582 quotes found
"In a head-on clash between violence and power, the outcome is hardly in doubt. Nowhere is the self-defeating factor in the victory of violence over power more evident than in the use of terror to maintain domination, about whose weird successes and eventual failures we know perhaps more than any generation before us. Violence can destroy power; it is utterly incapable of creating it."
"Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. It is the only resort by which incompetent men can thrive. The bully, the brute, the dictator."
"The "hard law of value," the "law set in stone"—when it abandons us, what sadness, what panic! This is why there are still good days left to fascist and authoritarian methods, because they revive something of the violence necessary to life—whether suffered or inflicted. The violence of ritual, the violence of work, the violence of knowledge, the violence of blood, the violence of power and of the political is good! It is clear, luminous, the relations of force, contradictions, exploitation, repression! This is lacking today, and the need for it makes itself felt."
"I had long put on one side the purist pacifist view that one should have nothing to do with a social revolution if any violence were involved... Nevertheless, the conviction remained in my mind that any revolution would fail to establish freedom and fraternity in proportion to its use of violence, that the use of violence inevitably brought in its train domination, repression, cruelty."
"No matter what someone else has done, it still matters how we treat people. It matters to our humanity that we treat offenders according to standards that we recognize as just. Justice is not revenge — it's deciding for a solution that is oriented towards peace, peace being the harder but more human way of reacting to injury. That is the very basis of the idea of rights."
"Peace is a resistance to the terrible satisfactions of war."
"Violence as a tool is already operating in the world before anyone takes it up: that fact alone neither justifies nor discounts the use of the tool. What seems most important, however, is that the tool is already part of a practice, presupposing a world conducive to its use; that the use of the tool builds or rebuilds a specific kind of world, activating a sedimented legacy of use. When any of us commit acts of violence, we are, in and through those acts, building a more violent world."
"Quite apart from assiduous efforts to restrict the use of violence as means rather than an end, the actualization of violence as a means can inadvertently become its own end, producing new violence, producing violence anew, reiterating the license, and licensing further violence. Violence does not exhaust itself in the realization of a just end; rather, it renews itself in directions that exceed both deliberate intention and instrumental schemes. In other words, by acting as if the use of violence can be a means to achieve a nonviolent end, one imagines that the practice of violence does not in the act posit violence as its own end. The technē is undermined by the praxis, and the use of violence only makes the world into a more violent place, by bringing more violence into the world."
"Violence against the other is, in this sense, violence against oneself, something that becomes clear when we recognize that violence assaults the living interdependency that is, or should be, our social world."
"The state monopolizes violence by calling its critics “violent”. [...] Hence, we should be wary about those who claim that violence is necessary to curb or check violence; those who praise the forces of law, including the police and the prisons, as the final arbiters. To oppose violence is to understand that violence does not always take the form of the blow."
"We had relieved our own pain by inflicting it on others."
"Dr. King’s policy was, if you are nonviolent, if you suffer, your opponent will see your suffering and will be moved to change his heart. That’s very good. He only made one fallacious assumption. In order for nonviolence to work, your opponent must have a conscience. The United States has none."
"There is another question which arises out of this. Can peace, goodwill, and confidence be built upon submission to wrong-doing backed by force? One may put this question in the largest form. Has any benefit or progress ever been achieved by the human race by submission to organised and calculated violence? As we look back over the long story of the nations we must see that, on the contrary, their glory has been founded upon the spirit of resistance to tyranny and injustice, especially when these evils seemed to be backed by heavier force. Since the dawn of the Christian era a certain way of life has slowly been shaping itself among the Western peoples, and certain standards of conduct and government have come to be esteemed. After many miseries and prolonged confusion, there arose into the broad light of day the conception of the right of the individual; his right to be consulted in the government of his country; his right to invoke the law even against the State itself. Independent Courts of Justice were created to affirm and inforce this hard-won custom. Thus was assured throughout the English-speaking world, and in France by the stern lessons of the Revolution, what Kipling called, “Leave to live by no man’s leave underneath the law.” Now in this resides all that makes existence precious to man, and all that confers honour and health upon the State."
"Much of the sanctimonious abhorrence displayed by the ruling class and its apologists against the use of violence in the class struggle is rooted in the desire to maintain the integrity of its class monopoly of violence."
"Violent interactions are difficult because they go against the grain of normal interaction rituals. The tendency to become entrained in each other’s rhythms and emotions means that when the interaction is at cross-purposes—an antagonistic interaction—people experience a pervasive feeling of tension . . . [A]t higher levels of intensity . . . [this tension] shades over into fear."
"The Lord examines the righteous, but the wicked, those who love violence, he hates with a passion."
"For he will rescue the poor who cry for help, Also the lowly one and whoever has no helper. He will have pity on the lowly and the poor, And the lives of the poor he will save. From oppression and from violence he will rescue them, And their blood will be precious in his eyes."
"We have heard the tired cliché[,] that riots are the language of the unheard. But the reality is[,] that violence is the language of the unhinged."
"Democracy don’t rule the world,/You’d better get that in your head,/This world is ruled by violence,/But I guess that’s better left unsaid./"
"I wish your revolt well, my friend," said Bakhtin, "but beware that you don't end up merely repeating the same old story. The state abhors only one thing in the end, and that's the sound of laughter. Violence it can understand."
"Heroism by order, senseless violence, and all the pestilent nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism — how I hate them! War seems to me a mean, contemptible thing: I would rather be hacked in pieces than take part in such an abominable business."
"Violence is man re-creating himself."
"In its bare reality, decolonization reeks of red-hot cannonballs and bloody knives. For the last can be the first only after a murderous and decisive confrontation between the two protagonists. This determination to have the last move up to the front, to have them clamber up (too quickly, say some) the famous echelons of an organized society, can only succeed by resorting to every means, including, of course, violence."
"Victory won by violence is tantamount to defeat, for it is momentary."
"Hitler...Mussolini...and Stalin are able to show the immediate effectiveness of violence. But it will be as transitory as that of Chenghis' slaughters. But the effects of Buddha's nonviolence persist and are likely to grow with age."
"If “violence never solved anything,” cops wouldn’t have guns and slaves may never have been freed. If it’s better that 10 guilty men go free to spare one innocent, why not free 100 or 1,000,000? Clichés begin arguments, they don’t settle them."
"It is the technique of the baboon to try to get its way by violence."
"Violence, naked force, has settled more issues in history than has any other factor, and the contrary opinion is wishful thinking at its worst."
"It is presumptively wrong to do violence to innocent persons."
"We will never know whether there is a realistic moral alternative to violence unless we are willing to explore the potential of nonviolent action."
"In cases of violence against members of groups labeled as “cults,” it is common for observers to suggest that the perpetrator had mental health issues. While mental illness can be a factor in some violent incidents, using this explanation alone can overlook broader social dynamics. Individuals with fragile psychological profiles are often the most susceptible to sensationalized narratives. When a religious minority is repeatedly shown as dangerous or deceptive, those predisposed to fear or suspicion may see such portrayals as justification for preemptive or retaliatory action. This does not excuse individuals for violent acts, but it underscores the role of public discourse in shaping perceptions and, in some cases, provoking harmful behavior."
"It is not a question of the necessity of violence, but how to organize it to fit our unique situation, to tie it with flawless exactitude to our political activity, and to organize it immediately."
"We are quite obviously faced with a need to organize some small defenses to the more flagrant abuses of the system now. ... While we await the precise moment when all of capitalism's victims will indignantly rise to destroy the system, we are being devoured. ... Some of us are going to have to take our courage in hand and build a hard revolutionary cadre for selective retaliatory violence."
"Civilization is based on a clearly defined and widely accepted yet often unarticulated hierarchy. Violence done by those higher on the hierarchy to those lower is nearly always invisible, that is, unnoticed. When it is noticed, it is fully rationalized. Violence done by those lower on the hierarchy to those higher is unthinkable, and when it does occur is regarded with shock, horror, and the fetishization of the victims."
"People often say that violence accomplishes nothing, that it's ineffective. Violence is dreadfully effective. That's why those in power use it."
"The most heterogeneous ideas are yoked by violence together."
