Dagens Citat: Derrick Jensen.

“In a finite world, every resource expended for one purpose is unavailable for any other purpose. If you eat a salmon, I cannot eat salmon. If one eats or otherwise kills all of the salmon, no one will ever eat salmon again. The same principle works in economics. Every dollar spent building a B-2 bomber is unavailable to pay for immunization and food that a child needs to survive. Every human-hour used is unavailable to rehabilitate damaged streams, to create music or poetry, to play with children, or to teach people to read. Every gigawatt of electricity consumed is unavailable to run hospitals or schools [..] Since no one in her right mind wishes to kill people by dropping bombs on them, the best any of us can sanely hope for is that every resource used in construction of these bombers will be wasted. The alternative is that the bombers will be used for their designated purpose, which is to destroy. What cultural rootstock would put its resources into yielding such fruits as this? What cultural consciousness would engender such choices?”

Derrick Jensen, The Culture of Make Believe, p. 365.

Dagens Citat: Hardt & Negri.

“The great modern works of political science all provide tools for transformation or overthrowing the ruling powers and liberating us from repression. Even Machiavelli's The Prince, which some read as a guidebook for nefarious rulers, is in fact a democratic pamphlet that puts the understanding of violence and the cunning of power in the service of republican intelligence. Today, however, the majority of political scientists are merely technicians working to resolve the quantitative problems of maintaining order, and the rest wander the corridors from their universities to the courts of power, attempting to get the ear of the sovereign and whisper advice. The paradigmatic figure of the political scientist has become the Geheimrat, the secret adviser of the sovereign.”

- Michael Hardt & Antonio Negri, Multitude p. 33.

Dagens Citat: Howard Zinn

“[Civil disobedience] is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience. Our problem is that numbers of people all over the world have obeyed the dictates of the leaders of their government and have gone to war, and millions have been killed because of this obedience … Our problem is that people are obedient all over the world in the face of poverty and starvation and stupidity, and war, and cruelty. Our problem is that people are obedient while the jails are full of petty thieves, and all the while the grand thieves are running the country. That's our problem.”

- Howard Zinn.

Dagens Citat: Henry David Thoreau

»When the subject has refused allegiance, and the officer has resigned his office, then the revolution is accomplished. But even suppose blood should flow. Is there not a sort of bloodshed when the conscience is wounded? Through this wound a man's real manhood and immortality flow out, and he bleeds to an everlasting death. I see this blood flowing now.«

- Henry David Thoreau Civil Disobedience (1849)

Dagens Citat: Umberto Eco

“Ur-Fascism is still around us, sometimes in plainclothes. It would be easier for us if there appeared on the world scene somebody saying, “I want to reopen Auschwitz. I want the blackshirts to parade again in the Italian squares.” Life is not that simple. Ur-fascism can come back under the most innocent of disguises. Our duty is to uncover it and to point our finger at any of its instances – everyday, in every part of the world.”

Umberto Eco, Eternal Fascism: The New Face of Power in America, New York Review of Books, November-December 1995, p 15.

Dagens Citat: Erich Fromm

“The failure of the great promise, aside from industrialism's essential economic contradictions, was built into the industrial system by its two main psychological premises: (1) that the aim of life is happiness, that is maximum pleasure, defined as the satisfaction of any desire or subjective need a person may feel (radical hedonism); (2) that egotism, selfishness, and greed, as the system needs to generate them in order to function, lead to harmony and peace.”

- Erich Fromm To Have or To Be (1976).

Dagens Citat: Henry Giroux.

“Jingoistic patriotism is now mobilized in the highest reaches of government, in the media, and throughout society, put on perpetual display through the rhetoric of celebrities, journalists, and nightly news anchors, and, relentlessly buttressed by the never-ending waving of flags – on cars, trucks, clothes, houses and the lapels of TV anchors – as well as through the use of mottoes, slogans, and songs. As a rhetorical ploy to silence dissent, patriotism is used to name as unpatriotic any attempt to make governmental power and authority accountable at home or to question how the appeal to nationalism is being used to legitimate the United States government's aspirations to empire-building overseas. This type of anti-liberal thinking is deeply distrustful of critical inquiry, mistakes meaningful dissent for treason, constructs politics on the moral absolutes of “us and them”, and views difference and democracy as threats to consensus and national identity. Such “patriotic” fervour fuels a system of militarized control that not only repudiates the authority of international law, but also relies on a notion of preventive war to project the fantasies of unbridled American power all over the globe.”

