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.

COUPS D'ETAT
regime change

"After World War II, in the name of containing Communism, the United States, mostly through the actions of local allies, executed or encouraged coups in, among other places, Guatemala, Brazil, Chile, Uruguay, Argentina and patronized a brutal mercenary war in Nicaragua ... By the end of the Cold War, Latin American security forces trained, funded, equipped, and incited by Washington had executed a reign of bloody terror - hundreds of thousands killed, an equal number tortured, millions driven into exile-from which the region has yet to fully recover."

Greg Grandin in his book "Empire's Workshop"

"I have first-hand information that the [United States] empire, through the U.S. Southern Command, made the coup d'etat in Honduras."

Bolivian President Evo Morales, July 2009

"The hopes of people of Ukraine are being sacrificed on the same altar as those of people in Iran (1953); Guatemala(1954); Thailand (1957); Laos (1958-60); the Congo (1960); Turkey (1960, 1971 & 1980); Ecuador (1961 & 1963); South Vietnam (1963); Brazil (1964); the Dominican Republic (1963); Argentina (1963); Honduras (1963 & 2009); Iraq (1963 & 2003); Bolivia (1964, 1971 & 1980); Indonesia (1965); Ghana (1966); Greece (1967); Panama (1968 & 1989); Cambodia (1970); Chile (1973); Bangladesh (1975); Pakistan (1977); Grenada (1983); Mauritania (1984); Guinea (1984); Burkina Faso (1987); Paraguay (1989); Haiti (1991 & 2004); Russia (1993); Uganda (1996);and Libya (2011).
This list does not include a roughly equal number of failed coups, nor coups in Africa and elsewhere in which a U.S. role is suspected but unproven."

Nicolas J.S. Davies

"The trigger for military coups in Latin America was less the elite fear of Soviet encroachment or guerrilla threats than fears of popular demands for social reform and democratic change."

J. Patrice McSherry in the book "Predatory States: Operation Condor and Covert War in Latin America"

"It is unlikely the Honduras coup took place without the knowledge of the U.S. military, which has a base in that country... The coup is a message from Latin American and U.S. 'ultraconservatives' to keep leftist governments in line."

Ecuador's President Rafael Correa. July 2009

"The Americans who engineered countless military coups, death squads and massacres in Latin America never paid for their crimes - instead they got promoted and they're now running the 'War on Terror".

author Naomi Klein

"The democratically elected president [of Honduras Manuel] Zelaya, had called for a new constitution to replace the old one that was really set up by the oligarchy in favor of the very wealthy and the international companies. He also called for a 60 percent increase in the bottom wage rate, which had a huge impact on Dole and Chiquita, two of the biggest employers in that company. They, along with a number of companies that have sweatshops in Honduras, strongly objected, very much the same way that they had objected to Aristide in Haiti, when he did something similar, and called in the military. The general in charge of the military was a graduate of our School of the Americas, this, you know, school that's famous for creating dictators, and they overthrew Zelaya. It was a classic CIA-sponsored type of coup, very similar to what United Fruit had done in Guatemala in the early '50s. And, of course, United Fruit became Chiquita."

John Perkins, 2009

"The coups in Iran, Guatemala, South Vietnam, and Chile ... were not rogue operations. Presidents, cabinet secretaries, national security advisers, and CIA directors approved them ... The first thing all four of these coups have in common is that American leaders promoted them consciously, willfully, deliberately, and in strict accordance with the laws of the United States."

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

"Coups do not happen in Latin America without the support of those with power in the US."

Bill Quigley and Laura Raymond, 2010

" It was under Johnson that Washington began either to organize or patronize a cycle of coups starting in Brazil in 1964, continuing through Uruguay, Bolivia, and Chile, and ending in Argentina in 1976."

Greg Grandin in his book "Empire's Workshop"

"The coup against Aristide, then, must be understood not in isolation, but as the culmination of activities that really began the minute he was re-elected in 2000. Destabilization efforts by the U.S. government, active U.S. support for the creation of a so-called civil-society opposition, and eventually the invasion of Haiti by an armed band of criminals and murderers were all part of a process designed to ensure that Haiti would return fully to the fold of the U.S. empire and its minions in Haiti."

Bill Fletcher, Jr, 2004

"The United States... supported authoritarian regimes throughout Central and South America during and after the Cold War in defense of its economic and political interests.
In tiny Guatemala, the Central Intelligence Agency mounted a coup overthrowing the democratically elected government in 1954, and it backed subsequent rightwing governments against small leftist rebel groups for four decades. Roughly 200,000 civilians died.
In Chile, a CIA-supported coup helped put General Augusto Pinochet in power from 1973 to 1990.
In Peru, a fragile democratic government is still unraveling the agency's role in a decade of support for the now-deposed and disgraced president, Alberto K. Fujimori.
The United States had to invade Panama in 1989 to topple its narco-dictator, Manuel A. Noriega, who, for almost 20 years, was a valued informant for American intelligence."

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

"Jean-Bertrand Aristide's second term as President of Haiti would end the same way as had his first had, cut short in a U.S.-backed coup d'état. Aristide's opposition to neoliberalism, his defiant stance towards the U.S. and France, and his enduring popularity with Haiti's poor had made him a marked man from the very beginning of his term in February 2001."

Nik Barry-Shaw, 2008

"On June 28, 2009, Honduran President Manuel Zelaya was awakened by gunfire. A coup was carried out by US-trained military officers, including graduates of the infamous US Army School of the Americas (WHINSEC) in Georgia. President Zelaya was illegally taken to Costa Rica.
Democracy in Honduras ended as a de facto government of the rich and powerful seized control. A sham election backed by the US confirmed the leadership of the coup powers. The US and powerful lobbyists continue to roam the hemisphere trying to convince other Latin American countries to normalize relations with the coup government."

Bill Quigley and Laura Raymond, 2010

"History is repeating itself in Haiti, as democracy is being destroyed for the second time in the past fifteen years. Amazingly, the main difference seems to be that this time it is being done openly and in broad daylight, with the support of the "international community" and the United Nations
... The US Agency for International Development and the International Republican Institute (the international arm of the Republican Party) had spent tens of millions of dollars to create and organize an opposition ... and to make Haiti under Aristide ungovernable.
... Taking advantage of Haiti's desperate poverty and dependence on foreign aid, it stopped international aid to the government, from the summer of 2000 until the 2004 coup."

Mark Weisbrot, 2005

"In March 1982, General Efrain Rios Montt seized power in Guatemala in a military coup. An avowed fundamentalist Christian, he immediately impressed Washington where President Reagan hailed Rios Montt as "a man of great personal integrity." But under Rios Montt, the slaughter in the countryside and selective assassinations in the cities only grew worse.
By July 1982, Rios Montt had begun a new scorched-earth campaign called his "rifles and beans" policy. The slogan meant that pacified Indians would get "beans," while all others could expect to be the target of army "rifles." In October, he secretly gave carte blanche to the feared "Archivos" intelligence unit to expand "death squad" operations. Based at the Presidential Palace, the "Archivos" masterminded many of Guatemala's most notorious assassinations.
The U.S. embassy was soon hearing more accounts of the army conducting Indian massacres. However, during a swing through Latin America, Reagan discounted the mounting reports of hundreds of Mayan villages being eradicated. On December 4, 1982, after meeting with dictator Rios Montt, Reagan hailed the general as "totally dedicated to democracy" and asserted that Rios Montt's government was "getting a bum rap."
On January 7, 1983, Reagan lifted the ban on military aid to Guatemala and authorized the sale of $6 million in military hardware. Approval covered spare parts for UH-1H helicopters and A-37 aircraft used in counterinsurgency operations. Radios, batteries and battery chargers were also in the package. State Department spokesman John Hughes said political violence in the cities had "declined dramatically" and that rural conditions had improved, too.
In February 1983, however, a secret CIA cable noted a rise in "suspect right-wing violence" with kidnappings of students and teachers. Bodies of victims were appearing in ditches and gullies. CIA sources traced these political murders to Rios Montt's order to the "Archivos" in October to "apprehend, hold, interrogate and dispose of suspected guerrillas as they saw fit."
Despite these grisly facts on the ground, the annual State Department human rights survey praised the supposedly improved human rights situation in Guatemala. "The overall conduct of the armed forces had improved by late in the year" 1982, the report stated."

Robert Parry in his book "Secrecy & Privilege"

"President of Haiti Jean-Bertrand Aristide did not resign. He was abducted by the United States in the commission of a coup."

