Political Quotes

[bob x]

No, he did not go to war.

[Pathless]

Is he still our president?

[Pathless]

"It is never easy to demand the most from ourselves, from our lives, from our work. To go beyond the encouraged mediocrity of our society is to encourage excellence. But giving in to the fear of feeling and working to capacity is a luxury only the unintentional can afford, and the unintentional are those who do not wish to guide their own destinies."

--Audre Lorde

[Pathless]

"My illness helped me to see that what was missing in society is what was missing in me: a little heart, a lot of brotherhood. The '80s were about acquiring -- acquiring wealth, power, prestige. I know. I acquired more wealth, power, and prestige than most. But you can acquire all you want and still feel empty. What power wouldn't I trade for a little more time with my family? What price wouldn't I pay for an evening with friends? It took a deadly illness to put me eye to eye with that truth, but it is a truth that the country, caught up in its ruthless ambitions and moral decay, can learn on my dime. I don't know who will lead us through the '90s, but they must be made to speak to this spiritual vacuum at the heart of American society, this tumor of the soul."

--Lee Atwater, in an article in Life Magazine before his death in March of 1991

[Pathless]

"What I’m trying to do is encourage the capacities, the energy, the creativity, the imagination, that exists in people at the grassroots to redefine and rebuild our society. If we want to live in freedom from terror, we have to begin looking at ourselves, redefining who we are, redefining who this country is and reassessing what it is within our capacity to do."

--Grace Lee Boggs, speaking on Democracy Now!, January 22nd, 2008

[China Cat Sunflower]

Lyndon Johnson said something like, "success has many fathers, failure is an orphan."

Chris

[Pathless]

"We must rapidly begin the shift from a 'thing'-oriented society to a 'person'-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism and militarism are incapable of being conquered. A civilization can flounder as readily in the face of moral and spiritual bankruptcy as it can through financial bankruptcy."

--Martin Luther King, Jr; quoted in bell hooks' Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom

[Pathless]

"If the women are critical, they have to accept our contribution as men, as well as the workers have to accept our contribution as intellectuals, because it is a duty and a right that I have to participate in the transformation of society. Then, if the women must have the main responsibility in their struggle they have to know that their struggle also belongs to us, that is, to those men who don't accept the machista position in the world. The same is true of racism. As an apparent white man, because I always say that I am not quite sure of my whiteness, the question is to know if I am really against racism in a radical way. If I am, then I have a duty and a right to fight with black people against racism."

--Paulo Freire, quoted in Teaching to Transgress

[Pathless]

"The fundamental problem of mankind is to develop a culture where the needs of the individual are always complementary to those around him; a culture in which a child is not slapped for crying; a culture in which sorrow always is met by the complementary need to be compassionate; where fear is always met by the complementary need in others to give reassurance; where the need to be loved is met by a need to give love in the way it is wanted, at the time it is wanted and as much as it is wanted. This is not an American view, for the American makes conflict into a god; and although sociology swells its chest with a thousand 'conflict theories,' it has none on compassion.... Life without conflict seems stale to the American elites; and compassion, which is a low-paid motivation, has been relegated to the fringes of the low-paid segments of the culture, and has never been a subject for research."

--Erich Fromm, quoted in Barabara G. Walker, The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets (in the entry for War)

[Pathless]

"There is violence because we have daily honored violence. Any half-educated man in a good suit can make his fortune by concocting a television show whose brutality is photographed in sufficiently monstrous detail. Who produces these shows, who pays the sponsor, who is honored for acting in them? Are these people delinquent psychopaths, slinking along tenemnet streets? No, they are the pillars of society, our honored men, our exemplars of success and social attainment. We must begin to feel the shame and contrition we have earned before we can begin to sensibly construct a peaceful society, let alone a peaceful world. A country where people cannot walk safely in their own streets has not earned the right to tell any other people how to govern itself, let alone to bomb and burn that people."

--Arthur Miller, quoted in Barabara G. Walker, The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets (in the entry for War)

[Pathless]

"Fascism is also about the slow, steady infilitration of all the instruments of state power. It's about the slow erosion of civil liberties, about unspectacular day-to-day injustices. Fighting it means fignting to win back the minds and hearts of people."

and

"There is no terrorism like state terrorism."

