Articles and more

Not Sure Pieces

Suggested Movies to Watch

M.A.R.S. Attacks

Common Email Questions

Who's Watching?: Firewall Hits for the Computer Running the Website

Recommended

Listener Comments

Oft-cited Quotes

Oft-cited Quotes

Attali on the new nomads:

"Severed from any national allegiance or family ties by microchip-based gadgets that will enable individuals to carry out for themselves many of the functions of health, education, and security, the consumer-citizens of the world's privileged regions will become "rich nomads." Able to participate in the liberal market culture of political and economic choice, they will roam the planet seeking ways to use their free time, shopping for information, sensations, and goods only they can afford, while yearning for human fellowship, and the certitudes of home and community that no longer exist because their functions have become obsolete. Like New Yorkers who every day face homeless beggars who loiter around automated teller machines pleading for spare change, these wealthy wanderers will everywhere be confronted by roving masses of "poor nomads"- boat people on a planetary scale- seeking to escape from the destitute periphery, where most of the earth's population will continue to live. These impoverished migrants will ply the planet, searching for sustenance and shelter, their desires inflamed by the ubiquitous and seductive images of consumerism they will see on satellite TV broadcasts from Paris, Los Angeles, or Tokyo. Desperately hoping to shift from what Alvin Toffler has called the slow world to the fast world, they will live the life of the living dead." - Attali, Jacques. Millienium: Winners and Losers in the Coming World Order. Three Rivers Press, 1992, pp. 5-6. ISBN 0812920880


Bertrand Russell recommending the use of credits that cannot be saved:

"There would still have to be money, or something analogous to it, in any community such as we are imagining. The Anarchist plan of a free distribution of the total produce of work in equal shares does not get rid of the need for some standard of exchange value, since one man will choose to take his share in one form and another in another. When the day comes for distributing luxuries, old ladies will not want their quota of cigars, nor young men their just proportion of lap-dog; this will make it necessary to know how many cigars are the equivalent of one lap-dog. Much the simplest way is to pay an income, as at present, and allow relative values to be adjusted according to demand. But if actual coin were paid, a man might hoard it and in time become a capitalist. To prevent this, it would be best to pay notes available only during a certain period, say one year from the date of issue. This would enable a man to save up for his annual holiday, but not to save indefinitely." - Russell, Bertrand. Roads to Freedom: Socialism, Anarchism & Syndication. 3rd ed., Unwin Paperbacks, 1985, pp. 144-145. ISBN 0-04-335033-X (The first edition of Roads to Freedom was published in 1918).


Bertrand Russell quote on diets, injections, and injunctions:

"It is to be expected that advances in physiology and psychology will give governments much more control over individual mentality than they now have even in totalitarian countries. Fichte laid it down that education should aim at destroying free will, so that, after pupils have left school, they shall be incapable, throughout the rest of their lives, of thinking or acting otherwise than their schoolmasters would have wished. But in his day this was an unattainable ideal: what he regarded as the best system in existence produced Karl Marx. In future such failures are not likely to occur where there is dictatorship. Diet, injections, and injunctions will combine, from a very early age, to produce the sort of character and the sort of beliefs that the authorities consider desirable, and any serious criticism of the powers that be will become psychologically impossible. Even if all are miserable, all will believe believe themselves happy, because the government will tell them that they are so." - Russell, Bertrand. The Impact of Science on Society. Routledge, 1994, pp. 61-62. ISBN 0-415-10906-X (First published in 1952)


The Club of Rome on how democracy is too cumbersome:

"The crucial need is to revitalize democracy and give it a breadth of perspective that will enable it to cope with the evolving global situation. In other words, is this new world we find ourselves in governable? The answer is: probably not with the existing structures and attitudes. Have we gathered the necessary means and wisdom to make decisions on the scale of the world problematique, taking into account the exigencies of time? There is an increasingly evident contradiction between the urgency of making some decisions and the democratic procedure founded on various dialogues such as parliamentary debate, public debate, and negotiations with trade unions or professional organizations. The obvious advantage of this procedure is its achievement of consensus; its disadvantage lies in the time it takes, especially at the international level. For indeed the difficulty is not only in the making of decisions, but also in their implementation and evaluation. Time in these matters has acquired a deep ethical content. The costs of delay are monstrous in terms of human life and hardship as well as of resources. The slowness of decision in a democratic system is particularly damaging at the international level. When dictators attack and international policing is required, delays of decisions can be fatal." - King, Alexander, and Bertrand Schneider. The First Global Revolution: A Report by the Council of The Club of Rome. 1st ed., Pantheon Books, 1991, p. 112. ISBN 0-679-73825-8


The Club of Rome on how it came up with the idea that the common enemy of humanity is man:

