Sonali's Subversive Thoughts for the Day:

Click here for 2005 Current Subversive Thoughts
Click here for 2003 Archived Subversive Thoughts
Click here for 2004 Archived Subversive Thoughts


December 22, 2003
While I don’t agree with Salman Rushdie’s apologies for Bush’s wars, I want to quote him on the topic of immigration when he said, "The immigrant is not simply transformed. He also transforms his new world." from World Press Review, May 2000

December 19, 2003
Robert Thouless said: "A really educated democracy, distrustful of emotional phraseology and all the rest of the stock in trade of the exploiters of crooked thinking, devoid of reverence for ancient institutions and ancient ways of thinking, could take conscious control of our social development and could destroy these plagues of our civilizations--war, poverty, and crime-- if it were determined that nothing should stand in the way of their removal-- no old traditions and none of the ancient privileges which are called "rights" by their holders. That would be a beneficient revolution which we can have if we are willing to trust our own intelligences sufficiently boldly and if we want it badly enough. But the revolution must start in our own minds."

Source: How To Think Straight, Simon and Schuster, New York, 1939

December 18, 2003
Bertrand Russell once said "Facts are not ethical principles, but they tend to form or revise our moral i ideas by making it harder to believe nonsense."

December 17, 2003
Lewis Thomas once said "We pass the word around; we ponder how the case is put by different people; we read the poetry; we meditate over the literature; we play the music; we change our minds; we reach an understanding. Society evolves this way, not by shouting each other down, but by the unique capacity of unique, individual human beings to comprehend each other."

December 16, 2003
Lewis Thomas once said "We pass the word around; we ponder how the case is put by different people; we read the poetry; we meditate over the literature; we play the music; we change our minds; we reach an understanding. Society evolves this way, not by shouting each other down, but by the unique capacity of unique, individual human beings to comprehend each other."

December 15, 2003
Noam Chomsky once said "Any dictator would admire the uniformity and obedience of the [U.S.] media."

December 12, 2003
Albert Borgmann once said "Why are we so zealous, then, about the private sector? We persist in designating a large part of the economy as private so that we can disavow public responsibility for its evils and claim individual merit for its blessings. As a civic body, we are reluctant to countenance and cure the deprivations of the poor, the damage to the environment, and the trivialization of culture that are the depressing concomitants of our advanced industrial economy. At the same time applauding the rich and powerful who claim their privileges as the fruits of their rugged and individual efforts, we sanction our positions and our aspirations."

December 11, 2003
In a response to the Los Angeles Business Journal on the topic of Amnesty for undocumented workers in 2001, Fernando Guerra said: "any society that utilizes the labor, skills and creativity of a population and then refuses to give them legal standing, which leads to a greater quality of life, seems to be an unjust society."

December 10, 2003
Ani Difranco once said, "...the mainstream is so polluted with lies, once you are wet it's so hard to get dry, we are all taught, how to justify, history, as it passes by..."

Source: Roll With It, from the album Like I Said

December 8, 2003

David Edwards
It has become clear that the US and UK governments represent no one, that they are trying to plunge the world into the same cycle of violence and revenge, hatred and despair that cursed the twentieth century. But vast numbers of people around the world are unwilling to accept this lunatic course of action. There is an understanding that September 11 had causes - causes very much like the actions intended by Bush and Blair now. There is a sense that terrorism is the product, not simply of a world of crazed fanatics who enjoy killing, but of a world of injustice and pain - the solution to injustice and pain being not yet more injustice and pain.
Source: Civil Disobedience, 2/26/03

December 5, 2003
James Baldwin said in his Collected Essays (republished in 1998): "The civilized have created the wretched, quite coldly and deliberately, and do not intend to change the status quo; are responsible for their slaughter and enslavement; rain down bombs on defenseless children whenever and wherever they decide that their "vital interests" are menaced, and think nothing of torturing a man to death: these people are not to be taken seriously when they speak of the "sanctity" of human life, or the "conscience" of the civilized world."

December 4, 2003
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. once said "Peace is not simply the absence of conflict, but the existence of justice for all people."

December 3, 2003
Mother Jones once said, "I know there are no limits to which the powers of privilege will not go to keep the workers in slavery". A natural outcome of any top-down hierarchical power structure is worker abuse, whether that structure is within a profit-driven corporate framework like Walmart, or a non-profit top-down structure like Pacifica.