Randall Robinson, the founder and former director of TransAfrica, 2004

"It is firm and continuing policy that Allende be overthrown by a coup.... We are to continue to generate maximum pressure toward this end utilizing every appropriate resource. It is imperative that these actions be implemented clandestinely and securely so that United States Government and American hand be well hidden."

cable outlining CIA objectives in Chile to the station chief in Santiago

"In Indonesia in 1965 a group of young military officers attempted a coup against the U.S.-backed military establishment and murdered six of seven top military officers. The Agency seized this opportunity to overthrow Sukarno and to destroy the Communist Party of Indonesia (PKI), which had three million members... Estimates of the number of deaths that occurred as a result of this CIA ... operation run from one-half million to more than one million people."

Ralph McGehee in his book "Deadly Deceits"

"At the time of the Rios Montt coup d'etat in March 1982, the Israeli press ... referred to the Montt coup as "the Israeli connection" because that group was "trained and equipped by Israel"
... Rios Montt himself told ABC News reporters that his coup had been successful because "many of our soldiers were trained by the Israelis."

Bishara Bahbah in her book "Israel and Latin America: The Military Connection"

The U.S. wants to overthrow President Hugo Chavez to put Venezuela in line with their other clients in Latin America and knock down the only government that offers an alternative foreign policy for the whole region. They don't want that alternative present.
That's why this coup was planned, directed, and financed by the Bush administration. It wasn't just the CIA. The assistant secretary of state for Western hemisphere affairs was involved - I'm talking about the Cuban terrorist exile Otto Reich. I'm talking about people like Elliot Abrams, who was in the Reagan administration and involved in justifying the killings in Central America, which amounted to 300,000 deaths. I'm talking about John Negroponte, the U.S. ambassador to the UN, who was involved with the death squads in Honduras.
You have thugs running U.S. policy in Latin America, who are capable not only of overthrowing a government but engaging in the kind of violent repression that was launched in those 24 hours of the coup against Hugo Chavez.

James Petras interview, 2002

"80 percent of the officers who carried out the 1964 coup against President Goulart [Brazil] had been trained by the United States."

Penny Lernoux in her book "Cry of the People"

"The moment of Arbenz's fall is the moment history stopped in Guatemala or took another course, the army withdrawing support for an elected government that had relied upon it, joining in a CIA-supported coup replacing democrat with dictator, and beginning forty years of military repression."

Kate Millett in her book "Politics of Cruelty"


"Documents clearly show knowledge of the detailed plans for the coup against Chávez, written by the CIA... financial and advisory agencies like the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), the International Republican Institute (IRI), the National Democratic Institute (NDI) and the Center for International Private Enterprise (CIPE) financed all the groups, NGOs, trade unions, businesspeople, political parties and the media involved in the coup."

Eva Golinger, 2008

"In Guatemala, United Fruit supported the CIA-backed 1954 military coup against President Jacobo Arbenz, a reformer who had carried out a land reform package. Arbenz' overthrow led to more than thirty years of unrest and civil war in Guatemala."

Nikolas Kozloff, 2009

"On September 11, 1973, General Augusto Pinochet orchestrated a coup d'état, with the aid and participation of the CIA, against the Allende government of Chile, overthrowing it and installing Pinochet as dictator. The next day, an economic plan for the country was on the desks of the General Officers of the Armed Forces who performed government duties. The plan entailed "privatization, deregulation and cuts to social spending," written up by "U.S.-trained economists." These were the essential concepts in neoliberal thought, which, through the oil crises of the 1970s, would be forced upon the developing world through the World Bank and IMF."

Andrew Gavin Marshall

"Ukraine in historical context is at least the 80th time the United States has organized a coup or a failed coup in a foreign country since 1953. That was when President Eisenhower discovered in Iran that the CIA could overthrow elected governments who refused to sacrifice the future of their people to Western commercial and geopolitical interests. Most U.S. coups have led to severe repression, disappearances, extrajudicial executions, torture, corruption, extreme poverty and inequality, and prolonged setbacks for the democratic aspirations of people in the countries affected."

Nicolas J.S. Davies

"The United States has exercised a quite clinical manipulation of power worldwide while masquerading as a force for universal good. It's a brilliant, even witty, highly successful act of hypnosis. Brutal, indifferent, scornful and ruthless it may be, but it is also very clever."

Harold Pinter's acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2005

"The [U.S.] military acts in the interests of the corporate and financial elite, as those countries that do not submit to American economic hegemony are deemed enemies, and the military is ultimately sent in to implement "regime change." "

Andrew Gavin Marshall

"The coups in Iran, Guatemala, South Vietnam, and Chile were all "what the President ordered." They were not rogue operations. Presidents, cabinet secretaries, national security advisers, and CIA directors approved them, authorized by the 1947 law that created the CIA and assigned it "duties related to intelligence affecting the national security." The first thing all four of these coups have in common is that American leaders promoted them consciously, willfully, deliberately, and in strict accordance with the laws of the United States."

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

"Right wing [American] ideologues and shell NGOs based out of Washington played a critical role in the coup [in Honduras in 2009 ... and are hell bent on stopping the growing populist movements throughout Latin America from gaining more influence and power."

Bill Quigley and Laura Raymond

CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY

"If Nuremberg were applied, then every post-war American president would have been hanged."

Noam Chomsky

"This is a very hard choice, but ... we think the price is worth it."

U.S. Ambassador to the UN Madeleine Albright when asked whether she considered the deaths of half a million Iraqi children a reasonable result of U.S. sanctions

"The United States and its officials aided and abetted by others engaged in a continuing pattern of conduct from August 6, 1990 until this date to impose, maintain and enforce extreme economic sanctions and a strict military blockade on the people of Iraq for the purpose of injuring the entire population, killing its weakest members, infants, children, the elderly and the chronically ill, by depriving them of medicines, drinking water, food, and other essentials in order to maintain a large US military presence in the region, and dominion and control over its people and resources including oil.
... The United States, its President Bill Clinton and other officials, the United Kingdom and its [former] Prime Minister John Major and other officials have committed a crime against humanity as defined in the Nuremberg Charter against the population of Iraq.
... The United States, its President Bill Clinton and other officials, the United Kingdom and its Prime Minister John Major and other officials have committed genocide as defined in the Convention against Genocide against the population of Iraq including genocide by starvation and sickness through use of sanctions."

International Court On Crimes Against Humanity Committed by the UN Security Council, Madrid, November 1996

"American air power pounded the hell out of Iraqi armor and buildings with depleted uranium rounds... I have been in and around buildings destroyed by depleted uranium rounds, as well as vehicles, armored personnel carriers, tanks and corpses... During the invasion, we were also exposed to severe sandstorms, which meant that we were breathing in sand for days, sand that more than likely contained depleted uranium."

James Gilligan, United States Marine Corps, 2008

"The Charter of the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg was the institution that tried Nazi war leaders for their crimes [WWII]. Among the crimes listed in the charter were "crimes against peace," "war crimes," and "crimes against humanity" Crimes "against peace" were defined as "planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression, or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements or assurances, or participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of any of the foregoing."

David Swanson in his book "War Is A Lie"

CUBA

"In spite of the U.S. embargo, Cuba has managed to provide its citizens with what the United States so far has not: free top-notch health care, free university and graduate school education, and subsidized food and utilities. Cuba compares favorably to the United States on a number of basic social factors:
*Housing: There is virtually no homelessness in Cuba. Thanks to the 1960 Urban Reform law, 85% of Cubans own their own homes and pay no property taxes or interest on their mortgages. Mortgage payments can't exceed 10% of the combined household income.
* Employment: Cuba's unemployment rate is only 1.8% according to CIA data, compared with 7.6% (and rising) in the United States. One factor contributing to Cuba's low unemployment is undoubtedly the 350,000 jobs that have been recently created by the burgeoning sustainable urban agriculture program, one of the most successful in the world, according to U.S.-based economist Sinan Koont.
* Literacy: The adult literacy rate in Cuba (99.8%) is higher than the United States' rate (97%), according to the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).
* Infant mortality: Cuba has a lower infant mortality rate (4.7 per 1000 live births) than the United States' (6.0).
* Prisons: Cuba even does better on prisons. Its rate of incarceration - estimated at around 487 per 100,000 by the UNDP - is among the highest in the world, yet it is considerably lower than the U.S. rate of 738 per 100,000."

Margot Pepper, 2009

"That Cuba has survived at all under these circumstances [total U.S. economic embargo] is an achievement in itself. That it registered the highest per capita increase in gross social product (wages and social benefits) of any economy in Latin America-and almost double that of the next highest country-over the period 1981-1990 is quite remarkable. Moreover, despite the economic difficulties, the average Cuban is still better fed, housed, educated and provided for medically than other Latin Americans, and-again atypically-the Cuban Government has sought to spread the burden of the new austerity measures equally among its people."