"Violence as a way of achieving racial justice is both impractical and immoral. I am not unmindful of the fact that violence often brings about momentary results. Nations have frequently won their independence in battle. But in spite of temporary victories, violence never brings permanent peace. It solves no social problem: it merely creates new and more complicated ones. Violence is impractical because it is a descending spiral ending in destruction for all. It is immoral because it seeks to humiliate the opponent rather than win his understanding: it seeks to annihilate rather than convert. Violence is immoral because it thrives on hatred rather than love. It destroys community and makes brotherhood impossible. It leaves society in monologue rather than dialogue. Violence ends up defeating itself. It creates bitterness in the survivors and brutality in the destroyers."
"The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it. Through violence you may murder the liar, but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish the truth. Through violence you may murder the hater, but you do not murder hate. In fact, violence merely increases hate. So it goes. Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, 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."
"There is nothing but violence in the universe; but we are spoiled by a modern philosophy that tells us all is good, whereas evil has tainted everything, and in a very real sense, all is evil, since nothing is in its place."
"hopes for peace: hand clasped in hand firmer than fist on a gun or club, hand raised in greeting stronger than hand raised for violence"
"Violence is the whole essence of authoritarianism, just as the repudiation of violence is the whole essence of anarchism."
"To place the responsibility of violence on the illiterate, poor and unemployed mobs is to completely miss the pathologies amongst us, the privileged and the powerful, which are the greatest enablers of violence."
"Violence creates nothing but violence, no matter what we call it and what the excuse. And so it goes, down all the centuries."
"Always, the rulers of an order, consistent with their own interests and solely of their own design, have employed what to them seemed to be the most optimal and efficient means of maintaining unquestioned social and economic advantage. Clear-cut superiority in things social and economic—by whatever means—has been a scruples-free premise of American ruling class authority from the society's inception to the present. The initial socioeconomic advantage, begotten by chattel slavery, was enforced by undaunted violence and the constant threat of more violence."
"Brute force ... does not go well with ignorance."
"The only sound way to appraise the state of the world is to count. How many violent acts has the world seen compared with the number of opportunities? And is that number going up or down? [...] To be sure, adding up corpses and comparing the tallies across different times and places can seem callous, as if it minimized the tragedy of the victims in less violent decades and regions. But a quantitative mindset is in fact the morally enlightened one. It treats every human life as having equal value, rather than privileging the people who are closest to us or most photogenic. And it holds out the hope that we might identify the causes of violence and thereby implement the measures that are most likely to reduce it."
"Without promoting fraternity, our democracy cannot survive. And the dangerous demonisation of minorities has to be countered, as it is this hate which gets transformed into intense violence."
"Revolt, it will be said, implies violence; but this is an outmoded, an incompetent conception of revolt. The most effective form of revolt in this violent world we live in is non-violence."
"Violence, contrary to popular belief, is not part of the anarchist philosophy. It has repeatedly been pointed out by anarchist thinkers that the revolution can neither be won, nor the anarchist society established and maintained, by armed violence. Recourse to violence then is an indication of weakness, not of strength, and the revolution with the greatest possibilities of a successful outcome will undoubtedly be the one in which there is no violence, or in which violence is reduced to a minimum, for such a revolution would indicate the near unanimity of the population in the objectives of the revolution. … Violence as a means breeds violence; the cult of personalities as a means breeds dictators--big and small--and servile masses; government--even with the collaboration of socialists and anarchists--breeds more government. Surely then, freedom as a means breeds more freedom, possibly even the Free Society! To Those who say this condemns one to political sterility and the Ivory Tower our reply is that 'realism' and their 'circumstantialism' invariably lead to disaster. We believe there is something more real, more positive and more revolutionary to resisting war than in participation in it; that it is more civilised and more revolutionary to defend the right of a fascist to live than to support the Tribunals which have the legal power to shoot him; that it is more realistic to talk to the people from the gutter than from government benches; that in the long run it is more rewarding to influence minds by discussion than to mould them by coercion."
"Violence stinks no matter which side of it you're on. But now and then there's nothing left to do but hit the other person over the head with a frying pan."
"We live in a universe ruled by very few laws, but the redoubling of violence by violence is one of the main ones."
"I am not part of the human race. Humanity has rejected me. The females of the human species have never wanted to mate with me, so how could I possibly consider myself part of humanity? Humanity has never accepted me among them, and now I know why. I am more than human. I am superior to them all. I am Elliot Rodger... Magnificent, glorious, supreme, eminent... Divine! I am the closest thing there is to a living god. Humanity is a disgusting, depraved, and evil species. It is my purpose to punish them all. I will purify the world of everything that is wrong with it. On the Day of Retribution, I will truly be a powerful god, punishing everyone I deem to be impure and depraved."
"We were told that violence in itself is evil, and that, whatever the cause, it is unjustified morally. By what standard of morality can the violence used by a slave to break his chains be considered the same as the violence of a slave master? By what standards can we equate the violence of blacks who have been oppressed, suppressed, depressed and repressed for four centuries with the violence of white fascists? Violence aimed at the recovery of human dignity and at equality cannot be judged by the same yardstick as violence aimed at maintenance of discrimination and oppression."
"We are a fine species with some potential. Yet we are racked by sickening amounts of violence. Unless we are hermints, we feel the threat of it, often as a daily shadow. And regardless of where we hide, should our leaders push the button, we will all be lost in a final global violence."
"Violent delights have violent ends And in their triumph die, like fire and powder, Which as they kiss consume."
"The definition of “violence” has now expanded to include a new continuum of behaviors and feelings that are also generically used to ascribe a negative value to a person’s actions. The word “violence” has expanded far beyond the field of physical assault to also mean emotional abuse and, unfortunately, emotional conflict where there is no abuse. In recent years, we see “violence” and “abuse” being ascribed to , efforts to understand phenomena, and social and psychological analysis. “Abuse” is also regularly used to describe disagreement and misunderstanding. Accusations of “policing,” “shaming,” and other expressions of “call-out culture” demanding “safety” from uncomfortable ideas represent people and actions as laden with blame, refusing interactivity around the content of ideas and perceptions. This is in line with the similar practice of calling racial analysis “playing the race card.” Trying to understand and explain structures of pathology is repressed by accusations of wrong-doing. Thinking is wrong. Saying is wrong. Not only are revelations unwanted, they get mischaracterized as harm."
"The word “violence” should be used to describe physical violence. Emotional cruelty, shunning, group bullying—these things can be worse than some violence, but they are not the same. If this wide range of precise experiences is all collapsed into the generic word “violence,” then nothing has any differentiation, therefore all the variations lose meaning. And as I have been arguing, rhetorical devices that hide details keep truth from being known and faced. Using the word “violence” without metaphor will help with the current discourse of overreaction and help us discern, with more awareness, the differences between Abuse and Conflict."
"Physical violence has many varied manifestations, and non-defensive violence is never justified or desirable, nor does it solve problems. The most common scenario is the regularly violent spouse who initiates violence as a control mechanism, where it is used to enforce behaviors in the victim. Then there is the couple who both lack problem-solving skills and resort to violence irregularly, or in a single incident, in ways that are equally undesirable but don’t result in one person’s domination. They do not endanger each other physically, although there are clearly signs of problems that need to be faced and dealt with. These are obviously different phenomena. And I think they should be treated differently even though they both involve physical violence. Once we stop being determined to produce a victim and are instead focused on learning the truth of what actually happened, we become willing to accept the discomfort of recognizing two people as being Conflicted and embrace a more humane and acknowledging vision of social relationships. This is essential if we want peace."
"You should not use violence."
"Physical violence would be impossible without deep unconsciousness. It can also occur easily whenever and wherever a crowd of people or even an entire nation generates a negative collective energy field."
"Most humans are still in the grip of the egoic mode of consciousness: identified with their mind and run by their mind. If they do not free themselves from their mind in time, they will be destroyed by it. They will experience increasing confusion, conflict, violence, illness, despair, madness. Egoic mind has become like a sinking ship. If you don't get off, you will go down with it."
"For those who hold on to the old patterns, there will be increasing pain, violence, confusion, and madness."
"All violence consists in some people forcing others, under threat of suffering or death, to do what they do not want to do."
"As soon as men live entirely in accord with the law of love natural to their hearts and now revealed to them, which excludes all resistance by violence, and therefore hold aloof from all participation in violence — as soon as this happens, not only will hundreds be unable to enslave millions, but not even millions will be able to enslave a single individual."