December 2, 2003
Paul Goodman in the New York Review of Books, wrote a pledge for science students. Here is an excerpt: "As students of science, we see our situation and responsibilities at present as follows: There can be no limitation on science as an exploration of unknown nature. Science is an autonomous value of adventurous humanity. Of course, since there are other autonomous values, the adventure of science may sometimes be tragic, there may be conflict. But we can hope to lessen this conflict if we bear in mind our scientific and ethical responsibilities. First our scientific responsibilities. It is our tradition that research findings must be made public and replicable. Secrecy is unacceptable. In the United States, 86 percent of Federal R & D is under military auspices. Presumably other Great Powers are also out of line. Scientists must resist this nationally and internationally--.Since in the modern era scientific technology has profound and potentially and actually destructive effects on the environment, human scale, the quality of life, and human freedom, scientists have to take responsibility for the technological applications that they make possible."

December 1, 2003
On January 31st 2000, the pro-death penalty Republican governor of Illinois, declared a moratorium on carrying out the death penalty. He said: "I now favor a moratorium because I have grave concerns about our state’s shameful record of convicting innocent people and putting them on Death Row--. I cannot support a system which, in its administration, has proven so fraught with error and has come so close to the ultimate nightmare, the state’s taking of innocent life -- Until I can be sure that everyone sentenced to death in Illinois is truly guilty, until I can be sure with moral certainty that no innocent man or woman is facing lethal injection, no one will meet that fate--"

November 28, 2003
You heard the story of how the US entered World War II through North Africa, from the perspective of historian Rick Atkinson. Today we’ll hear the words of political prisoner and award winning journalist, Mumia Abu Jamal on the status of the US Empire currently. For more information, visit www.prisonradio.org

November 27, 2003
Albert Einstein
... wisdom is not a product of schooling but of the lifelong attempt to acquire it.

November 26, 2003
Josephine Baker once said: "Surely the day will come when color means nothing more than the skin tone, when religion is seen uniquely as a way to speak one's soul; when birth places have the weight of a throw of the dice and all men are born free, when understanding breeds love and brotherhood."

November 25, 2003
Hugo Black
A union of government and religion tends to destroy government and degrade religion.

November 24, 2003
Rene Descartes once said "If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things."

November 21, 2003
Noam Chomsky once said: The mass media reflect the distribution of power: everyone who has twenty million dollars is free to open a newspaper, and one knows what this means. Since they reflect the actual distribution of power, not the ideal one, they actually reflect only a very narrow band in the spectrum of possible opinion.

November 20, 2003
Ali Tonak from his latest Wiretap Magazine article: "This past October in Bolivia, a huge revolt led by indigenous and working people ousted the president Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada (Goni) because of his insistence in implementing neo-liberal policies. He fled with his family, interior circle of ministers (including the minister of defense who undoubtedly would have been held accountable for the 80 civilian deaths that had occurred in the past month during protests) and $85 million from the National Bank. His current location is particularly significant because it is none other than the city of Miami... and while Goni might be safe in Florida, his ideals, embodied in the FTAA, are not."

November 18, 2003
Bertrand Russell once said: "It is in the nature of imperialism that citizens of the imperial power are always among the last to know--or care--about circumstances in the colonies."

November 17, 2003
Joe Hill
If the workers took a notion they could stop all speeding trains; every ship upon the ocean they can tie with mighty chains. Every wheel in the creation every mine and every mill; fleets and armies of the nation, will at their command stand still

November 14, 2003
Octavio Paz said in the "Labyrinth of Solitude", "History has the cruel reality of a nightmare, and the grandeur of man consists in his making beautiful and lasting works out of the real substance of that nightmare. Or, to put it another way, it consists in transforming that nightmare into vision; in freeing ourselves from the shapeless horror of reality-if only for an instant-by means of creation."

November 13, 2003
In Chapter 6 of Moore’s book entitled "How to Talk to Your Conservative Brother-in-law", he says: "Admit that the left has made mistakes. Ouch. This is a tough one. I know, screw them, we’re not the ones who need to confess! But if you admit that, on occasion, you have been wrong, it’s easier for the other person to consider what they have been wrong about, too. It also makes you appear more human and less of a jerk."

