“Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.”
―George Orwell, 1984

“If we weren’t clear before, we know now: The world is interconnected. Our world is interdependent. And our world is fragile.”
US VP Kamala Harris
May 28, 2021

"But the climate crisis has already been solved. We already have all the facts and solutions. And why should I be studying for a future that soon may be no more, when no one is doing anything to save that future? And what is the point of learning facts when the most important facts clearly mean nothing to our society?"
Greta Thunberg of Sweden, age 15, addressing COP24, the 24th Conference of Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change

“Most women do not in fact recognize the degree of male hostility toward them, preferring to view the relations of the sexes as more benign than they are in fact. Similarly, women like to believe that they have greater freedom and higher status than they do in reality.”
Judith L. Herman, Trauma and Recovery, 1992, p. 69

“The purpose of war is indeed war itself. The justifications are always pretexts.”
David Swanson

"Discomfort is an essential part of learning."
Judith Butler

"We can either have great concentrations of wealth or we can have democracy.  But we cannot have both."
Louis Brandeis

“A basic principal of modern state capitalism is that costs and risks are socialized to the extent possible, while profit is privatized.”
Noam Chomsky

“I think it is appropriate to ask whether this trend [growing income and wealth inequality] is compatible with values rooted in our nation's history, among them the high value Americans have traditionally placed on equality of opportunity.”
10/17/2014
Janet Yellen
US Federal Reserve Board Chairwoman

“There’s class warfare, all right,” Mr. Buffett said, “but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.”

6/10/1994, Jackie Goldberg speaking before the tenBroek Society, St. Francis Hotel, SF:

"Cynicism is the biggest blockade to progress right now. Cynicism is the biggest method of social control in America today. It is what prevents young people...from feeling their own power. We had disillusionments, but we weren’t cynical. We believed you could change the world and we tried to do it and many of us continue to try to do it."

Peace Day
September 21

America is trapped in a never ending cycle of enormously profitable warfare. The public relations packaging is always the same: "We are fighting for freedom and democracy." Who better to believe that than the idealistic and young? The truth however is cleverly hidden in plain sight: We are sending America's young men and women off to protect the global interests of wealthy and powerful mega-corporations based on US soil.
Mark Ash

War=Debt

Barbara Boxer pushes for Afghan exit strategy
Carla Marinucci, Chronicle Political Writer

Asked whether she would eliminate any government programs to reduce the national debt, Boxer said to applause, "Well, the biggest one is the wars."

The Atlantic, June 2010Letters, page 12

The Causes of Inflation

I’m glad to see Michael Kinsley (“My Inflation Nightmare,” April Atlantic) raising the issue of the unavoidable connection between budget deficits and inflation. Another connection is also rarely dealt with by economists or the press: the connection between budget deficits, inflation, and massive military spending. It cannot be just coincidence that hyperinflationary pressures so regularly follow, about a decade later, periods of massive military spending, whether the wars be hot or cold. This pattern is seen across nations and across centuries.

Daniel Liechty, Normal, Ill.

 

San Francisco Chronicle
Sunday, July 18, 2010

'Every Man in This Village Is a Liar'
Rayyan Al-Shawaf, Special to The Chronicle

Every Man in This Village Is a Liar
An Education in War
By Megan K. Stack
(Doubleday; 255 pages; $26.95)

" the foundering war on terror is 'essentially nothing but a unifying myth for a complicated scramble of mixed impulses and social theories and night terrors and cruelty and business interests, all overhung with the unassailable memory of falling skyscrapers.'"

The Cultural Cold War
The CIA and the World of Arts and Letters
Frances Stonor Saunders