Noam Chomsky

"Cuba's move away from a free-market system dominated by U.S. firms and toward a not-for-profit socialist economy caused it to become the target of an unremitting series of attacks perpetrated by the U.S. national security state. These attacks included U.S.-sponsored sabotage, espionage, terrorism, hijackings, trade sanctions, embargo, and outright invasion. The purpose behind this aggression was to undermine the Revolution and deliver Cuba safely back to the tender mercies of global capitalism.
The U.S. policy toward Cuba has been consistent with its longstanding policy of trying to subvert any country that pursues an alternative path in the use of its land, labor, capital, markets, and natural resources. Any nation or political movement that emphasizes self-development, egalitarian human services, and public ownership is condemned as an enemy and targeted for sanctions or other forms of attack. In contrast, the countries deemed "friendly toward America" and "pro-West" are those that leave themselves at the disposal of large U.S. investors on terms that are totally favorable to the moneyed corporate interests."

Michael Parenti

"During the late 1970s & 1980s and continuing to the present, the most visible, the most vocal, the most active terrorists in the United States have been a small group of Cuban exiles, based primarily in southern Florida and in New Jersey, operating under several names and generally well known to local authorities. This group originally was dedicated to the overthrow of the Cuban Government and concentrated its efforts in hundreds of attacks against Cuba and Cuban-related offices and personnel around the world. They were all involved in the Bay of Pigs fiasco. They were all trained, supplied and encouraged by the CIA."

Ellen Ray and William H. Schaap, 2003

"The majority of Cubans support Castro. The only foreseeable means of alienating internal support is through disenchantment and disaffection based on economic dissatisfaction and hardship... Every possible means should be undertaken promptly to weaken the economic life of Cuba. We should take a line of action which makes the greatest inroads in denying money and supplies to Cuba, to decrease monetary and real wages, to bring about hunger, desperation and overthrow of government."

Lester D. Mallory, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs, in an internal memorandum, April 6, 1960

"The truth beyond Western philanthropy is that every time weaker nations have attempted to reallocate their resources and undertake land reform [to feed starving populations], powerful interests emanating from the rich world and its multilateral bodies have thwarted their efforts.
By means of economic strangulation, proxy armies, or outright invasion, as the peasants of Chile, Nicaragua, Vietnam, El Salvador, Cuba and Haiti among many others know only too well. The reason for the opposition to local, self-preserving initiatives is simply that the goal of the Western powers is not, and never was, to feed today's undernourished or starving millions, but to perpetuate poverty and dependence for altogether "valid" political and economic reasons."

David Pepper

"The clearest case of a media-inspired war - the 1898 Spanish-American War to get the Spanish out of Cuba - was pretty much an invention of William Randolph Hearst, aided and abetted by Joseph Pulitzer."

Ben Bagdikian

"Cuba is one of the poorest countries in the world and it has approximately the same quality of life index, in terms of health and so on, that the United States has."

Noam Chomsky

"There is no question that Cuba has the best health statistics in Latin America. Cuba is the only country on a par with developed nations."

World Health Organization's representative in Cuba in 1980

"Cuban life expectancy rose from fifty-five years in 1959 to seventy-three years by 1984. Infant mortality has dropped to the lowest in Latin America, on a par with developed countries. Cuba's per capita food consumption is the second highest in Latin America. It has a free public-health system... The literacy rate is over 95 percent, the highest in Latin America and higher than in the USA; almost all children under sixteen are attending school. In Cuba, the paint may be peeling off some of the buildings, but unlike so many other Latin American countries, there are no hungry children begging in the streets."

Michael Parenti

"The U.S. travel ban and the distorted portrayal of Cuba in both popular and scholarly media ensure that the majority of North Americans do not learn that a poor, Third World country, gripped by economic crisis, and under constant attack from the most powerful nation in the world, is still able to achieve health standards higher than those in the capital of that powerful nation, Washington, DC."

Aviva Chomsky

"The United States remained Cuba's main supplier of food and farm products in 2007, selling the communist-run island more than $600 million in agricultural exports despite its trade embargo.
... Washington's nearly 50-year-old trade embargo prevents U.S. tourists from visiting Cuba and prohibits nearly all trade. But a law passed by the U.S. Congress in 2000 allows the Cuban government to buy U.S. food and agricultural products with direct cash payments.
... The U.S. has been the island's top food source since 2003."

Will Weissert, Associated Press, 2008

"The embargo has been a failure by every measure. It has not changed the course or nature of the Cuban government. It has not liberated a single Cuban citizen. In fact, the embargo has made the Cuban people a bit more impoverished, without making them one bit more free."

Cato Institute

"The U.S. embargo against Cuba, one of the few that includes both food and medicine, has been described as a war against public health with high human costs."

Brian Cloughley, 2010

"Cuba registered the highest per capita increase in gross social product (wages and social benefits) of any economy in Latin America - and almost double that of the next highest country - over the period 1981-1990. Despite the economic difficulties, the average Cuban is still better fed, housed, educated and provided for medically than other Latin Americans."

Noam Chomsky

DEBS, EUGENE

"The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles. The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing to gain and all to lose--especially their lives."

Eugene Debs , Canton, Ohio, June 16, 1918

"They have always taught and trained you to believe it to be your patriotic duty to go to war and to have yourselves slaughtered at their command. But in all the history of the world, you, the people, have never had a voice in declaring war, and strange as it certainly appears, no war by any nation in any age has ever been declared by the people."

Eugene Debs , Canton, Ohio, June 16, 1918

"The working class that fights all the battles, the working class that makes the supreme sacrifices, the working class that freely sheds its blood and furnishes the corpses, has never yet had a voice in either declaring war or making peace."

Eugene Debs , Canton, Ohio, June 16, 1918

"It is the ruling class ... alone declare war and they alone make peace. "Yours not to reason why; Yours but to do and die.' That is their motto, and we object on the part of the awakening workers of this nation."

Eugene Debs , Canton, Ohio, June 16, 1918

"While there is a lower class, I am in it, and while there is a criminal element I am of it, and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free."

Eugene Debs , Canton, Ohio, June 16, 1918

"I look upon the Espionage Law as a despotic enactment in flagrant conflict with democratic principles and with the spirit of free institutions."

Eugene Debs , Canton, Ohio, June 16, 1918

DEBT, CREDIT & MONEY

"Sovereign nations do not have to borrow their money into existence., yet the United States has been deceived into doing this since 1913. The compounding interest on this debt is now growing exponentially, and cannot be sustained. Unfortunately, we cannot just pay down the national debt. All our money - except for coins - is created out of debt. Under this debt money system, to reduce the debt is to reduce the national money. The only solution is to restructure our monetary system to forbid government borrowing. Fortunately, this is nothing new. The U.S. and other nations have done it before.
The problem with the economy of every nation on earth has the same root - national debt - debt that is totally unnecessary... All nations can get out of debt and not incur any more debt. Any nation that did this would immediately stabilize their economic situation - that is, incur neither significant inflation, nor deflation - by design. Human societies run best on stability - a stable economic platform - one that can be predicted in the long term. Once the money power is taken away from the big banks and returned into the hands of we, the people, then economic common sense can return, and the nation's legislature can once again become responsive to the voting electorate instead of the bankers...In other words, what we need is a new human rights movement for the next generation based upon No More National Debt.
The economic problems that most people became aware of in the fall of 2008 are not reversing. Unemployment is still rising. Foreclosures are still rising. The world's economic death spiral into a deflationary depression must continue until the real problem is addressed. Our entire global economic system is at a tipping point."

Bill Still, No More National Debt

"I know of no severe depression, in any country or any time, that was not accompanied by a sharp decline in the stock of money, and equally of no sharp decline in the stock of money that was not accompanied by a severe depression."

Milton Friedman

"Instrumental in control of economics by the rich has been the debt-based monetary system, where credit is treated as the monopoly of private financial interests who in turn control governments, intelligence services and military establishments. Politicians are bought and sold, elected or removed, or even assassinated for this purpose. The global monetary system is tightly controlled and coordinated at the top by the leaders of the central banks who work for the world's richest people."

Andrew Gavin Marshall, Global Research

"Once the government reclaims the power to create money from the banks, it will no longer need to sell its bonds to investors. It will not even need to levy income taxes... Government-issued money would actually be less inflationary than the system we have now; and it is precisely because power and money corrupt, that money creation needs to be done by a public body, exercised in full view and with full accountability... What has allowed government to be corrupted today is that it is actually run by the money cartel. Big business holds all the cards, because its affiliated banks have monopolized the business of issuing and lending the national money supply, a function the Constitution delegated solely to Congress."