"People in favour of the use of force all think that it is just a means of attaining justice and peace. But peace and justice are free from violence...That is the final objective of history. If you abandon non-violence, you have no sense of history. You pass history by, you put history on ice, you are a traitor to history."
"All violence is justified by the perpetrators and their supporters, and condemned by those who disagree. In other words, all humans support violence when they agree with the philosophy of the perpetrators and condemn violence when they disagree with that philosophy."
"Football combines the two worst things about America: it is violence punctuated by committee meetings."
"I wouldn't use physical violence even if I could, because one of my romantic ideas is that physical violence is beneath the dignity of a man, and that whatever you get by physical aggression costs more than it is worth."
"The trouble about the use of force or violence as the primary instrument of a Government or society is the inordinate difficulty of stopping or stabilizing it. It does not matter whether the units be individuals, classes, or nations, the more they rely upon force to determine their relations, the more difficult it becomes to stabilize relations."
"Violence is as American as cherry pie."
"The use of violence as an instrument of persuasion is therefore inviting and seems to the discontented to be the only effective protest."
"Violence has no constitutional sanction; and every government from the beginning has moved against it. But where grievances pile high and most of the elected spokesmen represent the Establishment, violence may be the only effective response."
"I'd hate to be in those [slum] conditions and I'll tell you if I were in those conditions, you'd have more trouble than you have already because I've got enough spark left in me to lead a mighty good revolt."
"I feel that we will continue to have a non-violent movement, and we will continue to find the vast majority of Negroes committed to non-violence, at least as the best tactical approach and from a pragmatic point of view as the best strategy in dealing with the problem of racial injustice. Realism impels me to admit, however, that when there is justice and the pursuit of justice, violence appears, and where there is injustice and frustration, the potentialities for violence are greater, and I would like to strongly stress the point that the more we can achieve victories through non-violence, the more it will be possible to keep the non-violent discipline at the center of the movement. But the more we find individuals facing conditions of frustration, conditions of disappointment and seething despair as a result of the slow pace of things and the failure to change conditions, the more it will be possible for the apostles of violence to interfere."
"Lawlessness is lawlessness. Anarchy is anarchy is anarchy. Neither race nor color nor frustration is an excuse for either lawlessness or anarchy."
"Our most serious challenges to date have been external—the kind this strong and resourceful country could unite against. While serious external dangers remain, the graver threats today are internal: haphazard urbanization, racial discrimination, disfiguring of the environment, unprecedented interdependence, the dislocation of human identity and motivation created by an affluent society—all resulting in a rising tide of individual and group violence."
"First of all, it's not being ruthless it is about being genuine, it is about the real intentions, it is about being serious, it is about having the will. The United States doesn't have the will to defeat the terrorists. It has the will to control them and to use them as "the cards", as they did in Afghanistan that would be reflected of military aspects for the issue, if you want to compare more than a hundred and twenty or thirty Russian airstrikes to few areas in Syrian compare to ten or twelve American allies' airstrike in Syria and Iraq, it means militarily nothing! but that military ineffectiveness is a reflection of the political will."
"In recent years, the FBI observed a decline in its ability to access to the content of both domestic and international terrorist communications, due to the widespread adoption of encryption for Internet traffic and the prevalence of mobile messaging apps using end-to-end encryption as default. In many places, we have effectively “gone dark.” As a private citizen, I certainly appreciate encryption’s increase in the overall safety and security of the Internet for users. But in fulfilling the FBI’s duty to the American people to prevent acts of terrorism, encryption creates serious challenges. Accessing content of communications by, or data held by, known or suspected terrorists pursuant to judicially authorized, warranted legal process is getting more and more difficult. If law enforcement loses the ability to detect criminal activity because communication between subjects—data in motion—or data held by subjects —data at rest—is encrypted in such a way making content inaccessible, even with a lawful order, our ability to protect the American people will be degraded. I believe there are solutions providers could deploy which would provide safety and security to those using the Internet while also contributing to the FBI’s ability to prevent and investigate terrorism and other criminal acts like child exploitation and cybercrimes."
"Terrorism thrives on administrative violence and injustice; that is the only atmosphere in which it can thrive and grow. It sometimes follows the example of indiscriminate violence from above; it sometimes, though very rarely, sets it from below. But the power above which follows the example from below is on the way to committing suicide."
"That is why despite its imperfections, the European Union can be, and indeed is, a powerful inspiration for many around the world. Because the challenges faced from one region to the other may differ in scale but they do not differ in nature. We all share the same planet. Poverty, organised crime, terrorism, climate change: these are problems that do not respect national borders. We share the same aspirations and universal values: these are progressively taking root in a growing number of countries all over the world. We share “l’irréductible humain”, the irreducible uniqueness of the human being. Beyond our nation, beyond our continent, we are all part of one mankind. Jean Monnet, ends his Memoirs with these words: “Les nations souveraines du passé ne sont plus le cadre où peuvent se résoudre les problèmes du présent. Et la communauté elle-même n’est qu’un étape vers les formes d’organisation du monde de demain.” (“The sovereign nations of the past can no longer solve the problems of the present. And the [European] Community itself is only a stage on the way to the organised world of the future.”) This federalist and cosmopolitan vision is one of the most important contributions that the European Union can bring to a global order in the making."
"The record clearly shows that jihadists see the run-up to an election and the months just afterward as an opportune time to act. Everyone remembers the Bin Laden video that was released days before the 2004 presidential election and the Madrid train-station bombings that occurred 72 hours before Spain’s national elections in March of that year. When the conservative government of José María Aznar mistakenly attributed the attacks to Basque separatists, the public punished his party, which was felt to be pretending that its unpopular support for the war in Iraq had nothing to do with the attacks. The socialists, led by José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, had been trailing in the polls, but after the government’s blunder, they thumped the conservatives by a five-point margin. Those are only the best-known jihadist interventions. Alongside them should be added the first bombing of the World Trade Center on Feb. 26, 1993, a little more than a month after Bill Clinton took office, and the attack on the USS Cole on Oct. 12, 2000, three weeks before that year’s Bush-Gore matchup. Last year, radicals attempted multiple car bombings in London and Glasgow, Scotland, three days after Gordon Brown’s June 27 installation as Britain’s prime minister. And let’s not forget the murder of Benazir Bhutto while she was campaigning in Pakistan or the September 2004 bombing of the Australian Embassy in Jakarta, Indonesia, which preceded the Australian elections by a month. What makes elections and transitions so attractive to terrorists? After the October 2004 Bin Laden video was released, I wrote here about jihadists’ need to leave their fingerprints on big events. These are the seam moments, the points of inflection in history, and the terrorists want to demonstrate that they are central players in determining outcomes. They especially want to show their Muslim audience that they are having a powerful impact on the world stage and are the global actors they claim to be. Do they try to tilt events to help preferred candidates or parties? There isn’t much evidence to support that—and the terrorists seem to have some regard for the law of unintended consequences, so I don’t think they believe they can act with sufficient precision to ensure, for example, a victory for McCain or Obama. (The outcome of the 2004 Spanish election was a freak event; no one could have predicted that Aznar’s government would have botched its reaction to the bombings.)"
"They say they believe in freedom and share our values. They say a few bad apples shouldn’t bring down judgment on their entire kind. Don’t be fooled. Though they walk among us with impunity, they are, in the words of Henry Farrell, a political scientist at George Washington University, “a group that is notoriously associated with terrorist violence and fundamentalist political beliefs.” They are engineers. Farrell, of course, was kidding. He posted that comment on a blog shortly after Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab (confessed Al Qaeda operative and engineering student) tried to blow up an airliner over Detroit last winter. But the satire was rooted in a statistical fact: in the ranks of captured and confessed terrorists, engineers and engineering students are significantly overrepresented. Maybe that’s a numerological accident. The sociologist Diego Gambetta and the political scientist Steffen Hertog don’t think so."