November 12, 2003
W.A. Duncan once said: "Business knows no pity, and cares for justice only when justice is seen to be better policy. If it had power to control the elements, it would grasp in its iron clutches the waters, sunshine and air and resell them by measure, and at exorbitant prices to the millions of famished men, women and children".

November 11, 2003
Howard Zinn from his book, Terrorism and War, in response to a question comparing WW II and Pearl Harbor: History is abused when you create an analogy that will immediately put people on your side without thinking about it carefully. You say, "September 11 is like Pearl Harbor. Since we went to war over Pearl Harbor, now we’ve got to go to war". Well, is this really like Pearl Harbor? Is there an indentifiable nation out there that has attacked us, and that, if attacked in response, will therefore stop attacking us? Is there a nation out there that is expanding its power like Hitler expanding his power in Europe?" We leave the answer to that question to our listeners.

November 10, 2003
Richard Schickel
The current moguls understand that true media power lies not in firing up our outrage, as Hearst did, but in befuddling it or tranquilizing it with new toys. The idea is to render us passive so that they can exercise their power to sell us a bunch of stuff we mostly don't need and mostly don't want.

Source: Brill's Content, July/August 2000, p. 122 Richard Schickel reviews movies for Time magazine.

November 7, 2003
Sonali is traveling to Madison, Wisconsin for a conference. There is no Subversive thought today.

November 6, 2003
Sonali is traveling to Madison, Wisconsin for a conference. There is no Subversive thought today.

November 5, 2003
Richard Erdoes and Alfonso Ortiz said in their book American Indian Myths and Legends: "Most industrialized people, eyes ever on the clock, fragmented by the pressing problems of a split-second society, have little time or inclination, it seems, to speculate on the communal nature of the universe".

November 4, 2003
George Kennan
We have 50 per cent of the world's wealth, but only 6.3 per cent of its population. In this situation, our real job in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships which permit us to maintain this position of disparity. To do so, we have to dispense with all sentimentality . . . we should cease thinking about human rights, the raising of living standards and democratisation.
George Kennan, US Cold War Planner, 1948 (Source: "Hidden Agendas" by John Pilger )

November 3, 2003
The Spanish anarchist, Buenaventura Durruti once said: "We have always lived in slums and holes in the wall. We will know how to accommodate ourselves for a time. For, you must not forget, that we can also build palaces and cities, here in Spain and in America and everywhere. We, the workers. We can build others to take their place. And better ones. We are not in the least bit afraid of ruins. We are going to inherit the earth. There is not the slightest doubt about that. The bourgeoisie might blast and ruin its own world before it leaves the stage of history. We carry a new world here, in our hearts. That world is growing in this minute."

October 20, 2003
On the 27th of February, 2003, Bill O’Reilly admitted he made a mistake. "I made a mistake yesterday. Can you believe it? I was wrong when I said that Americans who continue demonstrating against the war once the shooting begins are being un-American. I’m taking that back--. People who lawfully dissent should never be labeled un-American. Instead I will call those who publicly criticize our country in a time of military crisis, which is this: ‘bad Americans’." -- From "The O’Really Factor: Unspinning Fox News Channel’s Bill O’Reilly" by Peter Hart and Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting.

October 17, 2003
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi
My notion of democracy is that under it the weakest shall have the same opportunities as the strongest. . .no country in the world today shows any but patronizing regard for the weak. . .Western democracy, as it functions today, is diluted fascism. . true democracy cannot be worked by twenty men sitting at the center. It has to be worked from below, by the people of every village.

October 16, 2003
Lois Wyse
Men are taught to apologize for their weaknesses, women for their strengths.

October 15, 2003
James Petras
Cultural imperialism emphasizes the segmentation of the working class: stable workers are encouraged to dissociate themselves from temporary workers, who in turn separate themselves from the unemployed, who are further segmented among themselves within the "underground economy." Cultural imperialism encourages working people to think of themselves as part of a hierarchy emphasizing minute differences in life style, in race and gender, with those below them rather than the vast inequalities that separate them from those above.

October 13, 2003
Eric Hobsbawm

In the course of the century, the burden of war shifted increasingly from armed forces to civilians, who were not only its victims, but increasingly the object of military or military-political operations. The contrast between the first world war and the second is dramatic: only 5% of those who died in the first were civilians; in the second, the figure increased to 66%. It is generally supposed that 80 to 90% of those affected by war today are civilians. The proportion has increased since the end of the cold war because most military operations since then have been conducted not by conscript armies, but by small bodies of regular or irregular troops, in many cases operating high-technology weapons and protected against the risk of incurring casualties. There is no reason to doubt that the main victims of war will continue to be civilians.