Henry Giroux: Against the New Authoritarianism: Politics after Abu Ghraib, Arbeiter Ring Publishing 2005, p. 41-42.

Dagens Citat: Albert Camus

“What better way to enslave a man than to give him the vote and tell him he’s free.”

-Albert Camus

Dagens Citat. Rune Engelbreth Larsen

"I stedet for klassiske liberale dyder om den enkeltes individualitet og integritet og menneskerettigheders værn om individet i kontrast til statsmagten og konforme massebevægelser, har vi fået Pinds håndsrækning til nationalprotestantismens mumificerede kulturchauvinisme som sindelagsdiktat. "

Dagens citat: C.S. Lewis.

"The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid "dens of crime" that Dickens loved to paint. It is not done even in concentration and labour camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered, moved, seconded, carried and minuted, in clean, carpeted, warmed and well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut finger nails and smooth shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voice. Hence, naturally enough, my symbol for Hell is something like the bureaucracy of a police state or the offices of a thoroughly nasty business concern."

Dagens citat: Geroge Kennan

“USA rummer 50 pct. af verdens rigdomme, men kun 6,3 pct. af dens befolkning. I den situation kan vi ikke undgå at være genstand for misundelse og vrede. Vor egentlige opgave i den kommende tid vil blive at udforme de relationer, der tillader os at bevare denne ulighed, uden at det sker på bekostning af vor nationale sikkerhed. I den hensigt må vi se bort fra al sentimentalitet og dagdrømmeri og over alt koncentrere vor opmærksomhed om vore umiddelbare nationale formål. Vi har ikke behov for at bilde os ind, at vi har råd til uegennytte og velgørenhed. Vi må holde op med at tale om så vage og urealistiske mål som menneskerettigheder, højnelse af levestandarden og demokratisering. Den dag er ikke langt borte, hvor vi må handle ud fra ren magtstrategi. Desto mindre vi hæmmes af idealistiske slagord, desto bedre.”

George Kennan (1948).

Dagens Citat: Aldous Huxley.

"At least two-thirds of our miseries spring from human stupidity, human malice and those great motivators and justifiers of malice and stupidity: idealism, dogmatism and proselytizing zeal on behalf of religous or political ideas."

Dagens Citat: Neil Postman.

"We were keeping our eye on 1984. When the year came and the prophecy didn't, thoughtful Americans sang softly in praise of themselves. The roots of liberal democracy had held. Wherever else the terror had happened, we, at least, had not been visited by Orwellian nightmares.

But we had forgotten that alongside Orwell's dark vision, there was another - slightly older, slightly less well known, equally chilling: Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. Contrary to common belief even among the educated, Huxley and Orwell did not prophesy the same thing. Orwell warns that we will be overcome by an externally imposed oppression. But in Huxley's vision, no Big Brother is required to deprive people of their autonomy, maturity and history. As he saw it, people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.

What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy. As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny "failed to take into account man's almost infinite appetite for distractions". In 1984, Huxley added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us."

Neil Postman i "Amusing Ourselves to Death".

Dagens citat: Voltaire.

"It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets."

Dagens citat: Stig Dalager.