"I know there are several countries - mostly dictatorships with highly repressive regimes - desperately trying to acquire chemical weapons, biological weapons or, in particular, nuclear weapons capability. Some of these countries are now a short time away from having a serviceable nuclear weapon. This activity is not diminishing. It is increasing. We all know that there are terrorist cells now operating in most major countries. Just as in the last two years, around 20 different nations have suffered serious terrorist outrages. Thousands have died in them. The purpose of terrorism lies not just in the violent act itself. It is in producing terror. It sets out to inflame, to divide, to produce consequences which they then use to justify further terror. Round the world it now poisons the chances of political progress: in the Middle East; in Kashmir; in Chechnya; in Africa. The removal of the Taliban in Afghanistan dealt it a blow. But it has not gone away. And these two threats have different motives and different origins but they share one basic common view: they detest the freedom, democracy and tolerance that are the hallmarks of our way of life. At the moment, I accept that association between them is loose. But it is hardening. And the possibility of the two coming together - of terrorist groups in possession of WMD, even of a so-called dirty radiological bomb is now, in my judgement, a real and present danger."
"Terrorism is defined as political violence in an asymmetrical conflict that is designed to induce terror and psychic fear (sometimes indiscriminate) through the violent victimization and destruction of noncombatant targets (sometimes iconic symbols). Such acts are meant to send a message from an illicit clandestine organization. The purpose of terrorism is to exploit the media in order to achieve maximum attainable publicity as an amplifying force multiplier in order to influence the targeted audience(s) in order to reach short- and midterm political goals and/or desired long-term end states."
"The rebellion of the exploited is never terrorism."
"Insurers have always found it costly to ignore new exposures. Doing that in the case of terrorism, however, could literally bankrupt the industry. No one knows the probability of a nuclear detonation in a major metropolis this year (or even multiple detonations, given that a terrorist organization able to construct one bomb might not stop there). Nor can anyone, with assurance, assess the probability in this year, or another, of deadly biological or chemical agents being introduced simultaneously (say, through ventilation systems) into multiple office buildings and manufacturing plants. An attack like that would produce astronomical workers' compensation claims."
"At length, after a terrible struggle, the (Directory) Troops prevailed over the Citizens (…) To secure them further, they have a strong corps of irregulars, ready armed. Thousands of those Hell-hounds called Terrorists, whom they had shut up in Prison on their last Revolution, as the Satellites of Tyranny, are let loose on the people."
"I believe that Islam is a great religion that preaches peace. And I believe people who murder the innocent to achieve political objectives aren’t religious people."
"When people live in freedom, they do not willingly choose leaders who pursue campaigns of terror. When people have hope in the future, they will not cede their lives to violence and extremism. So around the world, America is promoting human liberty, human rights, and human dignity. We are standing with dissidents and young democracies, providing AIDS medicine to bring dying patients back to life, and sparing mothers and babies from malaria. And this great republic born alone in liberty is leading the world toward a new age when freedom belongs to all nations... Murdering the innocent to advance an ideology is wrong every time, everywhere. Freeing people from oppression and despair is eternally right. This nation must continue to speak out for justice and truth. We must always be willing to act in their defense and to advance the cause of peace."
"While our nation is safer than it was seven years ago, the gravest threat to our people remains another terrorist attack. Our enemies are patient and determined to strike again. America did nothing to seek or deserve this conflict. But we have been given solemn responsibilities, and we must meet them. We must resist complacency. We must keep our resolve. And we must never let down our guard. At the same time, we must continue to engage the world with confidence and clear purpose. In the face of threats from abroad, it can be tempting to seek comfort by turning inward. But we must reject isolationism and its companion, protectionism. Retreating behind our borders would only invite danger. In the 21st century, security and prosperity at home depend on the expansion of liberty abroad. If America does not lead the cause of freedom, that cause will not be led."
"Maintain our moral clarity. I have often spoken to you about good and evil. This has made some uncomfortable. But good and evil are present in this world, and between the two there can be no compromise. Murdering the innocent to advance an ideology is wrong every time, everywhere. Freeing people from oppression and despair is eternally right. This nation must continue to speak out for justice and truth. We must always be willing to act in their defense and to advance the cause of peace."
"When I was still a member of what is probably best termed the British Jihadi Network, a series of semi-autonomous British Muslim terrorist groups linked by a single ideology, I remember how we used to laugh in celebration whenever people on TV proclaimed that the sole cause for Islamic acts of terror like 9/11, the Madrid bombings and 7/7 was Western foreign policy.By blaming the government for our actions, those who pushed the 'Blair's bombs' line did our propaganda work for us. More important, they also helped to draw away any critical examination from the real engine of our violence: Islamic theology."
"You should not be walking through the lobbies with Jeremy Corbyn and a bunch of terrorist sympathisers."
"No-one becomes a terrorist from a standing start. It starts with a process of radicalisation. When you look in detail at the backgrounds of those convicted of terrorist offences, it is clear that many of them were first influenced by what some would call non-violent extremists."
"We should together challenge the ludicrous conspiracy theories of the extremists. The world is not conspiring against Islam; the security services aren’t behind terrorist attacks; our new Prevent duty for schools is not about criminalising or spying on Muslim children. This is paranoia in the extreme."
"We need our internet companies to go further in helping us identify potential terrorists online. Many of their commercial models are built around monitoring platforms for personal data, packaging it up and selling it on to third parties. And when it comes to doing what’s right for their business, they are happy to engineer technologies to track our likes and dislikes. But when it comes to doing what’s right in the fight against terrorism, we too often hear that it’s all too difficult."
"We’ve got to show that if you say “yes I condemn terror – but the are inferior”, or “violence in London isn’t justified, but suicide bombs in Israel are a different matter” – then you too are part of the problem. Unwittingly or not, and in a lot of cases it’s not unwittingly, you are providing succour to those who want to commit, or get others to commit to, violence."
"We know from long experience in Iraq and Afghanistan to take territory, hold territory, and govern territory and prevent a reemergence of a terrorist group."
"One has to ask whether there was transparency in the invasion of Iraq. The world knows President Bush lied openly about Iraq having chemical weapons, They keep on bombing cities, killing children, they have become a terrorist state."
"If fine speech-making, appeals to reason, or pleas for compassion had the power to move them, the terrorists would long ago have abandoned the field."
"A twenty-year war of terrorism was waged against Cuba. Cuba has probably been the target of more international terrorism than the rest of the world combined and, therefore, in the American ideological system it is regarded as the source of international terrorism, exactly as Orwell would have predicted. And now there’s a war against Nicaragua. The impact of all of this has been absolutely horrendous. There’s vast starvation throughout the region while crop lands are devoted to exports to the United States. There’s slave labor, crushing poverty, torture, mass murder, every horror you can think of. In El Salvador alone, from October 1979 (a date to which I’ll return) until December 1981 — approximately two years — about 30,000 people were murdered and about 600,000 refugees created. Those figures have about doubled since. Most of the murders were carried out by U.S.-backed military forces, including so-called death squads. The efficiency of the massacre in El Salvador has recently increased with direct participation of American military forces. American planes based in Honduran and Panamanian sanctuaries, military aircraft, now coordinate bombing raids over El Salvador, which means that the Salvadoran air force can more effectively kill fleeing peasants and destroy villages, and, in fact, the kill rate has gone up corresponding to that."
"Before there were any suicide bombers, it was also reported by the same sources that Saddam Hussein was giving $10,000 to the families of anyone who was killed by Israeli atrocities, and there were plenty of them. Well, should he've been doing that? So let's take the first month of the current intifada. I'm just relying now on IDF sources. What they say is, that in the first few days of the intifada, the Israeli army fired a million bullets. One of the high military officers said 'that means one bullet for every child'. Within the first month of the intifada, they killed about 70 people. Using U.S. helicopters, and in fact Clinton shipped new helicopters to Israel as soon as they started using them against civilians. That's just the first month. And it goes on, no suicide bombers. At the time, it was reported that Saddam Hussein was giving $10,000 to every family. Well, is that supporting terror? It seems to me, sending helicopters to Israel when they're using them to attack apartment complexes, that's supporting terror."
"I know that the — that Saudi individuals have certainly funded other related terrorist groups over time and also exported a lot of Wahhabi radicalism by kicking out or sending out imams and teachers to set up schools and mosques to preach that particularly harsh brand of Islam. So the Saudis have a lot that they can do to both stop and then to help."