"In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill. In their totality and in their interactions these phenomena do constitute a common threat which demands the solidarity of all peoples. But in designating them as the enemy, we fall into the trap about which we have already warned, namely mistaking symptoms for causes. All these dangers are caused by human intervention and it is only through changed attitudes and behaviour that they can be overcome. The real enemy, then, is humanity itself." - King, Alexander, and Bertrand Schneider. The First Global Revolution: A Report by the Council of The Club of Rome. 1st ed., Pantheon Books, 1991, p. 115. ISBN 0-679-73825-8


Mikhail Gorbachev calling for a new sort of religion of greening:

"At the same time, we must begin to define certain moral maxims or ethical commandments that constitute values common to all humankind. It is my view that the individual's attitude toward nature must become one of the principal criteria for ensuring the maintenance of morality. Today it is not enough to say, "Thou shalt not kill." Ecological education implies, above all, respect and love for every living being. It is here that ecological culture interfaces with religion." - Gorbachev, Mikhail. The Search for a New Beginning: Developing a New Civilization. Translated by Pavel Palazchenko, HarperSanFrancisco, 1995, p. 64. ISBN 0-06-251338-9


Aldous Huxley on how much of the population is suggestible:

"About a fifth of the population, they tell us [writers on hypnosis], can be hypnotized very easily. Another fifth cannot be hypnotized at all, or can be hypnotized only when drugs or fatigue have lowered psychological resistance. The remaining three-fifths can be hypnotized somewhat less easily than the first group, but considerably more easily than the second." - Huxley, Aldous. Brave New World Revisited. TriadGrafton, 1983, p. 153. ISBN 0-586-05854-0 (Brave New World Revisited was first published by Chatto & Windus Ltd in 1959.)


Zbigniew Brzezinski writing in 1970 on the future of warfare:

"In addition to improved rocketry, multi-missiles, and more powerful and more accurate bombs, future developments may well include automated or manned space warships, deap-sea installations, chemical and biological weapons, death rays, and still other forms of warfare- even the weather may be tampered with.* [He continues in a footnote at the bottom of the page] As one specialist noted, 'By the year 2018, technology will make available to the leaders of the major nations a variety of techniques for conducting secret warfare, of which only a bare minimum of the security forces need be appraised. One nation may attack a competitor covertly by bacteriological means, thoroughly weakening the population (though with a minimum of fatalities) before taking over with its own overt armed forces. Alternatively, techniques of weather modification could be employed to produce prolonged periods of drought or storm, thereby weakening a nation's capacity and forcing it to accept the demands of the competitor.' (Gordon J. F. MacDonald, "Space," Toward the Year 2018, p. 34)." - Brzezinski, Zbigniew. Between Two Ages: America's Role in the Technetronic Era. The Viking Press, 1970, p. 57. ISBN 670-16041-5


Zbigniew Brzezinski writing in 1970 on the possibility of electronic strokes affecting the behavior of people throughout whole regions of the earth:

"In addition, it may be possible- and tempting- to exploit for strategic-political purposes the fruits of research on the brain and on human behavior. Gordon J. F. MacDonald, a geophysicist specializing in problems of warfare, has written that accurately timed, artificially excited electronic strokes 'could lead to a pattern of oscillations that produce relatively high power levels over certain regions of the earth. . . . In this way, one could develop a system that would seriously impair the brain performance of very large populations in selected regions over an extended period. . . . No matter how deeply disturbing the thought of using the environment to manipulate behavior for national advantages to some, the technology permitting such use will very probably develop within the next few decades.'" - Brzezinski, Zbigniew. Between Two Ages: America's Role in the Technetronic Era. The Viking Press, 1970, p. 57. ISBN 670-16041-5


Carroll Quigley on how there exists an international Anglophile network which operates similarly to how the radical Right believes the communists operate:

"The radical Right version of these events [the activities and policies of the IPR (Institute of Pacific Relations) that seemed to favor the Communists] as written up by John T. Flynn, Freda Utley, and others, was even more remote from the truth than were Budenz's or Bentley's versions, although it had a tremendous impact on American opinion and American relations with other countries in the years 1947-1955. This radical Right fairy tale, which is now an accepted folk myth in many groups in America, pictured the recent history of the United States, in regard to domestic reform and in foreign affairs, as a well-organized plot by extreme Left-wing elements, operating from the White House itself and controlling all the chief avenues of publicity in the United States, to destroy the American way of life, based on private enterprise, laissez faire, and isolationism, in behalf of the alien ideologies of Russian Socialism and British cosmopolitanism (or internationalism)... This myth, like all fables, does in fact have a modicum of truth. There does exist, and has existed for a generation, an international Anglophile network which operates, to some extent, in the way the radical Right believes the Communists act. In fact, this network, which we may indentify as the Round Table Groups, has no aversion to cooperating with the Communists, or any other groups, and frequently does so. I know of the operations of this network because I have studied it for twenty years and was permitted for two years, in the early 1960's, to examine its papers and secret records." - Quigley, Carroll. Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World in Our Time. GSG & Associates, 1981, pp. 949-950. ISBN 0-945001-01-0 (First published by The Macmillan Company in 1966)