Dagens Citat: George Orwell.

"In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible. Things like the continuance of British rule in India, the Russian purges and deportations, the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan, can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of political parties. Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness. Defenseless villages are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the huts set on fire with incendiary bullets: this is called pacification. Millions of peasants are robbed of their farms and sent trudging along the roads with no more than they can carry: this is called transfer of population or rectification of frontiers. People are imprisoned for years without trial, or shot in the back of the neck or sent to die of scurvy in Arctic lumber camps: this is called elimination of unreliable elements."

George Orwell, “Politics and the English Language” (1946).

Dagens Citat: Michael Parenti

“The free market core mythology, to which both parties in this country and just about all mainstream political commentators are wedded, argues in effect that the most ruthless, selfish, opportunistic, greedy, calculating plunderers, applying the most heartless measures in cold-blooded pursuit of corporate interests and wealth accumulation, will produce the best results for all of us, through something called the invisible hand.” 

Michael Parenti "Democracy and the Pathology of Wealth". 

Dagens Citat: David Graeber.

"While the new free market ideology has framed itself above all as a rejection of bureaucracy, it has, in fact, been responsible for the first administrative system that has operated on a planetary scale, with its endless layering of public and private bureaucracies: the IMF, World Bank, WTO, trade organizations, financial institutions, transnational corporations, NGOs. This is precisely the system that has imposed free market orthodoxy, and opened the world to financial pillage, under the watchful aegis of American arms. It only made sense that the first attempt to recreate a global revolutionary movement, the Global Justice Movement that peaked between 1998 and 2003, was effectively a rebellion against the rule of that very planetary bureaucracy." [min fremhævning]

David Graeber: "A Practical Utopian’s Guide to the Coming Collapse."

Quote of the day: Pierre-Joseph Proudhon

"To be governed is to be watched over, inspected, spied on, directed, legislated at, regulated, docketed, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled, assessed, weighed, censored, ordered about, by men who have neither the right, nor the knowledge, nor the virtue. ... To be governed is to be at every operation, at every transaction, noted, registered, enrolled, taxed, stamped, measured, numbered, assessed, licensed, authorized, admonished, forbidden, reformed, corrected, punished. It is, under the pretext of public utility, and in the name of the general interest, to be placed under contribution, trained, ransomed, exploited, monopolized, extorted, squeezed, mystified, robbed; then, at the slightest resistance, the first word of complaint, to be repressed, fined, despised, harassed, tracked, abused, clubbed, disarmed, choked, imprisoned, judged, condemned, shot, deported, sacrificed, sold, betrayed; and, to crown all, mocked, ridiculed, outraged, dishonoured. That is government; that is its justice; that is its morality."

Proudhon: The General Idea of the Revolution(1851).

Dagens Citat: Hermann Göring

Dagens Citat: Noam Chomsky.

"Intellectuals are in a position to expose the lies of governments, to analyze actions according to their causes and motives and often hidden intentions. In the Western world, at least, they have the power that comes from political liberty, from access to information and freedom of expression. For a privileged minority, Western democracy provides the leisure, the facilities, and the training to seek the truth lying hidden behind the veil of distortion and misrepresentation, ideology and class interest, through which the events of current history are presented to us."

The Responsibility of Intellectuals.

Dagens Citat: Derrick Jensen.

“Who determines that money is more valuable than life? Who determines that those with money are more powerful? What is money in the end? It is paper. It is metal. It cannot be eaten. The paper can be burned for heat. But it is nothing. It is nothing except what we make of it. It is nothing except what we pretend it to be.”

- Derrick Jensen, The Culture of Make Believe, p. 381.

Dagens Citat: David Hume.

"Nothing appears more surprising to those, who consider human affairs with a philosophical eye, than the easiness with which the many are governed by the few; and the implicit submission, with which men resign their own sentiments and passions to those of their rulers. When we enquire by what means this wonder is effected, we shall find, that, as FORCE is always on the side of the governed, the governors have nothing to support them but opinion. It is therefore, on opinion only that government is founded; and this maxim extends to the most despotic and military governments, as well as to the most free and most popular."

- David Hume: “Of the First Principles of Government.”

Dagens citat: Herbert Marcuse.

"Når radiospeakeren rapporterer om tortur og mord på menneskerettighedsforkæmperne i samme ufølsomme tonefald, som han bruger ved rapporter om børskurser, varenoteringer og vejret, eller med samme "schwung" som han bruger ved reklameindslag, bliver objektiviteten falsk - ja mere end det, det bliver en krænkelse af menneskeligheden og sandheden ved at forholde sig rolig, hvor man burde blive oprørt, ved at afstå fra beskyldninger, hvor beskyldningerne ligger i selve kendsgerningerne. Den tolerance, som udtrykkes i en sådan neutralitet, tjener til at minimere eller rent ud frikende den eksisterende intolerance og undertrykkelse. Hvis objektivitet har noget at gøre med sandhed, og hvis sandhed er mere end et spørgsmål om logik og videnskab, så er denne slags objektivitet falsk og denne slags tolerance umenneskelig. Og hvis det er nødvendigt at sønderbryde det bestående meningsunivers (og den praksis som det indebærer) for at sætte mennesket i stand til at finde ud af, hvad der er sandt og falsk, så må man forlade denne bedrageriske objektivitet"

- Herbert Marcuse, Politiske Essays

Quotes of the day: Stéphane Hessel.