"Fifteen years ago, there was this country called the Soviet Union that had over 10,000 nuclear warheads pointed at us... they're not there anymore. That's a good thing. And when people talk about how the world is more dangerous now than it was because we had these terrorists running around, my reply is, you know, a terrorist is like a buzzing mosquito. About 15 years ago, there was a great, big vampire bat; that's several orders of magnitude different from a mosquito. So the world is much safer — a lot safer than it was. It's not perfectly safe, but it's a heck of a lot safer than it was."
"Ending your own life is not something the average person does. Everybody's assuming these are Islamic terrorists. Well, if so they've defiled their own religion. Islam does not permit suicide. It says you go to hell if you do something like this... We saw people in Northern Ireland, Catholics acting like savages and Protestants acting like savages... We have people who call themselves Muslims acting like savages. It's not because of their religion, it's because they're fools."
"Others are engaging even in an War|eco-type of terrorism whereby they can alter the climate, set off earthquakes, volcanoes remotely through the use of electromagnetic waves."
"In this tragic moment, when words seem so inadequate to express the shock people feel, the first thing that comes to mind is this: We are all Americans! We are all New Yorkers, just as surely as John F. Kennedy declared himself to be a Berliner in 1962 when he visited Berlin."
"...the purpose of terrorism, not to kill, maim or destroy, but to terrorize, to frighten, to anger, to provoke irrational responses. Terrorism gains more from the responses than it gains from the actions themselves."
"When I think about the violence of my own youth in , where bombs were planted repeatedly and houses were destroyed and churches were destroyed and lives were destroyed and we have yet to refer to those acts as the acts of terrorists. You know terrorism which is represented as external, as outside, is very much a domestic phenomenon. Terrorism very much shaped the history of the United States of America."
"By one measure at least, the world is getting less dangerous. There were 10% fewer deaths from terrorism in 2015 than the year before, according to the latest Global Terrorism Index compiled by the Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP). It was still the second deadliest year on record though, with 29,376 people killed in terrorist attacks. Despite news coverage which often seems to suggest that terrorism is an ever-present threat all around the world, the reality is that a small number of countries suffer disproportionately. On the basis of the IEP’s definition of terrorism – illegal violence by non-state actors designed to intimidate or coerce others, or in pursuit of a political, economic, religious or social goal – more than 72% of terrorist deaths last year occurred in just five countries, and although there were 274 known groups that carried out terrorist attacks, just four of them (Islamic State / ISIS, Boko Haram, the Taliban and Al Qaeda) were responsible for 74% of all deaths."
"Terror consists mostly of useless cruelties perpetrated by frightened people in order to reassure themselves."
"Many factors have contributed to the evolution of the terrorism threat on both the international and domestic fronts, such as: Lone offenders: Terrorist threats have evolved from large-group conspiracies toward lone-offender attacks. These individuals often radicalize online and mobilize to violence quickly. Without a clear group affiliation or guidance, lone offenders are challenging to identify, investigate, and disrupt. The FBI relies on partnerships and tips from the public to identify and thwart these attacks. The Internet and social media: International and domestic violent extremists have developed an extensive presence on the Internet through messaging platforms and online images, videos, and publications. These facilitate the groups’ ability to radicalize and recruit individuals who are receptive to extremist messaging. Social media has also allowed both international and domestic terrorists to gain unprecedented, virtual access to people living in the United States in an effort to enable homeland attacks."
"Terrorism is nearly alone in its power to amplify the actions of an individual to influence the behavior of millions. By creating a fear of future attacks, terrorism affects even those who do not experience the violence firsthand. That fear leads people to give security a higher priority, to seek authority figures who will impose order and to re-evaluate who in society might pose a threat. Researchers who seek to understand this effect have long looked to Israel. With its history of terrorism and its complex multiparty political system, the country is something of a laboratory for understanding the interplay of attacks and elections. Claude Berrebi of the RAND Corporation and Esteban F. Klor of Hebrew University found, in a 2008 study, that when an area suffered a terrorist attack in the three months before an election, voters in that area shifted toward right-wing parties by an average of 1.35 percentage points. The effect was messier in parts of the country that did not experience the attack. Areas where voters already leaned right tended to increase support for right-wing parties. But left-leaning areas reduced their support for right-wing parties. Even if those effects cancel out in the short term, in the long term they can deepen political polarization, making politics more extreme."
"There is another, subtler way that terrorism can alter politics: by reshaping how people view themselves and the rest of society. Exposure to terrorism tends to increase support for extreme politics in a number of ways, according to a 2015 study led by Daphna Canetti-Nisim, a political psychologist at the University of Maryland. For one, it increases hostility toward minorities. While this effect is strongest when people associate that minority with the attack, it can play out in other ways. People who endure terrorism “feel threatened and vulnerable,” the study found. This “psychological distress” makes them ore likely to retreat to familiar in-groups and view outsiders as threats. This supports Ms. Le Pen’s narrative of a civilizational conflict along demographic lines. Terrorism can also increase “popular support for nondemocratic regulations and practices,” particularly those targeting minorities, the study finds. Ms. Le Pen has promised to impose restrictions on Muslims and immigrants that critics have called undemocratic or even authoritarian."
"Terrorism grows when there is no other option, and as long as the world economy has at its center the god of money and not the person."
"Terrorism has rattled us, starting with 9/11 but continuing through lesser forms of murder and mayhem ever since—the kind perpetrated by radical Muslims via internet indoctrination (for example, Ft. Hood, Boston Marathon, San Bernardino, Orlando) and the more nativist kind perhaps more so (for example, Columbine, Sandy Hook, Parkland, Dylann Roof, Stephen Paddock, and, just this past week, Cesar Sayoc and Robert Bowers). Terrorism does its damage not mainly through body counts but by undermining the social trust that keeps communities engaged, united, and optimistic. The bureaucratized paranoia we have allowed to develop as a consequence hasn’t helped in the least—“If you see something, say something” spoken a hundred million times a day across the country by our now ubiquitous automatonic ghosts. By essentially reminding people of the real prospect of mass murder several times a day, it’s been on balance counterproductive as well as very expensive."
"There is always a point at which the terrorist ceases to manipulate the media gestalt. A point at which the violence may well escalate, but beyond which the terrorist has become symptomatic of the media gestalt itself. Terrorism as we ordinarily understand it is innately media-related."
"There are real people out there who are organized to kill people in religion and based on race. But it's 2015 there are people out there looking for Christians to kill them. So this is a mean time we live in."
"It is a telling paradox indeed that this central, all-justifying word [Terrorism] is simultaneously the most meaningless and therefore the most manipulated. It is, as I have noted before, a word that simultaneously means nothing yet justifies everything. Indeed, that's the point: it is such a useful concept precisely because it's so malleable, because it means whatever those with power to shape discourse want it to mean."
"Many of the benefits from keeping Terrorism fear levels high are obvious. Private corporations suck up massive amounts of Homeland Security cash as long as that fear persists, while government officials in the National Security and Surveillance State can claim unlimited powers, and operate with unlimited secrecy and no accountability. In sum, the private and public entities that shape government policy and drive political discourse profit far too much in numerous ways to allow rational considerations of the Terror threat."
"There's a very similar and at least equally important (though far less discussed) constituency deeply vested in the perpetuation of this fear. It's the sham industry... "terrorism experts," who have built their careers on fear-mongering... and can stay relevant only if that threat does. These "terrorism experts" form an incredibly incestuous, mutually admiring little clique in and around Washington. They're employed at think tanks, academic institutions, and media outlets. They can and do have mildly different political ideologies -- some are more Republican, some are more Democratic -- but, as usual for D.C. cliques, ostensible differences in political views are totally inconsequential when placed next to their common group identity and career interest: namely, sustaining the myth of the Grave Threat... in order to justify their fear-based careers, the relevance of their circle, and their alleged "expertise." Like all adolescent, insular cliques, they defend one another reflexively whenever a fellow member is attacked, closing ranks with astonishing speed and loyalty; they take substantive criticisms very personally as attacks on their "friends," because a criticism of the genre and any member in good standing of this fiefdom is a threat..."
"There is no term more potent in our political discourse and legal landscape than "Terrorism." It shuts down every rational thought process and political debate the minute it is uttered. It justifies torture (we have to get information from the Terrorists); due-process-free-assassinations even of our own citizens (Obama has to kill the Terrorists); and rampant secrecy (the Government can't disclose what it's doing or have courts rule on its legality because the Terrorists will learn of it), and it sends people to prison for decades (material supporters of Terrorism)."
