abdication of civic responsibility. And I do think it - there's something fundamentally immoral about that."

Andrew J. Bacevich

"How is it possible for people to consider themselves supporters of the troops when they approve of an event that throws those troops into peril?"

Ramman Kenoun

"People, and not only Americans, are losing their sons, husbands, brothers, and fathers for no other reason than the profits of US armaments corporations, and the gullible American people seem proud of it. Those ribbon decals on their cars, SUVs and monster trucks proclaim their naive loyalty to the armaments industries and to the whores in Washington who promote wars."

Paul Craig Roberts

"Despite the asphyxiating economic presence, the military keeps aloof from America. This too serves the purposes of the military-industrial complex, further preventing attention by the public to what is not its business. In the days of conscription there was a familiarity with the armed services. Young men from most social classes wore the uniform however ruefully and told of their experiences. Not now. The career military have always tended to keep to themselves, to socialize with each other as the police do. Now the isolation is almost hermetic. You can spend years in Washington or New York and never meet a colonel. Military society with its authoritarianism, its uniforms and its uniform government-issue outlook is not compatible with civil society."

Fred Reed, 2018

"America's entire domestic and foreign history has been made of genocidal killing, enslaving, stealing and subjugating other darker-skinned races into death and submission. Given this context, "supporting our troops" is really supporting mass murder around the world."

Joachim Hagopian, 2017

"In a democratic society, the question should not be whether one supports the troops. The relevant question is whether one supports the policy. The demand that war opponents must "support the troops" is nothing more than a way of demanding that we drop our opposition to the policy."

Robert Jensen

"What does "supporting the troops" mean? It means supporting what they do. Why should anyone with a conscience support people who carry out war crimes in service of the obscene goal of violently maintaining a system of global exploitation, including the very system that shoots Black and Latino youths down in the streets and degrades and abuses women in a thousand ways?
Whatever their background or personal lives, these are not "our" troops-they're cogs in a global military machine, the troops of the U.S. imperialist system. Whatever the soldiers thought they were doing-and no doubt the military hierarchy forcefully breaks down and brainwashes the troops and no doubt many are crippled mentally and/or physically by the war's toll-the fact is they were carrying out an unjust and bloody war of conquest, suppressing any opposition, installing a new reactionary regime, and trying to turn Iraq into a neo-colony."

Larry Everest

"There is a very deep and emotional commitment among a significant group of working-class voters to the belief that "supporting the troops" and "being patriotic" requires adopting a wartime attitude of unquestioning support for military leaders and a refusal to oppose or criticize any war-related policies or actions."

Andrew Levison

"The government's view is: US soldiers fighting in Iraq signed a contract to serve for three years. The fact that they get blown up after one month means they haven't fulfilled their contract... They have to pay back the money.
... [US soldiers] check out helmets and other equipment... then they lose their helmet in an explosion... they're shipped out, they're disabled, they're in concussion. Somebody in the military will send them a bill for their helmet."

Joseph Stiglitz, 2008

"There was the GAO study on about hundreds of veterans being chased around the country for small amounts of money that they allegedly owe, mostly related to pieces of equipment that they lost during serious injuries."

Linda Bilmes, 2008

"We were told that in a crowded area, if one person shoots at you, kill everybody."

former U.S. specialist Darrell Anderson, about U.S. policy in Iraq

"I went down to the market where all the women shop. I pulled out my machete and I begin to chop. I went down to the park where all the children play. I pulled out my machine gun and I begin to spray."

US Army basic training marching chant in Iraq

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