Source: London Review of Books

October 10, 2003
"America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between--Perhaps, after all, America never has been discovered. I myself would say that it has merely been detected. .. Of course America had often been discovered before Columbus, but it had always been hushed up." -- Oscar Wilde

October 9, 2003
Gabriel Kolko
The more ambitious wars are, the greater the likelihood that they will go awry. Wars usually become nightmares that last far longer than expected, and their ultimate consequences can rarely be predicted. These monumental legacies of failure have shaped the past century profoundly and have altered decisively the existences of countless millions: destroyed their lives, driven them into exile, or traumatized what might have been the joys and cares of normal existence--Empires have risen, but they have also fallen. The strongest argument against one nation interfering with another does not have to be deduced from any doctrine, moral or otherwise: it is found by looking honestly at the history of past centuries.

Source: "Another Century of War?" Page 86

October 8, 2003
Otto Von Bismarck once said "People never lie so much as after a hunt, during a war, or before an election."

October 7, 2003
The Weekly World News some weeks ago had the one and only story on Arnold Schwarzenegger in this whole election campaign entitled "Alien Backs Arnold for Governor". Uprising brings you this exclusive interview today with Mr. Alien, who also lent his otherworldly support for GW Bush during his presidential campaign.

Sonali: Welcome to Uprising, and joining me all the way from Mars calling from the southern martian canels, the very alien who backs Arnold for Governor of California. Thanks for joining us. Why don't you begin by telling us exactly why you support Schwarzenegger for Governor.

Alien: Well, first of all, I see a real man in Schwarzenegger. Not like the other sniveling candidates in this race, who think that groping women is a BAD thing! On my planet, grabbing a female's sexual extremities is a complement second only to dunking her in a bowl of water. When I heard that Schwarzenegger has been practicing groping for decades, I thought, well here's a man who speaks my language!

Sonali: Okay. Well what do you think of his policies on the economy?

Alien: The economy! I believe that the economy is far too important to actually talk about. Arnold says that cutting taxes is good, because taxes are bad and cutting spending is good, because it is, so kill them all.

Sonali: But, if you cut taxes and spending, what will happen to essential social services which are tax funded, like welfare, education, healthcare, and more?

Alien: Hey, on my planet, we just let the rich buy everything for themselves. everyone on Mars is rich anyway, unless their not, and then they just live underground, and well, they don't count anyway. It
strengthens our race! Arnold's my kind of alien, er, human!

Sonali: Okay, since you're so interested in aliens, Mr Alien, what about the fact that Arnold is opposing drivers licenses for undocumented workers, or as others call them, illegal aliens?

Alien: Those illegal aliens, they are driving everyone crazy, so why would we want to give them licences, see, license to drive us crazy? That's crazy! How could we dis our fellow aliens? I found out that all the
aliens he is against are darker shades of brown! They're not really alien!

Sonali: Okay, I'm a little confused but let's move on. Arnold has said that he expressed admiration for Hitler, Kurt Waldheim and other Nazis. I don't know if you know the gravity of such things on your planet, but .

Alien: Hey, didn't you know that Hitler was an alien too? Vote for Arnold. We saved, er, abducted Adolf and replaced his body with a robot at the end of WWII, he lives with us here, and people think that most Nazis went to South America, really they came here.

Sonali: Okay, let's try another approach. Don't you think it's a little unfair to the other candidates that the corporate media have been bombarding us with images of Arnold, major talk shows have featured him by
himself, cable TV networks have been running his movies continuously and even the tabloid newspapers like the Weekly World News that broke the story of your backing Arnold have run only positive features on him!

Alien: Yes well, that's what electing leaders is all about! If you can convince the people that they should vote against themselves and their own self interest then you know you're winning. We adbucted Gray Davis a long way back replaced his brain with a republican brain--he will vote for Arnold too, because he’s in our pocket [alt offensive comedy-central style version: because he's our bitch]. All real aliens vote for Arnold. Even Davis wishes he had big muscles like Arnold.

Sonali: What about Arriana Huffington, is she an alien too?