"Refusing to accept a life of submission, the suicide bomber turns life itself into a horrible weapon."
"What do groups like ISIS and al-Qaeda, and even Hamas, want? They want to impose their religious views on the rest of humanity. They want to stifle every freedom that decent and educated and secular people care about. This is not a trivial difference. And yet, judging from the level of condemnation that Israel now receives, you would think the difference ran the other way. This kind of confusion puts us all in danger. This is the great story of our time. For the rest of our lives, and the lives of our children, we are going to be confronted by people who don't want to live peacefully in a secular pluralistic world because they are desperate to get to paradise, and they are willing to destroy the very possibility of human happiness along the way. The truth is, we are all living in Israel; it's just that some of us haven't realized it yet."
"Actually, who is the terrorist, who is against human rights? The answer is the United States because they attacked Iraq. Moreover, it is the terrorist king, waging war."
"Usually, terrorists film their attacks for future information operations and social media use. They may have had terrorist videographers in specific locations for that purpose."
"On one point, at least, everyone agrees: terrorism is a pejorative term. It is a word with intrinsically negative connotations that is generally applied to one's enemies and opponents, or to those with whom one disagrees and would otherwise prefer to ignore. 'What is called terrorism,' Brian Jenkins has written, 'thus seems to depend on one's point of view. Use of the term implies a moral judgment; and if one party can successfully attach the label terrorist to its opponent, then it has indirectly persuaded others to adopt its moral viewpoint.' Hence the decision to call someone or label some organization terrorist becomes almost unavoidably subjective, depending largely on whether one sympathizes with or opposes the person/group/cause concerned. If one identifies with the victim of the violence, for example, then the act is terrorism. If, however, one identifies with the perpetrator, the violent act is regarded in a more sympathetic, if not positive (or, at the worst, an ambivalent) light; and it is not terrorism."
"We need intelligence services to fight against terrorism, but they have to respect the principles of good relationships between allies and protect personal, confidential data."
"You get used to terrorist attacks... [B]ecause you get used to everything. No human force, not even fear, is stronger than habit."
"Atheism is the only real hope against terrorism."
"Today they speak of freedom, democracy and anti-imperialism, whereas until recently they openly preached the doctrine of the Fascist state. It is in its actions that the terrorist party betrays its real character; from its past actions we can judge what it may be expected to do in the future."
"Terrorism feeds off lies, conspiracies, disinformation, and hatred. Indian leader Mahatma Gandhi urged individuals to practice what he called “satyagraha,” or truth force. “Satyagraha is a weapon of the strong; it admits of no violence under any circumstance whatever; and it always insists upon truth,” he explained. That advice is just as important as it has ever been in the United States."
"We cannot lose to terrorism, we must not yield to brute force."
"America has made many accusations against us and many other Muslims around the world. Its charge that we are carrying out acts of terrorism is unwarranted."
"Questions about what motivates the terrorist have been asked for a long time and the answers have varied enormously. This is hardly surprising, for terrorism has appeared in many different guises and has varied greatly in character from age to age and from country to country. Any explanation that attempts to account for all of its many different manifestations is bound to be either exceedingly vague or altogether wrong. It has been said that highly idealistic and deeply motivated young people have opted for terrorism when they faced unresolved grievances and when there was no other way of registering protest and effecting change. Dostoyevski and many others would hardly have agreed. It has also been said that terrorists are criminals, moral imbeciles, mentally deranged people or sadists (or sado-masochists). Sweeping definitions of this kind are bound to provoke skepticism. Terrorist movements are usually youth movements of sorts, and to dwell upon the idealistic character of youth movements is only stressing the obvious: they are not out for personal gain and they always oppose the status quo. But political goals are not necessarily wholy altruistic, idealism and interest may coincide. Nor are personal ambitions absent; terrorists have also been driven by impatience and a kind of machismo (or, more recently, its female equivalent). Terrorism has occurred with increasing frequency in societies in which peaceful change is possible. Grievances always exist, but at certain times and in certain places major grievances have been borne without protest, whereas elsewhere and at other times relatively minor grievances have resulted in violent reaction. Nor is the choice of terrorism as a weapon altogether obvious, for frequently there are other ways of resistance, both political and military."
"Terrorism is as old as human civilization… and as new as this morning’s headlines. For some, it seems obvious that individuals and organizations have used terrorism for millennia, while others insist terrorism has only been around for decades. Both camps are right – up to a point. The weapons, methods, and goals of terrorists constantly change, but core features have remained since the earliest times. Clodius Pulcher, the Roman patrician who used murderous gangs to intimidate his opponents; the dagger-wielding Sicarii of Judea, who hoped to provoke a war with the Romans; twelfth-century assassins who killed and terrorized their Muslim rivals; medieval scholars who quoted scripture to justify killing rulers – all these are examples of terrorism, and all predate the advent of the word “terrorism” in revolutionary France. Since the 1790s, terrorism has been used by Italian secret societies hoping to establish a liberal democratic state, Russian revolutionaries eager to introduce socialism, and European anarchists eager to abolish all governments. American workers intimidated industrialists with terrorism, while German fascists used it to open the way to a semi-legal seizure of power. Zionists and Arabs alike have employed it in attempts to win themselves states in Palestine. Cults have hoped to trigger the apocalypse, and environmental extremists have sought to save the wilderness. More recently, an American blew up a federal building in Oklahoma City out of disgust for his government. And nineteen Arabs so loved death that they piloted planes into American landmarks, killing three thousand people. All of these actors and events are unique, but every single one of them belongs to the history of terrorism."
"Another complicating factor is that people, misled by the word’s suffix, tend to mistake the core nature of terrorism. Terrorism is not an ideology and does not exist as a specific worldview, a system of thought, or a political program. In this regard, it is not comparable to liberalism, conservatism, capitalism, socialism, or any of the other myriad “isms” that populate our history books, despite terrorism’s existence as one of the defining phenomena of the modern era. Looked at another way, terrorists are always something else, be they communists, nationalists, or fascists (among other possibilities). Terrorism is a strategy that makes use of certain tactics; in other words, terrorism is a means to an end – although often one that eventually overshadows the positive goals which its users ostensibly strive. I begin with two core assertions well founded in the broad literature on the topic. The first is that individuals or groups choose to commit terrorist acts as part of a process of rational and conscious decision-making within particular political and social contexts. Thus, terrorism is not, as it is often colloquially described, a kind of madness – although individual terrorists have certainly been known to exhibit the various signs of mental illness. My second basic assertion is that terrorism is a communicative act intended to influence the behavior of one or more audiences."
"The difference between a terrorist and a freedom fighter is a matter of perspective: it all depends on the observer and the verdict of history."
"I know that you personally do not fear giving up your own life in order to take others; that is why you are so dangerous. But I know you fear that you may fail in your long-term objective to destroy our free society and I can show you why you will fail. In the days that follow, look at our airports, look at our sea ports and look at our railway stations and, even after your cowardly attack, you will see... They come to be free, they come to live the life they choose, they come to be able to be themselves. They flee you because you tell them how they should live. They don't want that and nothing you do, however many of us you kill, will stop that flight to our city where freedom is strong and where people can live in harmony with one another. Whatever you do, however many you kill, you will fail."
"Terror struck into the hearts of the enemies is not only a means, it is the end in itself… It is the point where the means and the end meet and merge. Terror is not a means of imposing decision upon the enemy. It is the decision we wish to impose upon him... Terror... can be instilled only if the opponent’s Faith is destroyed. Psychological dislocation is temporary; spiritual dislocation is permanent. Psychological dislocation can be produced by a physical act but this does not hold good of the spiritual dislocation. To instill terror into the hearts of the enemy, it is essential, in the ultimate analysis, to dislocate his Faith ..."
"I define a 'terrorist' as a non-state actor who attacks civilian targets in order to strike terror into the hearts of the enemy community... A 'state terrorist' is a state doing the same thing."
"The international community has never succeeded in developing an accepted comprehensive definition of terrorism. During the 1970s and 1980s, the United Nations attempts to define the term floundered mainly due to differences of opinion between various members about the use of violence in the context of conflicts over national liberation and self-determination."