Mens vækstkurven i nationaløkonomien er for nedadgående og hundredtusinder af husejere som teknisk insolvente sidder fanget i en gældsfælde oven på den overophedede økonomi under Fogh Rasmussens kortsigtede lederskab, er vækstkurven for skandalesager omkring den nedslidte regering for opadgående:

Lederen af Det Konservative Folkeparti, Lene Espersen, måtte gå af som følge af dårlige udenrigsministerielle prioriteringer og i bedste fald vildledende ministersvar i Folketinget; Lars Løkke Rasmussen har klare forklaringsproblemer omkring en sandsynlig overbetaling til private hospitaler; Bertel Haarder gik amok på en TVA-journalist, fordi han stiller et uskyldigt kritisk spørgsmål i forbindelse med Haarders embedsførelse; tidligere forsvarsminister Søren Gade forlod sin ministerpost i skyggen af flere lækagesager, og efter hans afgang anklages han af sin tidligere spindoktor for at have lækket statshemmeligheder om jægerkorpset; Henriette Kjær, der en gang tidligere måtte forlade en ministerpost på grund af ægtemandens økonomiske uregelmæssigheder, måtte trække sig som ordfører i Det Konservative Folkeparti på grund af angiveligt endnu flere af slagsen; tidligere videnskabsminister Helge Sander synes at være dybt involveret i den voksende skandale omkring hjerneforskeren Milena Penkowa – en skandale, der i sig selv er ved at blive et symptom på den elite- og konkurrencementalitet og den demokratisk udhulede ledelse af universiteterne, som regeringen har fremmet.

Fra kronikken "De trækker stikket til folkestyret ud"

Dagens Citat: Chris Hedges.

Empires communicate in two languages. One language is expressed in imperatives. It is the language of command and force. This militarized language disdains human life and celebrates hypermasculinity. It demands. It makes no attempt to justify the flagrant theft of natural resources and wealth or the use of indiscriminate violence. When families are gunned down at a checkpoint in Iraq they are referred to as having been “lit up.” So it goes. The other language of empire is softer. It employs the vocabulary of ideals and lofty goals and insists that the power of empire is noble and benevolent. The language of beneficence is used to speak to those outside the centers of death and pillage, those who have not yet been totally broken, those who still must be seduced to hand over power to predators. The road traveled to total disempowerment, however, ends at the same place. It is the language used to get there that is different.

Chris Hedges: Recognizing the Language of Tyranny.

Dagens citat: Sarah Palin

"Time is our most precious resource. How we choose to spend time I think is a reflection on what's most important to us. I am going to read my Bible every day. I am going to dig in there and seek God's wisdom and direction in every step that I take so I prioritize time to make sure that daily devotion is available."

Kilde.

Dagens citat: Tony Blair om Mubarak.

"Where you stand on him depends on whether you've worked with him from the outside or on the inside. I've worked with him on the Middle East peace process between the Israelis and the Palestinians so this is somebody I'm constantly in contact with and working with and on that issue, I have to say, he's been immensely courageous and a force for good"

Kilde.

Erich Fromm on doubt.

“To ‛doubt’ [..] does not imply a psychological state of inability to arrive at decisions or convictions, as is the case in obsessional doubt, but the readiness and capacity for crititical questioning of the assumptions and institutions which have become idols under the name of common sense, logic, and what is supposed to be ‛natural’. This radical questioning is possible only if one does not take the concepts of one's society or even of an entire historical period – like Western culture since the Renaissance - for granted, and furthermore if one enlarges the scope of one's awareness and penetrates into the unconscious aspects of one's thinking. Radical doubt is an act of uncovering and discovering; it is the dawning of the awareness that the Emperor is naked, and that his splendid garments are nothing but the product of one's fantasy.”

Erich Fromm i sit forord til Ivan Illich “Celebration of Awareness”.

Dagens Citat: Chris Hedges.

"Orwell warned of a world where books were banned. Huxley warned of a world where no one wanted to read books. Orwell warned of a state of permanent war and fear. Huxley warned of a culture diverted by mindless pleasure. Orwell warned of a state where every conversation and thought was monitored and dissent was brutally punished. Huxley warned of a state where a population, preoccupied by trivia and gossip, no longer cared about truth or information. Orwell saw us frightened into submission. Huxley saw us seduced into submission. But Huxley, we are discovering, was merely the prelude to Orwell. Huxley understood the process by which we would be complicit in our own enslavement. Orwell understood the enslavement. Now that the corporate coup is over, we stand naked and defenseless."

Kilde.