Alien: No, she wouldn't let us grope her. Arnold is going to clean up house with his broom. Arnold spends over 300,000 dollars a year on domestic help, so he obviously knows a lot about cleaning.

Sonali: Ah well, I want to thank you very much for joining us Mr. Alien--

October 6, 2003
I shudder as I read this. And that is my subversive thought. Go forth and vote. Schwarzenegger was quoted in Associated Press this September about how people don’t deserve the details of his campaign: "The mass [sic] wants to hear one thing and wants to see one thing: Do I trust this guy? Does he have answers? How does he handle himself with the media? How does he handle himself out there? And this is someone that I can rally behind him and say, yes I want to go with this guy, he's bringing me hope. And that's what I want to bring to the table here, not the details. ... " (AP, 09/04).

October 3, 2003
Confucius
By nature, men are nearly alike; by practice, they get to be wide apart.

Source: The Confucian Analects

October 2, 2003
Josef Stalin
The people who vote decide nothing. The people who count the vote decide everything.
Disclaimer: this may not be true.

October 1, 2003
Tim Wise
-- few whites have ever thought of our position as resulting from racial preferences. Indeed, we pride ourselves on our hard work and ambition, as if somehow we invented the concepts. As if we have worked harder than the folks who were forced to pick cotton and build levies for free; harder than the Latino immigrants who spend 10 hours a day in fields picking strawberries or tomatoes; harder than the (mostly) women of color who clean hotel rooms or change bedpans in hospitals, or the (mostly) men of color who collect our garbage. We strike the pose of self-sufficiency while ignoring the advantages we have been afforded in every realm of activity: housing, education, employment, criminal justice, politics, banking and business. We ignore the fact that at almost every turn, our hard work has been met with access to an opportunity structure denied to millions of others. Privilege, to us, is like water to the fish: invisible precisely because we cannot imagine life without it.

Source: Whites Swim in Racial Preference, 2/23/03

September 30, 2003
In Los Angeles County between 1981 and 1992, a child between five and nine was slain, on average, every eight and a half days. [Los Angeles Department of Health Services]. This war is an old one, and yet education cuts today will number in the billions of dollars. How far will this war escalate before politicians prioritize our youth over wars abroad?

September 29, 2003
Noam Chomsky once said, "In the US...it was necessary to find some justification for eliminating the indigenous population and running the economy on slavery -- And the only way to justify having your boot on someone's neck is that you are uniquely magnificent and they are uniquely awful. A leading source of racism, which persist to the present moment, so deeply entrenched in the culture -- of the West generally -- that it is far beyond consciousness and can barely be understood by properly educated people when it is pointed out."

September 26, 2003
The late Professor Edward Said, a quote from his Nation Magazine article, "The Public Role of Writers and Intellectuals", published this September 11th. "The intellectual's role generally is to uncover and elucidate the contest, to challenge and defeat both an imposed silence and the normalized quiet of unseen power, wherever and whenever possible. For there is a social and intellectual equivalence between this mass of overbearing collective interests and the discourse used to justify, disguise or mystify its workings while at the same time preventing objections or challenges to it."

September 25, 2003
The English historian and philosopher, Arnold Toynbee once said "Great empires do not die by murder, but suicide."

September 24, 2003
Propaganda in a democracy establishes truth in the sense that it creates "true believers" who are as ideologically committed to the democratic progress as others are ideologically committed to its control. The perpetuation of democratic ideals and beliefs in the face of concentrated power in propaganda institutions (media, political institutions) is a triumph of propaganda in modern American society. -- Nancy Snow in "Ten Things Everyone should know about propaganda".

September 18, 2003
Bush Resignation Hailed by World Leaders
Thursday, September 11, 2003

[Washington] The surprise resignation of the forty-third President of the United States, George W. Bush, on the second anniversary of the terrorist attack on America, was hailed by chiefs of state throughout the world. Mr. Bush announced that after, "two years of bloodshed, economic devastation, and spreading fear in America and abroad," he saw no choice but to accept that, "I have held a title which I did not win, and for which I have proven unqualified."

The text of the former President's September 11 address to the nation follows:

"My fellow Americans:

I come to you tonight with a heavy heart. Two years ago today, thousands of innocent Americans were murdered by terrorist maniacs.