"Researchers and journalists for the news site Quartz said they used data compiled by the Global Terrorism Database that has tabulated terrorist events around the world since 1970. The database is supported by the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START), affiliated with the University of Maryland. “A Quartz analysis of the database shows that almost two-thirds of terror attacks in the (United States) last year were tied to racist, anti-Muslim, homophobic, anti-Semitic, fascist, anti-government, or xenophobic motivations,” its posting says. The remaining attacks, the web site said, “were driven by left-wing ideologies … and Islamic extremism.” Globally, terrorist attacks dropped from about 17,000 in 2014 to about 11,000 in 2017, including a 40 percent decline in the Middle East, according to Quartz's analysis of the START data."
"No one can terrorize a whole nation, unless we are all his accomplices."
"The root cause of terrorism lies not in grievances but in a disposition toward unbridled violence. This can be traced to a world view which asserts that certain ideological and religious goals justify, indeed demand, the shedding of all moral inhibitions.”"
"It must be noted that men with bad instincts are more in number than the good, and therefore the best results in governing them are attained by violence and terrorization, and not by academic discussions."
"This is the origin of the theory of course of arbitration. You may say that the goyim will rise upon us, arms in hand, if they guess what is going on before the time comes; but in the West we have against this a manoeuvre of such appalling terror that the very stoutest hearts quail -- the undergrounds, metropolitains, those subterranean corridors which, before the time comes, will be driven under all the capitals and from whence those capitals will be blown into the air with all their organizations and archives."
"That the people may know and love their king it is indispensable for him to converse in the market-places with his people. This ensures the necessary clinching of the two forces which are now divided one from another by us by the terror. This terror was indispensable for us till the time come; for both these forces separately to fall under our influence."
"In a word, to sum up our system of keeping the governments of the goyim in Europe in check, we shall show our strength to one of them by terrorist attempts and to all, if we allow the possibility of a general rising against us, we shall respond with the guns of America or China or Japan."
"The terrorists have won... What was their goal 15 long, sad years ago? To strip from the world's greatest power, their traditions of growing tolerance. To hamstring the international interests of a country that barely stuck to the international double-white line of the moral road, but came closer than any other. To take our energies from trying... to help the world move forward, and instead make us direct those energies inward, at one another, within our own borders."
"You know, the media and the politicians would have us believe that there's something inherently immoral about terrorism. That is, they would have us believe that it's not immoral for us to destroy a pharmaceutical factory in Sudan with cruise missiles, but it is immoral for someone like Bin Laden to blow up a government building in Washington with a truck bomb. It's okay for us to take out an air-raid shelter full of women and children in Baghdad with a smart bomb, but it's cowardly and immoral for an Iraqi or Iranian agent to pop a vial of sarin in a New York subway tunnel. Really, what should we expect? They don't have aircraft carriers and cruise missiles and stealth bombers. So should we expect them to just sit there and take their punishment when we wage war on them? I think that it is the most reasonable thing in the world for them to hit back at us in the only way they can. It actually takes more courage to be a terrorist behind enemy lines than it does to push the firing button for a cruise missile a hundred miles away from your target. And yet we certainly will see Bill Clinton and every other Jew-serving politician in our government on television denouncing as a "cowardly act" the first terrorist bomb which goes off in the United States as a result of a war against Iraq. And don't be surprised when the FBI and the CIA announce that they have studied the evidence carefully and have determined that it was Iranian terrorists who built the bomb, so that the Jews will have an excuse for expanding the war to take out Iran as well as Iraq."
"Every morning I wake up with the news of bloodshed. I feel my body, desperate to know whether I’m still alive."
"Thank God, my name isn't in the list of those who died or were killed yesterday!"
"Terrorism is a real and serious threat no matter what its ideological origin. And it is not only the immediate casualties who are victims — attacks on minorities for ideological reasons have the effect of terrorizing entire minority groups."
"The impact of terrorism goes far beyond the body count. Violence motivated by racial, ethnic or religious animus fractures society along its most fragile fault lines, and sends shock waves through entire targeted communities. More hatred and fear, particularly of diversity, are often the response."
"Osama Bin Laden and George Bush were both terrorists. They were both building international networks that perpetrate terror and devastate people’s lives. Bush with the Pentagon, the WTO, the IMF and the World Bank. Bin Laden with Al-Qaeda. The difference is that nobody elected Bin Laden... The United States supported Saddam Hussein and made sure that he ruled with an iron fist for all those years. Then they used the sanctions to break the back of civil society. Then they made Iraq disarm. Then they attacked Iraq. And now they’ve taken over all its assets."
"Terrorists aren't trying to kill us because we offended them. They attack us because they want to impose their view of the world on as many people as they can, and America is standing in their way. We need to make it unmistakably clear that we will do whatever it takes, for however long it takes, to defeat radical Islamic terrorism. We will punish — we will punish their allies, like Iran — and we will stand with our allies, like Israel."
"Unlike the wimps who have merely condemned terrorism without defining it, Netanyahu bravely ventures a definition: “terrorism” he says, “is the deliberate and systematic murder, maiming, and menacing of the innocent to inspire fear for political purposes.” But this powerful philosophic formulation is as flawed as all the other definitions, not only because it is vague about exceptions and limits but because its application and interpretation in Netanyahu’s book depend a priori on a single axiom: “we” are never terrorists; it’s the Moslems, Arabs and Communists who are."
"The spurious excuse of ‘fighting terrorism’ serves to legitimize every case of torture, illegal detention, demolition of houses, expropriation of land, murder, collective punishment, deportation, censorship, closure of schools and universities."
"Governments are terrorists, but they hide their actions behind the label of nationalism and patriotism: war becomes defense; theft becomes 'taxation'; slavery becomes 'conscription'; terrorism becomes 'defense.' Few people question the violations; rather, if they do protest, it is because the government is oppressing the 'wrong' group of people, and not because they regard coercion itself as wrong."
"Islamic terrorists are against us because of what we do, not who we are…if we did not attack them, then their leadership would have trouble persuading their followers that they need to die attacking the American way of life."
"For more than 150 years after it was coined, “terrorism” meant violence inflicted by the state on its people. How did the word come to mean the reverse?"
"Today Israel and India are embattled democracies, sharing values and the challenge of terrorism. United in our quest for life, liberty and peace our joint determination to fight for these values can inspire our hopes for a better future for our people."
"A terrorist act is the logical if extreme outcome of white supremacy and intolerance. Apparently, reasons this particular white supremacist gunman, 'if you can't own them, exploit them, or remove them, you kill them'."
"No religion, whether Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, or Christian, supports terrorism."
"The term "Single Issue Terrorism" is broadly accepted as extremist militancy on the part of groups or individuals protesting a perceived grievance or wrong usually attributed to governmental action or inaction. Generally, three principal issues are regarded to fall under that definition: animal rights, environmentalism, and abortion."
"History has shown us that strength may be useless when faced with terrorism."
"The terrorist kills because he cannot compete with his adversaries. Instead of responding to Salman Rushdie’s ill-structured and unreadable novel with a novel that is well-plotted and properly written, the terrorist calls for his murder. The terrorist cannot challenge Theo van Gogh’s controversial documentary with a better one and thus decides to stab him to death. The history of contemporary Islamist terrorism is full of instances of cold-blooded murder ordered by those who could not compete in literary, political, social or even theological fields against those better than them. With the advent of globalization, Islamist terrorism is now able to strike beyond the frontiers of the Muslim world. But the same lazy mentality is at work. The terrorist knows that he is incapable of building an alternative civilization capable of competing with the one he despises. So he tries to destroy what becomes the cause of his humiliation."
"Terrorists may end up like the man who, having won a great many tokens at the roulette table, is surprised when the casino tells him his winnings cannot be cashed."
"Terrorism is terrorism, violence is violence, and it has no place."
"Well, what if you said something like — if this happens in the United States, and we determine that it is the result of extremist, fundamentalist Muslims, you know, you could take out their holy sites."
"We must try to find ways to starve the terrorist and the hijacker of the oxygen of publicity on which they depend."
"It looked as if death itself had danced on the roads of Delhi that day."
"The terror of was directed against the proletariat. Our shoot , capitalists, and generals who are striving to restore the capitalist order. Do you grasp this... distinction? Yes? For us communists it is quite sufficient."