The quotes below are all taken from the now famous pamphlet by the French World War II resistance fighter Stéphane Hessel, entitled "Time for Outrage!" ("Indignez Vous!"):

"The worst possible outlook is indifference that says, “I can’t do anything about it; I’ll just get by.” Behaving like that deprives you of one of the essentials of being human: the capacity and the freedom to feel outraged. That freedom is indispensable, as is the political involvement that goes with it."

"We must realize that violence turns its back on hope. We have to choose hope over violence—choose the hope of nonviolence. That is the path we must learn to follow. The oppressors no less than the oppressed have to negotiate to remove the oppression: that is what will eliminate terrorist violence. That is why we cannot let too much hate accumulate."

"The Western obsession with productivity has brought the world to a crisis that we can escape only with a radical break from the headlong rush for “more, always more” in the financial realm as well as in science and technology. It is high time that concerns for ethics, justice and sustainability prevail. For we are threatened by the most serious dangers, which have the power to bring the human experiment to an end by making the planet uninhabitable."

Quotes of the day: Niall Ferguson.

“Last year (2007) the income of the average American (just under $34,000) went up by at most 5 per cent. But the cost of living rose by 4.1 per cent. So in real terms Mr Average actually became just 0.9 per cent better off. Allowing for inflation, the income of the median household in the United States has in fact scarcely changed since 1990, increasing by just 7 per cent in eighteen years. Now compare Mr Average's situation with that of Lloyd Blankfein, chief executive officer at Goldman Sachs, the investment bank. In 2007 he received $68.5 million in salary, bonus and stock awards, an increase of 25 per cent on the previous year, and roughly two thousand times more than Joe Public earned. That same year, Goldman Sachs's net revenues of $46 billion exceeded the entire gross domestic product (GDP) of more than a hundred countries, including Croatia, Serbia and Slovenia; Bolivia, Ecuador and Guatemala; Angola, Syria and Tunisia. The bank's total assets for the first time passed the $ i trillion mark. Yet Lloyd Blankfein is far from being the financial world's highest earner. The veteran hedge fund manager George Soros made $2.9 billion. Ken Griffin of Citadel, like the founders of two other leading hedge funds, took home more than $2 billion. Meanwhile nearly a billion people around the world struggle to get by on just $1 a day.”

“At times, the ascent of money has seemed inexorable. In 2006 the measured economic output of the entire world was around $47 trillion. The total market capitalization of the world's stock markets was $ 51 trillion, 10 per cent larger. The total value of domestic and international bonds was $68 trillion, 50 per cent larger. The amount of derivatives outstanding was $473 trillion, more than ten times larger. Planet Finance is beginning to dwarf Planet Earth. And Planet Finance seems to spin faster too. Every day two trillion dollars change hands on foreign exchange markets. Every month seven trillion dollars change hands on global stock markets. Every minute of every hour of every day of every week, someone, somewhere, is trading. And all the time new financial life forms are evolving.In 2006, for example, the volume of leveraged buyouts (takeovers of firms financed by borrowing) surged to $753 billion. An explosion of 'securitization', whereby individual debts like mortgages are 'tranched' then bundled together and repackaged for sale, pushed the total annual issuance of mortgage backed securities, asset-backed securities and collateralized debt obligations above $3 trillion. The volume of derivatives - contracts derived from securities, such as interest rate swaps or credit default swaps (CDS) – has grown even faster, so that by the end of 2007 the notional value of all 'over-the-counter' derivatives (excluding those traded onpublic exchanges) was just under $600 trillion. Before the 1980s, such things were virtually unknown. New institutions, too, have proliferated. The first hedge fund was set up in the 1940s and, as recently as 1990, there were just 610 of them, with $38 billion under management. There are now over seven thousand, with $1.9 trillion under management. Private equity partnerships have also multiplied, as well as a veritable shadow banking system of 'conduits' and 'structured investment vehicles' (SIVs), designed to keep risky assets off bank balance sheets. If the last four millennia witnessed the ascent of man the thinker, we now seem to be living through the ascent of man the banker.”

Niall Ferguson: The Ascent of Money.