In the script I've been handed, I'm now supposed to tell you that America is safer today, and that the world is kinder and nicer and happier, because of I'm such a brilliant general in the War on Terror.

But who are we kidding? Yesterday, Osama released his new hit video. The terrorists are having a picnic ever since I turned over our foreign policy to Saudi Arabia and Exxon-Mobil.

And here's the point in my speech where my handlers would have me tell you about how I've been praying hard, making it sound like I just got off the phone with the Lord. I don't know about you, but I find it pretty darn offensive, downright blasphemous, to drag the Lord's name into every cheap campaign speech and chest-pounding war threat. Osama says he talks to God too. Let's leave Him out of the politics from now on, OK?

Look, in my speech this past Sunday, I used the word "democracy" about 11 times when talking about Iraq. It's democracy Florida-style, I suppose. Except we're not fixing the vote this time -- we aren't letting these people vote at all. "Iraqis aren't prepared for democracy." That's what Dick Cheney and Saddam Hussein told me.

So we're blowing 100 billion bucks we don't have to colonize a country we don't want. Rummy tries to explain it to me each morning -- oil this and oil that -- but I just don't see it. And one of our kids dying there every day - where are their parents, anyway? My dad didn't let that happen - he got me out of the service. Didn't I look neat in that fly-boy suit?
And, let me tell you, I just looked at our nation's piggy bank. Uh-oh.

When I arrived, the last guy left me $4 trillion and said, "Be careful with all that cash in this neighborhood." Well, I have to level with you, America: it's all gone. The cupboard's bare and this year alone we blew half a trillion more dollars than we have in our bank account. Man, I can't believe I went through all that dough stone sober.

And what did we get for it? A Fatherland Security Department that's trying to read the labels on everyone's underpants. Think about it, all this Total Information Awareness KGB stuff: two years ago Americans were the victims - but my government has made Americans the suspects. I don't know about you, but this guy Ashcroft scares the bejeezus out of me.

And today I'm told that over nine million Americans are out of work. That's not so bad: I haven't done much work in my lifetime either. But my mama explained to me that not everyone's daddy can lend them an oil well to tide them over.

It's like I can't get anything right. The lights are going out in Ohio and the North Pole is melting. I don't get it. I appointed all those regulators that Ken Lay told me to, and I got rid of all the rules that got in the way of patriotic Polluter-Americans --. and what's the upshot? America the Beautiful is looking like she's had a pretty rough night. Won't be long before the whole country smells like Houston.

And now the stock market's floating face down in the swimming pool - despite everything I've done for those guys on Wall Street. Even my plan to give every millionaire an extra million seems to have backfired. Greenspam says I've created "business risk." Says I spook investors. But when I asked Greenspam for a solution, all he did was hand me a bag of pretzels.

Hey, I can take a hint. OK, I'm over my head on this one. I look back over these last years, and what have I got to show you for it: two years of bloodshed, economic devastation, and spreading fear in America and abroad.

When I ran for this office, I said the issue was, "character." And just look at the characters around me. I've gotten all their resignations today. And while I've got some character left, here's my own good-bye note too. Let's face it: I have held a title which I did not win, and for which I have proven unqualified. You know it. And I know it.

It's at this point in the speech where I'm supposed to say, "And may God bless America." God better, because Dick Cheney won't. Don't panic: I'm not turning over this sacred office to Mr. Contracts-R-Us.

Instead, I've petitioned the United States Supreme Court to pick a President for us. Those guys picked the last one, why not the next one?

And so, my fellow Americans, you can take this job and --."
Here, Mr. Bush's words became unintelligible. As usual.

September 17, 2003
Bertrand Russell once said "What a man believes upon grossly insufficient evidence is an index into his desires -- desires of which he himself is often unconscious. If a man is offered a fact which goes against his instincts, he will scrutinize it closely, and unless the evidence is overwhelming, he will refuse to believe it. If, on the other hand, he is offered something which affords a reason for acting in accordance to his instincts, he will accept it even on the slightest evidence."