Ellen Brown, Web Of Debt

"Central banking ... needs to expand its control over industry, nations and people through the expansion of debt, continually needing to bring more individuals, nations and industries under debt bondage. Debt is the source of all power and wealth for the central banking system - as they do not actually produce any tradable good, such as industry; nor do they provide any necessary service, such as government. Interest on debt is the source of income and authority for the central banking system, and thus, it needs to continually advance credit and expand debt."

Andrew Gavin Marshall, Global Research

"Central banking functions on the expansion and creation of money and debt, which is lent at interest, thus serving as the source of income for the central banking system."

Andrew Gavin Marshall, Global Research

"Since 97% of the money in the world is created from debt, any loans paid off decreases the amount of money in circulation. And when no further loans are given, the circulating money stock falls dramatically, adversely affecting businesses and the economy at large. This intentional reduction of the money supply leads to widespread business failures, high unemployment, foreclosures on property, and severe hardship within the community. On the other hand, great wealth is transferred from defaulting borrowers to the banksters."

Gabriel Donohoe

"When governments fall into the trap of accepting loans in foreign currencies, they become "debtor nations" subject to IMF and BIS [Bank for International Settlements] regulation. They are forced to divert their production to exports, just to earn the foreign currency necessary to pay the interest on their loan."

Andrew Gavin Marshall, Global Research

"A great industrial nation is controlled by it's system of credit. Our system of credit is concentrated in the hands of a few men. We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated governments in the world."
President Woodrow Wilson

"The organizational structure for creating means of payment out of nothing, we call credit."

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

"The Western banking system controls a worldwide electronic banking network. The control of money creation at a world level constitutes the ultimate instrument of economic and social domination. The creation of fiat money provides a command over the real economies of countries worldwide. The ultimate lever of the U.S.-NATO imperial design is to override and destroy national currencies."

Michel Chossudovsky

"One of the primary motivations for the [American] Revolution was the control of currency by a foreign imperial power, with the ability to control inflation and devaluation, essentially controlling the entire economic conditions of the colony from abroad. The Founding Fathers of the United States understood the necessity of controlling one's own currency if one was to preserve sovereignty and independence."

Andrew Gavin Marshall, Global Research

"The US is bankrupt. However, the US dollar remains the world reserve currency. This means that the US can print money to pay its bills. As long as the world accepts the dollar as world reserve currency, the US will be able to continue its wars."

Paul Craig Roberts

"The U.S. bailout ... shows that countries do not need to borrow credit from foreign banks at all. The government could have created its own money and credit system rather than leaving foreign creditors to accrue interest charges that now represent a permanent and seemingly irreversible balance-of-payments drain. The United States has shown that any country can monetize its own credit, at least domestic credit."

Michael Hudson and Jeffrey Sommers, 2008

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

Michel Chossudovsky in the book "The Global Economic Crisis"

DEEP STATE

"The term 'Deep State' describes a system composed of high-level elements within the intelligence services, military, security, judiciary and organized crime.
... It is a hybrid association of elements of government and parts of top-level finance and industry that is effectively able to govern the United States without reference to the consent of the governed as expressed through the formal political process."

former congressional staff member Mike Lofgren

"The "deep state" refers to a parallel secret government, organized by the intelligence and security apparatus, financed by drugs, and engaging in illicit violence, to protect the status and interests of the military against threats from intellectuals, religious groups, and occasionally the constitutional government.
... The "deep state" refers to the wider interface in America between the public, the constitutionally established state, and the deep forces behind it of wealth, power, and violence outside the government. You might call it the back door of the Public state, giving access to dark forces outside the law."

Peter Dale Scott

"The deep state is alleged to be a group of influential anti-democratic coalitions within the political system, composed of high-level elements within the intelligence services (domestic and foreign). The notion of deep state is similar to that of a "state within the state". For those who believe in its existence, the political agenda of the deep state involves an allegiance to nationalism, corporatism, and state interests. Violence and other means of pressure have historically been employed in a largely covert manner to manipulate political and economic elites and ensure that the needs of specific interests are met within the seemingly democratic framework of the political landscape.
The outlook and behavior of the elites who constitute the deep state, and work to uphold national interests, are shaped by an entrenched belief that the country is always "on the brink"."

Wikipedia (excerpted)

"The "deep state" consists of individuals across all elements within and external to the government, who in the aggregate are able to leverage government capabilities while violating, with impunity, all Constitutional checks and balances. Related to this is the matter of funding and reach - if you follow the money, where do you end up? From New York banks to Texas energy to global drugs, there is a criminal network that is above the law and above the state."

Daniel Sheehan

"America's deep state is something of a hybrid creature that operates along a New York to Washington axis.
... The U.S.-style deep state includes key players in the police and intelligence agencies, the military, the treasury and justice departments and in the judiciary. It is structured to materially reward those who play along.
... Even though government is needed to implement desired policies, the banksters comprise the truly essential element, capable of providing genuine rewards for compliance. As corporate interests increasingly own the media, little dissent comes from the Fourth Estate as the process plays out while many of the proliferating Washington think tanks that provide deep state "intellectual" credibility are similarly funded by defense contractors.
... The cross fertilization that is essential to make the deep state system work takes place through the famous revolving door whereby senior government officials enter the private sector at a high level. In some cases the door revolves a number of times, with officials leaving government before returning in an even more elevated position.
This has been characteristic of the rise of the so-called neoconservatives. Along the way, those select individuals are protected, promoted and groomed for bigger things. The senior government officials, ex-generals, and high level intelligence operatives who participate find themselves with multi-million dollar homes for their retirement years, cushioned by a tidy pile of investments."

Philip Giraldi, 2016

"The New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, NPR, etc. all are stenographers for the deep state."

Edward Curtin

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

Douglas P. Horne, 2014

"The long-time tendency of business and government to become more intricately and deeply involved with each other has now reached a new point of explicitness. The two cannot now be seen clearly as two distinct worlds."

John Stuart Mills in his book The Power Elite

"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

"The power of The Secret Team derives from its vast intra-governmental undercover infrastructure and its direct relationship with great private industries, mutual funds and investment houses, universities, and the news media, including foreign and domestic publishing houses. All true members of the Team remain in the power center whether in office with the incumbent administration or out of office with the hardcore set. They simply rotate to and from official jobs and the business world or the pleasant haven of academe."

L. Fletcher Prouty, who served as a liaison officer between the Pentagon and the CIA from 1955 to 1963 - in his book The Secret Team

"The "Deep State" is a parallel secret government, organized by a covert faction of the intelligence agencies, operated by a splinter cell of the United States military-industrial complex, financed through both the major banks, and the sale of illegal drugs, weapons, and human trafficking. They are international in their reach, owe no allegiance to any particular country, and are unbelievably ruthless in the protection of their interests."

Charlie Robinson, in his book "The Octopus of Global Control", 2017

"The Deep State has a life of its own, like the government itself. It's composed of top-echelon employees of a dozen Praetorian agencies, like the FBI, CIA, and NSA, top generals, admirals, and other military operatives, long-term congressmen, senators, and directors of important regulatory agencies. But Deep State is much broader than just the government. It includes the heads of major corporations, all of whom are heavily involved in selling to the State and enabling it. That absolutely includes Silicon Valley, although those guys at least have a sense of humor, evidenced by their "Don't Be Evil" motto. It also includes all the top people in the Fed, and the heads of all the major banks, brokers, and insurers. Add the presidents and many professors at top universities, which act as Deep State recruiting centers, all the top media figures, of course, and many regulars at things like Bohemian Grove and the Council on Foreign Relations. They epitomize the status quo, held together by power, money, and propaganda."

Doug Casey, financial analyst

"There is another government - a Deep State - concealed behind the one that is visible at either end of Pennsylvania Avenue, a hybrid entity of public and private institutions, ruling the country according to consistent patterns in season and out, connected to, but only intermittently controlled by, the visible state whose leaders we choose."

former congressional staff member Mike Lofgren

"The deep forces dominating both political parties [in the United States] are now so powerful, so affluent, and above all so invested in the profits from war-making, that a president is farther than ever from challenging this power - even as it becomes more and more clear that America's era of world dominance, like Britain's before it, is drawing to a close."