Quotes of the day: Robert Albritton

Capitalism and Democracy:

“Capitalism is only supportive of democracy to a limited extent, for democracy requires a high level of equality, while capitalism generates inequality. To an extent capitalism has supported individual rights, which can be important dimensions of democracy; however, if inequality leaves large numbers in dire need, these rights can be weakened to the point of being almost meaningless. Thus free speech is terribly important, but it can be undermined when inequality creates a situation where de facto it is almost entirely the voices of small elites that are heard. For this reason, the emphasis on individual rights needs to be balanced by an emphasis on social rights and responsibilities that arise from a sense of social connectedness and generosity.”

Corporations:

“The large corporations that we see today are among some of the largest and most centrally planned economic units to ever exist, and as a consequence of their status as private property and legal persons, the public has only very limited and indirect ways of holding corporations publicly accountable. By law, corporations are supposed to maximize profits for stockholders, but this is a very narrow mission for such a powerful institution as the modern corporation. Further, not only is most corporate decision making behind closed doors, but it is relatively authoritarian in the sense that it is mostly top-down, being finalized by small circles of top management. Is it rational for small coteries of private individuals to have so much power over the fate of humanity? I think
not.”

Socializing Costs, Privatizing Profits:

“We must find ways to make corporations more democratically accountable, and to include in their calculations not only short-term profits but also social costs and benefits. For example, in capitalism as it exists, a corporation may contribute to respiratory illness by polluting the air, but it would be irrational for it to install expensive anti-pollution devices if by doing so, its profits would be reduced. Normally under capitalism, it is the taxpayers and consumers who will pay the tab for increased health care costs stemming from air pollution. This is an example of how capitalism privatizes profits and socializes costs. The capitalist imperative to privatize profits and socialize costs becomes particularly problematic when economic activity is generating enormous social costs by running up against the limits of human and environmental health and when it is continually deepening a horrendous inequality.”

Accountability:

“Most mainstream economists believe that by their own impulses markets can rationally price commodities, but when enormous social and environmental costs are not included in market prices, they can scarcely be thought of as rational. It follows that market prices need to be made more representative of real social costs and benefits. The “carbon tax” is one example where this is being advocated. A “sustainability tax” has also been advocated. Such taxes, however, can only be progressive from the point of view of human flourishing, if they are combined with redistributive
measures that make the necessities of life more affordable and not less to those with lower incomes. We can make markets more democratically accountable by treating them instrumentally, and this means being willing to intervene, whenever by doing so human or environmental flourishing are advanced.

Because markets are always embedded in and shaped by power relations, their outcomes are always likely to favour the powerful. Today the mainstream speaks of “market failures”, as though for the most part markets succeed. But what is the measure of their success? It surely cannot be distributive justice unless radical inequality can be made consistent with justice. Nor can it be environmental sustainability or human health.”

Robert Albritton in "Let Them Eat Junk: How Capitalism Creates Hunger and Obesity".

Quote of the day: Rudolf Rocker.

“Only freedom can inspire men to great things and bring about social and political transformations. The art of ruling men has never been the art of educating men and inspiring them to a new shaping of their lives.”

Quote of the day: Robert O. Paxton on Fascism

Fascism, according to Paxton, is "A form of political behaviour marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion."

Robert O. Paxton: "The Anatomy of Fascism" 2004.

Dagens Citat: Martin Luther King Jr.

Martin Luther King Jr. on the purpose of education:

"It seems to me that education has a two-fold function to perform in the life of man and in society: the one is utility and the other is culture. Education must enable a man to become more efficient, to achieve with increasing facility the legitimate goals of his life.

Education must also train one for quick, resolute and effective thinking. To think incisively and to think for one's self is very difficult. We are prone to let our mental life become invaded by legions of half truths, prejudices, and propaganda. At this point, I often wonder whether or not education is fulfilling its purpose. A great majority of the so-called educated people do not think logically and scientifically. Even the press, the classroom, the platform, and the pulpit in many instances do not give us objective and unbiased truths. To save man from the morass of propaganda, in my opinion, is one of the chief aims of education. Education must enable one to sift and weigh evidence, to discern the true from the false, the real from the unreal, and the facts from the fiction.

The function of education, therefore, is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. But education which stops with efficiency may prove the greatest menace to society. The most dangerous criminal may be the man gifted with reason, but with no morals."

From the speech "The Purpose of Education" by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Dagens Citat: John Stuart Mill.

"If all mankind minus one were of one opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind." ~John Stuart Mill, On Liberty, 1859

Dagens Citat: Martin Luther King jr.

"I mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives, but I will not rejoice the death of one, not even an enemy. Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness, only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that."

Dagens Citat: David Letterman

"So now the CIA is arming the Libyan rebels. Great! You know what that means? In 10 years we'll be fighting them."

Dagens Citat: Oscar Wilde.

»Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their life a mimicry, their passions a quotation.«

- Oscar Wilde, DE PROFUNDIS, 1897.

Dagens Citat: Otto von Bismarck.

"People never lie so much as after a hunt, during a war or before an election."

- Otto von Bismarck.