Quotes

"Don't talk to the relatives," the policeman said. "Both men were killed by the Americans. One worked in a factory and was caught in the open when the resistance fired at American soldiers. The Americans shot everyone they saw. The people are angry because you look like an American." But they all shook hands and stood in front of us with their heads bowed and asked why the tragedy of Iraq was growing worse. The cop wanted the last word. "Saddam brought us to this tragedy and the Americans used it," he said. "You want to know who is to blame? I say this: fuck Saddam and fuck the USA."
http://www.zmag.org

"The disaster in Iraq is rotting the Blairite establishment. Blair himself appears ever more removed from reality; his latest tomfoolery about the 'discovery' of 'a huge system of clandestine weapons laboratories', which even the American viceroy in Baghdad mocked, would be astonishing, were it not merely another of his vapid attempts to justify his crime against humanity. His crime, and George Bush's, is clearly defined as 'supreme' in the Nuremberg judgment."
"This is not to say the threat from al-Qaeda and other fanatical groups is not real; what the normalisers don't want you to know is that the most pervasive danger is posed by 'our' governments, whose subordinates in journalism and scholarship cast always as benign: capable of misjudgement and blunder, never of high crime. Fuelled by religious fanaticism, a corrupt Americanism and rampant corporate greed, the Bush cabal is pursuing what the military historian Anatol Lieven calls 'the classic modern strategy of an endangered right-wing oligarchy, which is to divert mass discontent into nationalism', inspired by fear of lethal threats. Bush's America, he warns, 'has become a menace to itself and to mankind'."
John Pilger

"The secret is the acceptance, often unconscious, of an imperial legacy: the unspoken rule of reporting whole societies in terms of their usefulness to western 'interests' and of minimising and obfuscating the culpability of 'our' crimes. 'What are "we" to do?' is the unerring media cry when it is rarely asked who 'we' are and what 'our' true agenda is, based on a history of conquest and violence. Liberal sensibilities may be offended, even shocked by modern imperial double standards, embodied in Blair; but the invisible boundaries of how they are reported are not in dispute. The trail of blood is seldom followed; the connections are not made; 'our' criminals, who kill and collude in killing large numbers of human beings at a safe distance, are not named, apart from an occasional token, like Kissinger."
John Pilger, March 2002

'Both are in no doubt that the strategy of basing their season on home-grown productions is at the heart of the fresh identity that they hope to pin on the two Liverpool theatres. "We've programmed largely, though not exclusively, on the basis of each theatre's distinctive character," says Gemma Bodinetz. "The Everyman will retain its reputation for new writing, and the bigger Playhouse will focus more on the classics."

'Danny Kushlick, director of drug policy think-tank Transform said: "The reclassification of cannabis has been horribly botched. Postcode policing of cannabis will continue as a result of the confusion caused by a Government that wants to appear tough by retaining arrestability while relaxing the penalties for possession at one and the same time."'
The Independent

'The change in policy comes just as evidence is surging in that cannabis is not a non-toxic "recreational" substance. Two years ago, when the pro-liberalisers were on the ascendancy, Professor Susan Greenfield, an esteemed expert on brain processes, warned that 50 per cent of young people attending psychiatric services were cannabis users, and that new scientific evidence was showing severe impairment in attention span and cognitive performance in regular cannabis users "even after the habit has been relinquished."'
Yasmin Alibhai-Brown - The Independent

'So why are children getting fatter? Certainly, they are being encouraged to eat and drink like never before. Three quarters of all children's television advertising is for food, and 95% of those adverts are for products which are high in fat, sugar or salt. The medical journal 'The Lancet' recently called for legislation banning the use of celebrities such as David Beckham and Paula Radcliffe in endorsing fatty, sugary food.'
Julia Stuart - The Guardian

Tolstoy's essay 'Why Do Men Stupefy Themselves' was written from the Russian point of view. He says "The cause of the worldwide consumption of hashish, opium, wine and tobacco, lies not in the taste nor in the pleasure, recreation or fun they afford, bur simply in man's need to hide from himself the demands of conscience…..for man is a spiritual as well as animal being. He may be moved by things that influence his spiritual nature, or by things that influence his animal nature."
Taken from 'A Dictionary of Idiocy' by Stephen Bayley