Peter Dale Scott

"There is an amorphous group of unelected corporate lawyers, bankers, and intelligence and military officials who form an American "deep state," setting real limits on the rare politicians who ever try to get out of line. They collaborate with and nurture their deep state counterparts in other countries, to whom they feel far more loyalty than their fellow citizens. The minions of the deep state hate and fear even the mildest moves towards democracy, and fight against it by any means available to them. They're not all-powerful and don't get exactly what they want, but on the issues that matter most they almost always win in the end. And while all this is mostly right there in the open, discernible by anyone who's curious and has a library card, if you don't go looking you will never hear a single word about it."

Jon Schwarz

"The deep state wins no matter who is in power by creating bipartisan-supported money pits within the system. Unending wars and simmering though hard to define threats together invite more spending on national security and make for good business. Monetizing the completely unnecessary and hideously expensive global war on terror benefits the senior government officials, beltway industries and financial services that feed off it. Because it is essential to keep the money flowing, the deep state persists in promoting policies that otherwise make no sense, to include the unwinnable wars currently enjoying marquee status in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan. The deep state knows that a fearmongered public will buy its product and does not even have to make much of an effort to sell it."

Philip Giraldi, 2016

"John Stuart Mills wrote in his 1956 masterpiece The Power Elite, that America was ruled by those who control the "strategic command posts" of society-the big corporations, the machinery of the state, and the military establishment. These dominant cliques were drawn together by their deep mutual stake in the "permanent war economy" that had emerged during the Cold War.
Though political tensions could flare within the power elite, Mills wrote, there was a remarkable unity of purpose among these ruling groups. The top corporate executives, government leaders, and high-ranking military officers moved fluidly in and out of one another's worlds, exchanging official roles, socializing in the same clubs, and educating their children at the same exclusive schools.
... Within this system of American power, Mills saw corporate chiefs as the first among equals. Long interlocked with the federal government, corporate leaders came to dominate the "political directorate" during World War II. The United States had largely become a democracy in form only. More than half of a century before the John Roberts-era Supreme Court that legally sanctioned corporate control of the electoral process."

David Talbot

"Wall Street may be the ultimate owner of the Deep State and its strategies, if for no other reason than that it has the money to reward government operatives with a second career that is lucrative beyond the dreams of avarice - certainly beyond the dreams of a salaried government employee."

former congressional staff member Mike Lofgren

"One factor linking Dallas, Watergate, Iran-Contra, and 9/11, has been the involvement of personnel involved in America's highest-level emergency planning, known since the 1950s as Continuity of Government (COG).
This planning group is one part of the American deep state, along with agencies like the CIA and NSA, the private groups like Booz Allen Hamilton to which more than half of the US intelligence budget is outsourced, and finally the powerful banks and corporations whose views are well represented in the CIA and NSA."

Peter Dale Scott

"The United States of America is not exactly deep state Turkey, but any democracy can be subverted by particular interests hiding behind the mask of patriotism buttressed by phony international threats. Ordinary Americans frequently ask why politicians and government officials appear to be so obtuse, rarely recognizing what is actually occurring in the country. That is partly due to the fact that the political class lives in a bubble of its own creation but it might also be because many of America's leaders actually accept and benefit from the fact that there is an unelected, un-appointed and unaccountable presence within the system that actually manages what is taking place from behind the scenes. That would be the American deep state."

Philip Giraldi, 2016

"The Deep State is a hybrid entity of public and private institutions ruling the country.
Washington is the most important node of the Deep State that has taken over America, but it is not the only one. Invisible threads of money and ambition connect the town to other nodes. One is Wall Street, which supplies the cash that keeps the political machine quiescent and operating as a diversionary marionette theater. Should the politicians forget their lines and threaten the status quo, Wall Street floods the town with cash and lawyers to help the hired hands remember their own best interests."

former congressional staff member Mike Lofgren

"Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld were a part of the permanent, though hidden, national security apparatus of the United States, inhabitants of a world in which Presidents come and go, but America always keeps on fighting."

Peter Dale Scott

DEMOCRACY

"I wouldn't call it fascism exactly, but a political system nominally controlled by an irresponsible, dumbed down electorate who are manipulated by dishonest, cynical, controlled mass media that dispense the propaganda of a corrupt political establishment can hardly be described as democracy either"

columnist Edward Zehr

"The political institutions of the West, saturated as they are with contributions from free-floating global wealth, are more efficient at resisting than generating a visionary alternative to the status quo."

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

"An important characteristic of the Chinese model has been the idea of strong government and the eschewing of the notion of democracy... In contrast to the now discredited Washington Consensus, it rejects shock therapy in favour of a process of gradual reform based on working through existing institutions. It is predicated upon a strong developmental state capable of steering and leading the process of reform."

Martin Jacques in his book "When China Rules the World"

"In Washington, democracy has a simple definition: does a government do what the state department wants it to do?"

Mark Weisbrot

"The argument that the two parties should represent opposed ideals and policies, one, perhaps, of the Right and the other of the Left, is a foolish idea acceptable only to doctrinaire and academic thinkers. Instead, the two parties should be almost identical, so that the American people can "throw the rascals out" at any election without leading to any profound or extensive shifts in policy.
... It is increasingly clear that, in the twentieth century, the expert will replace the democratic voter in control of the political system. Hopefully, the elements of choice and freedom may survive for the ordinary individual in that he may be free to make a choice between two opposing political groups (even if these groups have little policy choice within the parameters of policy established by the experts). In general, his freedom and choice will be controlled within very narrow alternatives."

Carroll Quigley in is book Tragedy and Hope

"Crowds have always undergone the influence of illusions. Whoever can supply them with illusions is easily their master; whoever attempts to destroy their illusions is always their victim."

Gustave Le Bon, one of the first pioneers of the study of mass psychology.

"There is little demand for democracy from within China. Indeed, if anything, there has been a turn away from democracy since Tiananmen Square. A combination of a fear of instability following the events of 1989, the disintegration of the Soviet Union, and what are seen as the difficulties experienced by Indonesia, Thailand and Taiwan as democracies - and also the Philippines and India - have reinforced the view of most Chinese that this is not an immediate issue: that, on the contrary, it is liable to represent a distraction from the main task of sustaining the country's economic growth. Implicit in this is the not misplaced view that any move towards democracy is likely to embroil the country in considerable chaos and turmoil. This is a key reason why democracy, for the great majority of Chinese, commands little support."

Martin Jacques in his book "When China Rules the World"

"The elites know that once we stop thinking we become a herd. We react to every new stimulus as if we were rats crammed into a cage. When the elites push the button we jump. It is collective sadomasochism. And we get a good look at it on Election Day."

Chris Hedges

"I don't think [democracy is] worth a damn .... People say, 'If the Congress were more representative of the people it would be better.' I say the Congress is too damn representative. It's just as stupid as the people are; just as uneducated, just as dumb, just as selfish."

US Secretary of State Dean Acheson

"The West had failed to bring a better way of life to China. Foreigners had plundered the country for more than a century under the doctrine of free enterprise, leading more and more Chinese to reject the doctrine of individual liberty because they came to believe it was a weapon of the strong to oppress the weak... Today the Communist Party is often still seen within China not as a decaying elite feeding off a brutalized populace but as a political force that retains considerable legitimacy for the radical changes it has spearheaded."

James Peck in his book "Ideal Illusions: How the U.S. Government Co-opted Human Rights"

"All the news we get every day and every hour is all about the bankers, while presidents, prime ministers and other elected leaders of the world have been reduced to the role of mere commentators who are expected to supply taxpayers' money whenever it is needed to bail out the wealthy.
Indeed, what we are watching is nothing less than the steady transfer of real political power from the polling station to the market and from the ballot to the wallet - reversing the democratic gains we have made over the last century when we were able, increasingly, to use our votes to shape our economic future."

Tony Benn, 2008

DEPLETED URANIUM

"Depleted Uranium is a low level alpha radiation emitter which is linked to cancer, and chemical toxicity causing kidney damage. Short term effects of high doses can result in death, while long term effects of low doses have been implicated in cancer."

US Army in a 1990 study on depleted uranium

"How much proof do they want? There is every relation between congenital malformation and depleted uranium. Before 1991, we saw nothing like this at all. If there is no connection, why have these things not happened before? Most of these children have no family history of cancer. I have studied what happened in Hiroshima. It is almost exactly the same here; we have an increased percentage of congenital malformation, an increase of malignancy, leukaemia, brain tumours: the same."

Dr Ginan Hassen, pediatrician in Basra, Iraq, after the first Gulf War

"In Iraq childhood mortality spiralled. Cancers soared, linked to the depleted uranium weapons used in the 1991 Gulf War bombardment."