--Arundhati Roy, from her essay "Democracy: Who is She When She is at Home?" in War Talk

[Pathless]

"Politics is a whore."

--Jalal Talabani, quoted in Riverbend's blog "Baghdad Burning" (check the entry "Let's Play Musical Chairs" posted on August 26th, 2003)

[Pathless]

"I do not agree that a dog in a manger has the final right to the manger, even though he may have lain there for a very long time. I do not admit that right. I do not admit, for instance, that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America, or the black people of Australia. I do not admit that a wrong has been done to these people by the fact that a stronger race, a higher grade race, a more worldly-wise race, to put it that way, has come in and taken their place."

--Winston Churchill, speaking of the Palestinians, quoted in Arundhati Roy's War Talk

[Pathless]

"Someone sent me an email a couple of weeks back praising Halliburton and Bechtel to the skies. The argument was that we should consider ourselves ‘lucky’ to have such prestigious corporations running the oil industry and heading the reconstruction efforts because a. they are efficient, and b. they employ the ‘locals’.

Ok. Fine. I’ll pretend I never read that article that said it would take at least two years to get the electricity back to pre-war levels. I’ll pretend that it hasn’t been 5 months since the ‘end of the war’ and the very efficient companies are terrified of beginning work because the security situation is so messed up.

As for employing the locals… things are becoming a little bit clearer. Major reconstruction contracts are being given to the huge companies, like Bechtel and Halliburton, for millions of dollars. These companies, in turn, employ the Iraqis in the following way: they first ask for bids on specific projects. The Iraqi company with the lowest bid is selected to do the work. The Iraqi company gets *exactly* what it bid from the huge conglomerate, which is usually only a fraction of the original contract price. Hence, projects that should cost $1,000,000 end up costing $50,000,000.

Now, call me naïve, or daft, or whatever you want, but wouldn’t it be a. more economical and b. more profitable to the Iraqis to hand the work over directly to experienced Iraqi companies? Why not work directly with one of the 87 companies and factories that once worked under the ‘Iraqi Military Council’ and made everything from missiles to electrical components? Why not work directly with one of the 158 factories and companies under the former Ministry of Industry and Minerals that produced everything from candy to steel girders? Why not work with the bridge, housing and building companies under the Ministry of Housing that have been heading the reconstruction efforts ever since 1991?

Some of the best engineers, scientists, architects and technicians are currently out of work because their companies have nothing to do and there are no funds to keep them functioning. The employees get together a couple of days a week and spend several hours brooding over ‘istikans’ of lukewarm tea and ‘finjans’ of Turkish coffee. Instead of spending the endless billions on multinational companies, why not spend only millions on importing spare parts and renovating factories and plants?

My father has a friend with a wife and 3 children who is currently working for an Italian internet company. He communicates online with his ‘boss’ who sits thousands of kilometers away, in Rome, safe and sure that there are people who need to feed their families doing the work in Baghdad. This friend, and a crew of male techies, work 10 hours a day, 6 days a week. They travel all over Baghdad, setting up networks. They travel in a beat-up SUV armed with cables, wires, pliers, network cards, installation CDs, and a Klashnikov for… you know… technical emergencies.

Each of the 20 guys who work with this company get $100/month. A hundred dollars for 260 hours a month comes to… $0.38/hour. My 16-year-old babysitter used to get more. The Italian company, like many other foreign companies, seems to think that $100 is appropriate for the present situation. One wonders the price of the original contract the Italian company got… how many countless millions are being spent so 20 guys can make $100/month to set up networks?"

--Riverbend, Baghdad Burning: September 24, 2003: "For Sale:Iraq"

[Pathless]

"But that's where the difference is: the majority of Iraqis have a deep respect for other cultures and religions… and that's what civilization is. It's not mobile phones, computers, skyscrapers and McDonalds; It's having enough security in your own faith and culture to allow people the sanctity of theirs…"

--Riverbend, Baghdad Burning: October 21, 2003: "Civilization..."