September 16, 2003
Charles Darwin, once said "If the misery of our poor be caused not by the laws of nature, but by our institutions, great is our sin." The Greek Social Reformer Vassilis Epaminondou said, "To the fervent proponents of ruthless corporate capitalism I say: make a millionaire CEO live as a poor sweatshop worker in Indonesia for one month and then ask him about the merits of the world economic system... "

September 15, 2003
Mark Tran, writing for the Guardian newspaper in London says in today’s article called "The Cost of Failure":

The race is now on for the major powers, the US, the EU and Japan, to try and unpick that alliance [of G 21 developing nations] through regional and bilateral trade deals. The US already has one free trade agreement (FTA) signed and sealed in Asia - with Singapore - and a second, with Australia, is due by the end of the year.

These free trade agreements will have as much to do with politics as economics. Singapore, which backed Washington on Iraq, saw its FTA signed in May while Chile, which was opposed to war, was made to wait.

Robert Zoellick, the US trade representative, has said it was unlikely that New Zealand, which did not support the war, would be granted a FTA. Mr Zoellick has already made it clear that FTAs will be used as a way of rewarding friends.

"It's the case where clearly on the non-economic side it helps to have a positive and friendly relationship," he said.

Sounds like nothing more than blackmail--.

September 11, 2003
The words of 16 year old Lana Stacy of Yucaipa High School. Lana will be refusing to stand up alongside her fellow students today, during the pledge of allegiance. She wrote the following statement in protest:

"On this day, September 11, 2003, I refuse to stand up and salute the flag of the United States of America because I can no longer pledge allegiance to a government

--that invades and occupies other nations unprovoked, on false pretenses, and against the will of the people,

--that declares global war against terrorism while harboring enough nuclear weapons to kill every person on earth 3 times over,

--that consistently promotes policies which inhance the profits of a few while failing to protect the environmental resources necessary for my survival and the sustainability of the entire planet.

On this day, while my classmates all stand to pledge their allegiance to this country, I exercise my liberty, to sit in silent protest to say that ours is but one nation among many, that it is very close to being divisable by greed, and that revenge will never lead to justice for all."

September 10, 2003
"The higher animals engage in individual fights, but never in organized masses. Man is the only animal that deals in that atrocity of atrocities, war. He is the only one that gathers his brethren about him and goes forth in cold blood and with calm pulse to exterminate his kind". -- Mark Twain, Letters from the Earth. Thanks to our listener, Elizabeth Bryer for the quote.

September 9, 2003
Wendell Berry once said "There is clearly too narrow a limit on how much money can be made from health, but the profitability of disease--especially disease of spirit or character--has so far, for profiteers, no visible limit."

Source: Wendell Berry, The Gift of Good Land: Further Essays Cultural and Agricultural (San Francisco: North Point Press, 1981) 156-57.

September 8, 2003
Yesterday as President Bush asked for $87 billion dollars to continue to fund the US occupation in Iraq, he lauded the increasingly frustrated US troops who are serving there and read a letter from what he called the "front lines of freedom". In the letter, the soldier apparently wrote about "his pride in serving a just cause, and about the deep desire of Iraqis for liberty. "I see it," he said, "in the eyes of a hungry people every day here. They are starved for freedom and opportunity." Bush read this as part of his speech yesterday. Well today we bring you an alternative viewpoint from the "front lines of freedom". Tim Predmore is on active duty with the 101st Airborne Division near Mosul, Iraq. He has been in Iraq since March and in the military for about five years and on August 24th, the Peoria Journal Star, the newspaper from his home town in Illinois, published an editorial by him entitled "A U.S. soldier in Iraq wonders: 'How many more must die?' For today’s subversive thought for the day, I want to present the words of Tim Predmore, we were unable to reach him by phone -- so with the help of KPFK’s Rick Alan, we recorded his editorial and I added a few choice words from US heads of state for illustration. The music is by Live from their Secret Samadhi album.

September 5, 2003
Arnold Schwarznegger was quoted in Wendy Leigh’s book, "Arnold: An Unauthorized Biography", on Page 41: "I wanted to be part of the small percentage of people who were leaders, not the large mass of followers. I think it was because I saw that leaders use 100% of their potential .. I was always fascinated by people in control of other people". Additionally, Christopher Ward of the Daily Mirror, interviewed Schwarznegger on March 8th 1968. At the end of the article, Arnold was quoted as saying, "I hope you are not going to go away and write that I am, how do you say, all brain and no brawns?". Ward replied, "All brawn and no brains is what you mean". "Ah," said Arnold. "You’re very kind." Source: Arnold: An Unauthorized Biography, by Wendy Leigh.