Special Rapporteur to the United Nations Martti Ahtisaari

"After the start of the Iraq war, rates of cancer, leukemia and birth defects rose dramatically in Najaf. The areas affected by American attacks saw the biggest increases. We believe it's because of the' illegal' weapons like depleted uranium that were used by the Americans. When you visit the hospital here you see that cancer is more common than the flu."

Iraqi physian Dr. Sundus Nsaif

"In the assault on Fallujah, Iraq in 2004 the US military used depleted uranium, also known as spent nuclear fuel, in armor-piercing shells and bullets because it is twice as dense as lead. Once these shells hit their target, however, as much as 40 percent of the uranium is released in the form of tiny particles in the area of the explosion. It can remain there for years, easily entering the human bloodstream, where it lodges itself in lymph glands and attacks the DNA produced in the sperm and eggs of affected adults, causing, in turn, serious birth defects in the next generation."

Tom Eley, WSWS

"The World Health Organisation (WHO) has categorically refused in defiance of its own mandate to share evidence uncovered in Iraq that US military use of Depleted Uranium and other weapons have not only killed many civilians, but continue to result in the birth of deformed babies."

Denis Halliday, United Nations Humanitarian Coordinator in Iraq, 1997-1998

"Since the 1991 US-NATO war aggression against Yugoslavia using highly toxic and radioactive uranium projectiles, the enormity of this war crime becomes clear: In Serbia, aggressive cancer among young and old has reached epidemic proportions.
... Every day a child suffers from cancer. The entire country is contaminated. By harming the genetic material (DNA) generation after generation, malformed children will be born.
... Due to the long degradation process of radioactivity and toxicity, waste from the uranium and nuclear industries - mainly DU from isotope 238 - are stored in secure landfills for a very long time. To reduce the high cost, DU is given free of charge to interested parties such as the military. DU has characteristics that are particularly attractive for the defense industry: The DU projectiles - developed according to German technology - have a high penetrating power because of the high density of the metallic uranium and are particularly suitable for breaking steel armor and underground concrete bunkers. DU is also a flammable material that ignites spontaneously when penetrating an armor plate and at 3000 degrees Celsius burns to uranium oxide dust while releasing highly toxic and radioactive substances (uranium oxide).
This uranium oxide aerosol with particle sizes in the Nano scale reaches the human body through the air, water and, in the long term, through the food chain.
... In the lungs, the DU dust particles are also attached to the red and white blood cells and thus reach all organs of the body, including the brain, the kidney and the testes, so that in many organs cancer is produced and the genetic material (DNA) irreversibly damaged. The strong carcinogenicity of DU is due to the synergistic effects of chemo- and radio toxicity. Through the placenta, the DU can also reach an unborn child and cause serious harm to it. Potential long-term damage includes genetic defects in infants, childhood leukemia, cancer and kidney damage."

Dr. Rudolf Hänsel, 2017

"It is clear that the Pentagon knew about the health risks long before Operation Desert Storm (1991) emanating from uranium-containing ammunition. Numerous military reports have acknowledged that uranium-238 can cause kidney damage, lung and bone cancer, lung disease, skin diseases, neurocognitive disorders, chromosome damage and birth defects."

Dr. Helen Caldicott in her book "The New Nuclear Danger" (2002)

"The US government sought to prevent the World Health Organization [WHO] from surveying areas in southern Iraq where depleted uranium had been used and caused serious health and environmental dangers."

Hans von Sponeck, former Assistant Secretary General of the United Nations

"Many believe DU [depleted uranium] is responsible for Gulf War Syndrome, which has killed and permanently injured many US soldiers who fought in the Persian Gulf theater. Since 2000, nearly 11,000 US Gulf War veterans have died from Gulf War Syndrome."

Dean Henderson

"In 2010, a study of cancers, leukemia's and birth defects linked to the use of DU (depleted uranium) proved that there were massive increases in cancer, a 38-fold increase in leukemia, 10-fold increase in breast cancer and infant mortalities were staggering."

author Felicity Arbuthnot

"Depleted uranium [DU] is a war crime. It's that simple. Once you've scattered all this stuff around, and then refuse to clean it up, you've committed a war crime."

Dr. Doug Rokke, University of Illinois health physicist

"The exact amount of depleted uranium used in the bombing of Iraq is not known but it has been estimated to be greater than the 340 tonnes in the 1991 Iraq war. The radiation from these weapons does not discriminate between military personnel and civilians. Depleted uranium may be a contributing factor to cases of "Gulf War Syndrome" affecting American veterans of the 1991 bombing of Iraq."

author David Model

"Laws which are breached by the use of DU [depleted uranium] shells include: the Universal Declaration of Human Rights; the Charter of the United Nations; the Genocide Convention; the Convention Against Torture; [and] the four Geneva Conventions of 1949, which expressly forbid employing "poison or poisoned weapons" and "arms, projectiles or materials calculated to cause unnecessary suffering." All of these laws are designed to spare civilians from unwarranted suffering in armed conflicts."

UN Subcommission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights

"Something is very, very wrong in southern Iraq. At Basra's Children's and Maternity Hospital, doctors display a large photo album of hundreds of children born with horrible birth defects.
One study conducted by Iraqi doctors indicated that 0.776 percent of Basra-area children were born with birth defects in 1998, compared to just 0.304 percent in 1990, before the Gulf War. Another study showed a rise in childhood cancers and other malignancies of 384.2 percent from 1990--2000.
Iraqi doctors, and an increasing number of western scientists, attribute the rise in diseases and birth defects to the U.S. and British use of depleted uranium. Iraqi doctors said they have found highly elevated rates of cancers in those parts of Basra where depleted uranium ammunition was used. The Pentagon confirms firing 320 tons of DU ammunition during the Gulf War."

author Norman Solomon

"In Iraq after the Gulf War, childhood mortality spiralled. Cancers soared, linked to the depleted uranium weapons used in the 1991 bombardment."

Special Rapporteur to the UN Martti Ahtisaari

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

author William Blum

"In April 1991, the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority claimed that U.S. ground forces fired between 5000 and 6000 rounds of depleted radiation ordnance in Iraq. In addition, U.S. and British aircraft launched approximately 50,000 DU rockets and missiles. DU weapons burst into flames creating uranium oxide that spreads and contaminates bodies, equipment, and the ground. The uranium-238 that is used to make the weapons causes cancer and genetic defects. According to the report of the UK Atomic Energy Authority, 40 tonnes of radioactive debris could kill 500,000 people."

author David Model

"American air power pounded the hell out of Iraqi armor and buildings with depleted uranium rounds... I have been in and around buildings destroyed by depleted uranium rounds, as well as vehicles, armored personnel carriers, tanks and corpses... During the invasion, we were also exposed to severe sandstorms, which meant that we were breathing in sand for days, sand that more than likely contained depleted uranium."

James Gilligan, United States Marine Corps

"The US military's decision to heavily deploy depleted uranium in the assault on Fallujah, Iraq in 2004 was a wanton act of brutality, poisoning an entire generation of children not yet born in 2004."

Tom Eley, WSWS

"The US dropped 88,000 tons of bombs on Iraq during the Gulf War [1991] and has rained down countless more bombs since. Many bombs were tipped with armor piercing depleted uranium (DU) warheads, which may account for chronic Iraqi health problems... Three hundred tons of DU ammunition was deployed during the war."

Dean Henderson

"In a 2004 WHO expert report on the long-term health of Iraq's civilian population resulting from depleted uranium (DU) weapons.
The study by three leading radiation scientists cautioned that children and adults could contract cancer after breathing in dust containing depleted uranium [DU], which is radioactive and chemically toxic. But it was blocked from publication by the World Health Organization (WHO), which employed the main author, Dr Keith Baverstock, as a senior radiation advisor. He alleges that it was deliberately suppressed, though this is denied by WHO.
Almost nine years later, a joint WHO-Iraqi Ministry of Health Report on cancers and birth defect in Iraq was to be released in November 2012. It has been delayed repeatedly and now has no release date."

Denis Halliday, United Nations Humanitarian Coordinator in Iraq, 1997-1998

"Aerosol DU (Depleted Uranium) exposures to soldiers on the battlefield could be significant with potential radiological and toxicological effects. [...] Under combat conditions, the most exposed individuals are probably ground troops that re-enter a battlefield following the exchange of armour-piercing munitions. [...] We are simply highlighting the potential for levels of DU exposure to military personnel during combat that would be unacceptable during peacetime operations. [...DU is..]... a low level alpha radiation emitter which is linked to cancer when exposures are internal, [and] chemical toxicity causing kidney damage. [...] Short term effects of high doses can result in death, while long term effects of low doses have been linked to cancer. [...] Our conclusion regarding the health and environmental acceptability of DU penetrators assume both controlled use and the presence of excellent health physics management practices. Combat conditions will lead to the uncontrolled release of DU. [...] The conditions of the battlefield, and the long term health risks to natives and combat veterans may become issues in the acceptability of the continued use of DU kinetic penetrators for military applications."

