#sm

We are benefiting from one thing, and that is the attacks on the twin towers and the pentagon and the American struggle in Iraq. These events swung American public opinion in our favor ↗

— Benjamin Netanyahu

#israel #jews #terrorism #war-on-terror #zionism

I am convinced that imprisonment is a way of pretending to solve the problem of crime. It does nothing for the victims of crime, but perpetuates the idea of retribution, thus maintaining the endless cycle of violence in our culture. It is a cruel and useless substitute for the elimination of those conditions--poverty, unemployment, homelessness, desperation, racism, greed--which are at the root of most punished crime. The crimes of the rich and powerful go mostly unpunished. It must surely be a tribute to the resilience of the human spirit that even a small number of those men and women in the hell of the prison system survive it and hold on to their humanity. ↗

— Howard Zinn

#criminal-justice-system #cycle-of-violence #desperation #greed #homelessness

We have to create culture, don't watch TV, don't read magazines, don't even listen to NPR. Create your own roadshow. The nexus of space and time where you are now is the most immediate sector of your universe, and if you're worrying about Michael Jackson or Bill Clinton or somebody else, then you are disempowered, you're giving it all away to icons, icons which are maintained by an electronic media so that you want to dress like X or have lips like Y. This is shit-brained, this kind of thinking. That is all cultural diversion, and what is real is you and your friends and your associations, your highs, your orgasms, your hopes, your plans, your fears. And we are told 'no', we're unimportant, we're peripheral. 'Get a degree, get a job, get a this, get a that.' And then you're a player, you don't want to even play in that game. You want to reclaim your mind and get it out of the hands of the cultural engineers who want to turn you into a half-baked moron consuming all this trash that's being manufactured out of the bones of a dying world. ↗

— Terence McKenna

#culture #inspirational #life #tv #wisdom

…most of the damage we cause to the planet is the result of our own ignorance. ↗

— Yvon Chouinard

#ignorance #education

I don't see how the study of language and literature can be separated from the question of free speech, which we all know is fundamental to our society. [p.92] ↗

— Northrop Frye

#literary-criticism #education

Don’t be deceived when they tell you things are better now. Even if there’s no poverty to be seen because the poverty’s been hidden. Even if you ever got more wages and could afford to buy more of these new and useless goods which industries foist on you and even if it seems to you that you never had so much, that is only the slogan of those who still have much more than you. Don’t be taken in when they paternally pat you on the shoulder and say that there’s no inequality worth speaking of and no more reason to fight because if you believe them they will be completely in charge in their marble homes and granite banks from which they rob the people of the world under the pretence of bringing them culture. Watch out, for as soon as it pleases them they’ll send you out to protect their gold in wars whose weapons, rapidly developed by servile scientists, will become more and more deadly until they can with a flick of the finger tear a million of you to pieces. ↗

— Jean-Paul Marat

#politics #pragmatism #sad-but-true #poverty

First Afghanistan, now Iraq. So who's next? Syria? North Korea? Iran? Where will it all end?' If these illegal interventions are permitted to continue, the implication seems to be, pretty soon, horror of horrors, no murderously repressive regimes might remain. ↗

— Daniel Kofman

#antiwar-movement #axis-of-evil #despotism #foreign-policy #foreign-policy-of-the-us

The violent subjugation of the Palestinians, Iraqis, and Afghans will only ensure that those who oppose us will increasingly speak to us in the language we speak to them—violence. ↗

— Chris Hedges

#blowback #iraq #palestinians #terrorism #violence

The number of people killed by the sanctions in Iraq is greater than the total number of people killed by all weapons of mass destruction in all of history. ↗

— Noam Chomsky

#perspective #terrorism #war #war-on-terror #wmd

...they needed someone to explain, to spin, the parts of the tale that couldn't be suppressed. Someone reputable and educated. Someone brilliant yet absolutely committed to the faith. Someone like my father. ↗

— Martha N. Beck

#controversial #faith #leaving #leaving-the-saints #mormonism