September 4, 2003
Aristotle once said: "If liberty and equality, as is thought by some, are chiefly to be found in democracy, they will be best attained when all persons alike share in the government to the utmost."

August 18, 2003
Robert Fisk once said, "In the United States, the Bush administration is busy terrorising Americans. There will be nuclear attacks, bombs in high-rise apartment blocks, on the Brooklyn bridge, men with exploding belts -- note how carefully the ruthless Palestinian war against Israeli colonisation of the West Bank is being strapped to America's ever weirder "war on terror" -- and yet more aircraft suiciders. If you read the words of President Bush, Vice-President Dick Cheney and the ridiculous national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice --you'll find they've issued more threats against Americans than Mr bin Laden." UK Independent, May 25, 2002

August 14, 2003
"Easy as Pie" by David Budbill, poet and buddhist from Vermont.

The Emperor divides the world into 2 parts: the good and the evil
If you don’t accept that, the emperor says you are evil
The emperor declares himself and his friends good
The emperor says as soon as good has destroyed evil, all will be good
Simple as 1-2-3, clear as night and day, different as black and white,
Easy as pie.

August 13, 2003
Paula Allen said "Being an activist means being aware of what's happening around you as well as being in touch with your feelings about it -- your rage, your sadness, your excitement, your curiosity, your feeling of helplessnes, and your refusal to surrender. Being an activist means owning your desire."

Source: from "An Activist Love Story" by Paula Allen and Eve Ensler, in The Feminist Memoir Project

August 12, 2003
On this 54th anniversary of the Geneva Conventions, we bring you a commentary by political prisoner Mumia Abu Jamal, on the thwarting of international law by empire. It is entitled "Above all Laws". For more information, visit www.prisonradio.org

August 11, 2003
In 1920, the year after the Palmer raids, there were mass arrests of "undesirables" in nearly all the major cities in the US; New York and Chicago, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Buffalo and St. Louis. Many of the arrests occurred in the middle of the night, with suspects being led from their homes in chains. According to a contemporary report by a Judge Anderson: "Pains were taken to give spectacular publicity to the raids, and to make it appear that there was great and imminent public danger against which these activities of the Department of Justice were directed. The arrested aliens -- in most instances perfectly quiet and harmless working people -- were handcuffed in pairs, and then for the purposes of transfer on trains and through the streets of Boston, chained together." That was Judge Anderson in New England complaining to the Justice Department.

August 8, 2003
Peter Townshend once said ""Poverty is not something people impose on themselves for want of effort and community organisation. It is constructed by divisive and discriminatory laws, inflexible organisations, acquisitive ideologies of wealth, a deeply rooted class system and policies which serve privilege in the short term and destroy society in the long term."
Source: The New Statesmand and Society, September 20, 1996

August 7, 2003
"I may be paralyzed ... but not from the neck up, like Gray Davis."
Larry Flynt, Hustler magazine publisher and candidate for the governorship of California

August 6, 2003
"In his first speech to the US public about the bombing of Hiroshima, which he delivered on August 9, 1945, the day the atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, Harry Truman reported: "The world will note that the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, a military base. That was because we wished in this first attack to avoid, insofar as possible, the killing of civilians." While Hiroshima did have a military base in the city, it was not the base that was targeted, but the center of the city. The vast majority of the victims in Hiroshima were ordinary civilians, including large numbers of women and children. -- By the end of 1945, some 145,000 people had died in Hiroshima, and some 75,000 people had died in Nagasaki. Tens of thousands more suffered serious injuries. Deaths among survivors of the bombings have continued over the years due primarily to the effects of radiation poisoning." - "Remembering Hiroshima and Nagasaki", David Krieger.

August 5, 2003
Graduates of the School of the Americas assassinated Archbishop Oscar Romero, and participated in the the torture of countless people throughout Central and South America -- if this isn’t a terrorist training camp, what is?

August 4, 2003
Robert Fisk, correspondent for the Independent, UK, in his latest article entitled, "Civil War" said: "For what is happening, in the Sunni heartland around Baghdad and now in the burgeoning Shia nation to the south, is not just the back-draft of an invasion or even a growing guerrilla war against occupation. It is the start of a civil war in Iraq that will consume the entire nation if its new rulers do not abandon their neo-conservative fantasies and implore the world to share the future of the country with them."