Science and Applications International Corporation report: ' Kinetic Energy Penetrator Environment and Health Considerations', July 1990
[These documents state clearly and equivocally that the US army was well aware of the radioactive and toxic dangers of Depleted Uranium ammunition long before the first shots of the war were fired.]

DISSENT

"To oppose the policies of a government does not mean you are against the country or the people that the government supposedly represents. Such opposition should be called what it really is: democracy, or democratic dissent, or having a critical perspective about what your leaders are doing. Either we have the right to democratic dissent and criticism of these policies or we all lie down and let the leader, the Fuhrer, do what is best, while we follow uncritically, and obey whatever he commands. That's just what the Germans did with Hitler, and look where it got them."

Michael Parenti

"Congress passed three pieces of legislation between 1917 and 1919 to suppress all forms of dissent.
The Espionage Act of 1917 made it a crime punishable by a fine of $10,000 and 20 years in jail to attempt to "convey false reports or false statements with intent to interfere with the operation or success of the military or naval forces of the United States or to promote the success of its enemies...or attempt to cause insubordination, disloyalty, mutiny, or refusal to duty."
The Sedition Act of 1918, under the same penalties, made it illegal to "utter, print, write, or publish any disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language about the form of government of the United States...or any language intended to...encourage resistance to the United States."
The third piece of legislation, passed in 1918, decreed that "any alien who, at any time after entering the United States, is found to have been at the time of entry, or to have become thereafter, a member of any one of the classes of aliens"-anarchists, anyone who advocated revolution or assassinations of public officials-would be "taken into custody and deported."

Annie Zirin, 2002

"On October 23 2007 the House of Representatives passed the Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Bill.
... The bill is designed to identify which ideas are likely to radicalize the American people and promote dissenting activity. A nationwide network of academic researchers is charged with the responsibility of identifying certain ideologies and the thoughts that underpin them. Thus, it is a pre-criminal thought control piece of legislation amending the Homeland Security Act, and has moved stealthily through two committees of the House of Representatives. While not criminalizing "thought crime" at this juncture, it sets up an elaborate foundation for that move in the future."

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

"It is in the interest of the corporate elites to accept dissent and protest as a feature of the system inasmuch as they do not threaten the established social order. The purpose is not to repress dissent, but, on the contrary, to shape and mould the protest movement, to set the outer limits of dissent. To maintain their legitimacy, the economic elites favor limited and controlled forms of opposition To be effective, however, the process of "manufacturing dissent" must be carefully regulated and monitored by those who are the object of the protest movement "

Michel Chossudovsky, 2010

"No revolution can be successful without organization and money. "The downtrodden masses" usually provide little of the former and none of the latter. But Insiders at the top can arrange for both."

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

"[The] process of incrementally closing down what is left of an "open society" has been a part of the political program of every dictatorship. Control over the major sources of mass information through an elaborate filtering system, ultimately presided over by compliant editors, is essential to creating homogenous views in a population who, in many instances, are already conditioned not to want to know. Allowing peripheral dissent still affords rulers the opportunity to claim that other views are allowed. The reality is that it is a fringe activity, irrelevant to the dominant system of control."

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

"To convey the illusion of democracy [in America], "the globalizers" must "fabricate dissent"... they must create and finance their own political opposition. In order to appear legitimate, they must actively encourage the type of "criticism" which does not challenge "their right to rule"
This libertarian "counter-discourse" - which serves to disarm a genuine mass movement against war and globalization - constitutes part of the foundations of this evolving totalitarian system. Leaders of trade union confederations and mainstream NGOs, together with selected "academics" and critics, are invited to participate in policy formulation together with bankers, corporate executives and politicians.
The ploy is to selectively handpick civil society leaders "whom we can trust" and integrate them into a "dialogue' The idea is to cut them off from their rank and file, make them feel that they are "global citizens" acting on behalf of their fellow citizens, but make them act in a way which serves the interests of the corporate establishment:
... Once the fundamental premise that the US Administration is committed to curbing international terrorism is accepted, these leftist intellectuals and civil society critics are invited to express their "reservations" regarding America's conduct of the war, the impacts on civilians or their humanitarian concerns regarding the derogation of the Rule of Law.
In this ritual, the main justification for waging the war, which is a complete falsehood, is never questioned despite documented evidence that the "war on terrorism" is a fabrication.
... While the "globalizers" are subjected to "constructive criticism", their legitimate right to rule remains unchallenged. What this "left accommodation" and "civil society mingling" does is to reinforce the [control] the military-intelligence elites and the corporate establishment, while weakening the real protest movement.
More importantly, "left accommodation" splits up the protest movement. It divides the anti-war movement from the antiglobalization movement. It prevents the development of a broader movement against the American Empire. The large trade unions and the mainstream non-governmental organizations, by failing to denounce the falsehoods behind the "war on terrorism' have contributed unwittingly to the failure of a real opposition movement being mounted against the New World Order."

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

DRUG TRAFFICKING
DOPE, INC

"The single, integrated, multinational cartel which runs the international drug trade is properly referred to as "Dope, Inc.".

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

"Money laundering, according to IMF estimates for the 1990s, was between 590 billion and 1.5 trillion dollars a year, representing 2-5 percent of global GDP.
The proceeds of the drug trade are deposited in the banking system. Drug money is laundered in the numerous offshore banking havens in Switzerland, Luxembourg, the British Channel Islands, the Cayman Islands and some 50 other locations around the globe. It is here that criminal syndicates involved in the drug trade and the representatives of the world's largest commercial banks interact. Dirty money is deposited in these offshore havens, which are controlled by major Western banks and financial institutions. The latter, therefore, have a vested interest in maintaining and sustaining the drug trade.
Once the money has been laundered, it can be recycled into bona fide investments not only in real estate, hotels, etc, but also in other areas such as the services economy and manufacturing. Dirty and covert money is also funneled into various financial instruments including speculative stock exchange transactions (derivatives), primary commodities, stocks and government bonds."

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

"From Colombia to Miami, from the Golden Triangle to the Golden Gate, from Hong Kong to New York, from Bogota to Frankfurt, the drug trade, and more especially the heroin trade, is big business and it is run from the top down by some of the most "untouchable" families in the world... It is not a street corner business, and it takes a great deal of money and expertise to keep it flowing smoothly.
... It is, in fact, the largest single enterprise in the world today, transcending all others. That it is protected from the top down is borne out by the fact that, like international terrorism, it cannot be stamped out which should indicate to a reasonable person that some of this biggest names in royal circles, the oligarchy, the plutocracy are running it, even if it is done through intermediaries."

John Coleman in his book "Conspirators' Hierarchy: The Story of the Committee of 300"

"The British Crown Colony of Hong Kong, with the British Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation (HSBC) at the top, is considered the number-one money-laundering center for the heroin trade ... Illegal drugs are the biggest business in the Far East -and close to being the biggest business in the world - but in Hong Kong, drugs do not merely dominate the economy: They are the economy."

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

"In 2009, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime reported that billions of dollars in drug money saved the major banks during the financial crisis, providing much-needed liquidity."

Andrew Gavin Marshall

"[Drug money was] the only liquid investment capital" available to banks on the brink of collapse, with roughly $325 billion in drug money absorbed by the financial system. Without identifying specific countries or banks, Costa stated that, "Inter-bank loans were funded by money that originated from the drugs trade and other illegal activities... There were signs that some banks were rescued that way."

Antonio Maria Costa, the head of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, 2009

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

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

"The Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank [HSBC] and related companies finance the opium trade. In this, they are acting as designated agents of the British monarchy, through the Royal Institute of International Affairs.
The world illegal drug traffic is controlled by a single group of men whose intimate ties of ownership, family, and political collaboration go back 200 years."

www.bibliotecapleyades.net "How the Drug Empire Works"

"The large international banks that finance the drug trade, get it and launder it, using it to prop up their bankrupt international financial system."

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

"The mafia and the CIA are the same group at the upper levels. In Britain, the MI-6 drug money is laundered through the Bank of England, Barclays Bank and other household name companies. The drug money is passed from account to account until its origins are lost in a huge web of transactions.
The drug money comes out 'cleaner' but not totally clean. Diamonds are then bought with this money from the corrupt diamond business families like the Oppenheimers.
These diamonds are then sold and the drug money is clean."

James Casbolt

"Under U.S. law, banks must report all cash deposits of $10,000 or more. Traffickers have turned to high cash-turnover businesses - such as hotels, casinos, restaurants, and sports events-to launder their money. Since banks don't have to report deposits made by these businesses, drug profits are simply mixed in with legal cash flows.
Cash is also frequently shipped out of the United States. Often planes which fly cocaine into the U.S., fly back loaded with $20, $50, and $100 bills. The bills can then either be deposited directly in offshore banking centers - where no questions are asked -or in remote bank branches in the drug-producing countries. These funds are then wire-transferred out to the offshore banks, into secret accounts where there is no government supervision."

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

"Cocaine is indeed clearly the most profitable article of trade in the world."

Economist magazine, August 1989

"Some of the world's leading private financial institutions [are] deeply implicated in the witting laundering of hundreds of billions of dollars a year in illegal dope money... [Illegal drugs are] the largest commodity in international trade, with the exception of petroleum, and the annual revenues of the narcotics traffic exceed[s] the national product of most of the world's nations, and the revenues of the largest multinational companies."

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

"In the half century since the Korean War the United States has been involved in four major wars in the Third World: in Vietnam (1961-1975), in the Persian Gulf (1990-1991), in Colombia (1991-present), and in Afghanistan (2001-2002).' All four wars were fought in or near significant oil-producing areas. All four involved reliance on proxies who were also major international drug traffickers. The American habit of training, arming, and financing its drug-trafficking allies in order to help secure oil resources abroad has been a major factor in the huge increase in global illicit drug trafficking since World War II."

Peter Dale Scott, 2003

"The drug activities of the US - and the US-led NATO - are tightly linked with the NATO expansion and the creation of US military bases in the protectorates established along the drug-trafficking and pipeline routes. The best example is the supervised state of Kosovo used by drug lords to relay narcotics from Afghanistan to Europe via the Balkan route. The Albanian drug mafia's throughput is estimated at four to six tons of heroin of the Afghan origin monthly, the annual revenues being as high as $2 billion. According to the UN, Europe which is the key market for Afghan opiates absorbs up to 150 tons of heroin annually, with 35-50 tons going to Russia. The Albanian mafia is responsible for 75% of heroin supplies to West Europe and 50% - to the US."

Elena Ponomareva

"All empires since the Renaissance have been driven by the search for foreign resources, and nearly all-including the British, the French, and the Dutch-used drugs as a cheap way to pay for overseas expansion. When the United States decided to preserve Western influence in Southeast Asia, it inherited a social structure of former colonial regimes that had coexisted in one way or other with powerful Chinese Triads engaged in the drug traffic."

Peter Dale Scott, 2003

"Shipments of cocaine are sometimes interdicted and seized. That is mere window dressing. Often times the shipments seized belong to a new organization trying to break into the trade. Such competition is put out of business by informing the authorities exactly where it is going to enter the U.S. and who the owners are. The big stuff is never touched; heroin is too expensive."

John Coleman in his book "Conspirators' Hierarchy: The Story of the Committee of 300"

"The United States has become more and more committed to exclusive domination of the world oil economy, both to secure its increasing oil needs and to preclude this power from passing into the hands of anyone else. The consistent U.S. recourse to actions that have built up the global drug traffic raises an analogous question: Did the United States seek to maintain control over the global drug economy to ensure that its riches would strengthen the U.S. economy and to deny them to communist enemies?"

Peter Dale Scott, 2003

"The U.S. military intervention in Afghanistan in 2001 was accompanied by restoration of opium for the world market, a recreation of what happened with the earlier U.S. intervention of 1979-1980, and before that with the U.S. intervention in Indochina after 1959, and in Southeast Asia in 1950."

Peter Dale Scott, 2003

"The strengthening of the global narcotics traffic has fueled other smuggling and related criminal activities, leading to the consolidation of an international criminal milieu. Chinese Triads, Japanese Yakuza, Russian gangs, and the Mafias of Italy, America, and Colombia have now combined into a "worldwide criminal consortium."

Peter Dale Scott, 2003

"The drug "industry" is run as a single integrated world operation, from the opium poppy to the nickel bag of heroin sold on an inner-city street corner. Not only is illegal drug traffic under the control of a single world network, but opiates traffic in particular is without doubt the best-controlled production and distribution system of any commodity in international trade, illegal or legal.
... The drug-related illegal economy is the biggest business in the world.
... The British monarchy organized most of the Far East to conform to the drug traffic.
... The Anglo-Dutch "offshore" banking system and related precious metals and gems trade were designed around illegal money.
... The world drug traffic is a top-down operation under the immediate control of the British and allied monarchies."

www.bibliotecapleyades.net "How the Drug Empire Works"

"The heroin epidemic that ravaged our cities during the fifties and sixties originated with the CIA out of Southeast Asia. Almost from the moment of their founding in 1947, the CIA was giving covert support to organized drug traffickers in Europe and the Far East, and eventually the Middle East and Latin America. During the Vietnam War, heroin was being smuggled into this country in the bodies of soldiers being flown home."

Jesse Ventura in the book "American Conspiracies"

"In my 30-year history in the Drug Enforcement Administration and related agencies, the major targets of my investigations almost invariably turned out to be working for the CIA."

Dennis Dayle, a forms DEA agent in the Middle East

"A huge chunk of international banking and related financial operations have been created solely to manage dirty money.
... The Anglo-Dutch banking operations control illegal drug and related trade.
... The Anglo-Dutch oligarchy's banking operations have the following qualifications:
They have run the drug trade for a century and a half.
They dominate those banking centers closed off to law enforcement agencies.
Almost all such "offshore," unregulated banking centers are under the direct political control of the British and Dutch monarchies and their allies.
They dominate all banking at the heart of the narcotics traffic; the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank, created in 1864 to finance the drug trade, is exemplary.
They control world trade in gold and diamonds, a necessary aspect of "hard commodity" exchange for drugs.
They subsume the full array of connections to organized crime, the pro-drug legislative lobby in the USA, and all other elements of distribution, protection, and legal support.

www.bibliotecapleyades.net "How the Drug Empire Works"

"Drug trafficking constitutes the third biggest global commodity in cash terms after oil and the arms trade. Supported by powerful interests, heroin is a multibillion-dollar business, which requires a steady and secure commodity flow. One of the hidden objectives of the war In Afghanistan was effectively to restore the CIA sponsored drug trade to its historical levels and exert direct control over the drug routes."

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

"Britain has been involved in the China opium trade for over two centuries. No one is going to be so foolish as to rock the boat when millions upon millions of dollars flow into the bank accounts of the British oligarchists, and more gold is traded on the Hong Kong gold market than the combined total traded in London and New York."

John Coleman in his book "The Committee of 300"

"The global narcotics market is estimated by the UN to be of the order of $400-500 billion a year."

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

"The main heroin supply routes from the NATO-dominated Afghanistan [are a] land heroin route through Turkey, Bulgaria, Kosovo or Bosnia, [and a] maritime heroin route via Mediterranean trade lines to the island of Corsica.
... How many tons of heroin were intercepted on merchant vessels in Mediterranean during more than ten years of the operation Active Endeavour? ... Not a single gram... In 2003-2009 155 merchant vessels were boarded and checked by NATO inspection teams. They did not find anything.
... Why is NATO is wasting stupendous resources on a purposeless operation [Operation Active Endeavor]? The answer is evident: both NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) and Active Endeavour are perfectly complying with their real mission: to ensure total control over production, transportation and distribution of illegal drugs."

www.voltairenet.org/, 2012

"Intelligence agencies and powerful business syndicates, which are allied with organized crime, are competing for the strategic control over the heroin routes. The multi-billion dollar revenues of narcotics are deposited in the Western banking system. Most of the large international banks, together with their affiliates in the offshore banking havens, launder large amounts of narco-dollars.
This trade can only prosper if the main actors involved in narcotics have "political friends in high places". Legal and illegal undertakings are increasingly intertwined; the dividing line between "business people" and criminals is blurred."

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

"The real reason that the drug problem is not eradicated is because it is being run by the highest families in the entire world as part of a coordinated gigantic money-making machine.
... The plutocracy controlling British banks held the purse strings and then, as now, put up a most respectable facade to cover their true business. No one ever caught them with dirtied hands. They always had front men, even as they do today, willing to take the blame if things went awry. Then as now the connections with the drug trade were tenuous at best. No one was ever able to lay a finger on the respectable and "noble" banking families of Britain."

John Coleman in his book "Conspirators' Hierarchy: The Story of the Committee of 300"

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