"In our eyes, individual terror is inadmissible precisely because it belittles the role of the masses in their own consciousness, reconciles them to their own powerlessness, and turns their eyes and hopes toward a great avenger and liberator who someday will come and accomplish his mission."
"Terrorists who oppress and murder innocent people should never sleep soundly, knowing that we will completely destroy them. These savage monsters will not escape their fate – and they will not escape the final judgement of God."
"Criminal acts intended or calculated to provoke a state of terror in the public, a group of persons or particular persons for political purposes are in any circumstance unjustifiable, whatever the considerations of a political, philosophical, ideological, racial, ethnic, religious or any other nature that may be invoked to justify them."
"Terrorism is the war of the poor, and war is the terrorism of the rich."
"Accusations of terrorism are usually very subjective. There seems to be no objective adjudicator on the subject of terrorism. In fact, in the post-9/11 United States the label has been thrown about with such carelessness in the media that the very word is in danger of losing significance. It is rapidly becoming the most commonly, carelessly, thoughtlessly and irresponsibly used word in the English language."
"Terrorism must be outlawed by all civilized nations — not explained or rationalized, but fought and eradicated. Nothing can, nothing will justify the murder of innocent people and helpless children."
"We must answer hatred and violence from terrorists with exclusion and intolerance and show who's the boss."
"Thousands of people have been killed by the terrorists and millions have been injured. I am just one of them. So here I stand, one girl among many. I speak not for myself, but so those without a voice can be heard. Those who have fought for their rights. Their right to live in peace. Their right to be treated with dignity. Their right to equality of opportunity. Their right to be educated."
"We must address the root causes of terrorism to end it for all time. […] I believe putting resources into improving the lives of poor people is a better strategy than spending it on guns."
"I invite all of us to continue taking preventive measures so that acts of terror do recur in the future. If there are such acts, immediate action must be taken and the perpetrators must be brought to justice. We know terrorism is something that we don’t want in Indonesia. Terrorism is a crime. No religion allows it."
"The next time you hear of a terror attack, no matter where it is, no matter what the circumstances, you will likely think to yourself, 'It's Muslims again.' And you will probably be right."
"Terrorist villains were a popular go-to in the 15 years preceding 9/11. Many films, like Air Force One (1997) and Die Hard (1988), featured Eastern European and Russian terrorists with more of a Cold War bent, depicting a Soviet-themed antagonist as something that felt real but no longer presented an existential threat. Others, like True Lies (1994), produced in the aftermath of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, featured Arab terrorists — a topical threat at the time, but ultimately not a real danger to American hegemony. After 9/11, terrorism was a topic no longer to be joked about, a trend that persists to this day. Friends had a significant edit in the episode "The One Where Rachel Tells Ross," in which Chandler is taken into custody by the TSA after making a quip about bringing a bomb onto a plane; that scene was removed. Films like The Bourne Identity (2002), whose plot featured terrorism and a villainous CIA, were extensively re-edited and reshot, not just for the terrorist elements but for fears that a villainous CIA might be seen as anti-American."
"Huey squeals to the Feds’ terrorism hotline -"
"Huey helps the FBI wage war on terrorism"
"Huey: Speaking honestly is not being insensitive. You think I’m not scared like everyone else? I’m scared to death! I know those terrorists don’t care about my leftist philosophies. I know they’ll kill me just as soon as they’ll kill anyone else matter of fact. Terrorist attacks are now my new number one fear!"
"FBI: FBI terrorism tip line."
"Counselor Troi: He needs your strength right now."
"Lt Cmdr. Data: Sir, I am finding it difficult to understand many aspects of Ansata conduct. Much of their behavior would be defined by my programme as unnecessary and unacceptable."
"If you look into the history of what is called the CIA, which means the US White House, its secret wars, clandestine warfare, the trail of drug production just follows. It started in France after the Second World War when the United States was essentially trying to reinstitute the traditional social order, to rehabilitate Fascist collaborators, wipe out the Resistance and destroy the unions and so on. The first thing they did was reconstitute the Mafia, as strikebreakers or for other such useful services. And the Mafia doesn't do it for fun, so there was a tradeoff: Essentially, they allowed them to reinstitute the heroin production system, which had been destroyed by the Fascists. The Fascists tended to run a pretty tight ship; they didn't want any competition, so they wiped out the Mafia. But the US reconstituted it, first in southern Italy, and then in southern France with the Corsican Mafia. That's where the famous French Connection comes from. That was the main heroin center for many years. Then US terrorist activities shifted over to Southeast Asia. If you want to carry out terrorist activities, you need local people to do it for you, and you also need secret money to pay for it, clandestine hidden money. Well, if you need to hire thugs and murderers with secret money, there aren't many options. One of them is the drug connection. The so-called Golden Triangle around Burma, Laos and Thailand became a big drug producing area with the help of the United States, as part of the secret wars against those populations."
"When Bobby Kennedy went after organized crime in the early 1960s, one of the things he learned was that the Mafia had a series of rituals new members went through to declare their loyalty and promise they’d never turn away from their new benefactors. Once in, they’d be showered with money and protection, but they could never leave and even faced serious problems if they betrayed the syndicate."
"The states in America replaced the Mafia as the proprietor of the numbers game."
"A very interesting report on the London property market as a refuge for secret assets and dirty money – published in March 2015 by Transparency UK – spoke of money coming from corruption or corrupt individuals, without ever mentioning the word “”; nor did it ever mention “organised crime”. The reason is simple: with the exception of a few very rare cases, in the UK the mafia is not something that you can see or hear. There aren’t dead bodies on the streets, or shootings. In Mexico or in Italy, between corpses, blood and drug seizures it’s impossible to think that the Mafia doesn’t exist. In Italy and in Mexico Mafia is loud and it smells of blood. In London, as in Paris, it exists, but it’s quiet, it acts in the dark. And most of all it doesn’t have the pungent smell of blood, but the reassuring smell of money. It’s not true that money doesn’t smell, it does smell indeed, but you definitely can’t rely on your sense of smell to identify criminal money."
"In silence, illegal assets are moving around and undermining our economy and our democracies. In silence. But it doesn’t stop here; organised crime is providing us with a winning economic model. Organised crime is the only segment of global economy to have not been affected by the financial crisis; to have profited from the crisis, to have fed on the crisis, to have contributed to the crisis. And it’s in the crisis that it finds its satellite activities, such as usury, gambling, counterfeiting. But the most important – and most alarming – aspect of this issue is that it’s exactly in times of crisis that criminal organisations find their safe haven in banks."
"Have you ever asked yourselves why Mafias from all over the world are constantly opening restaurants, cafes or shops? Because this type of commercial activity has huge amounts of cash coming in. A Mafioso businessman’s number one priority is not to make money, but to hand out receipts in order to justify money that he already has. In Italy, where tax avoidance is extremely high, we know that when a shopkeeper is reluctant to give you a receipt he or she is almost definitely committing an offence, but almost definitely not a Mafioso. Businesses run by the Mafia will always give you a receipt. And the , in the years of the wavering ruble, safely stored away its money in London’s luxury homes, fuelling London’s property bubble with dirty money. The fictitious buying and selling of property is one of organised crime’s favourite ways of laundering money. ... This is how entire neighbourhoods in London are becoming unoccupied, turning into investments’ empty spaces. Money moves in, and people move out."
"Danbury wasn't a prison, it was a crime school. I went in with a Bachelor of marijuana, came out with a Doctorate of cocaine. ~ George Jung."
"A lot of holes in the desert, and a lot of problems are buried in those holes. But you gotta do it right. I mean, you gotta have the hole already dug before you show up with a package in the trunk. Otherwise, you're talking about a half-hour to forty-five minutes worth of digging. And who knows who's gonna come along in that time? Pretty soon, you gotta dig a few more holes. You could be there all fuckin' night. ~ Nicky Santoro."
"When they send for you, you go in alive, you come out dead, and it's your best friend that does it. ~ Benjamin "Lefty" Ruggiero."
"When I introduce you, I'm gonna say, "This is a friend of mine." That means you're a connected guy. Now if I said instead, "this is a friend of ours", that would mean you a made guy. Capice? ~ Benjamin "Lefty" Ruggiero."
"[Luca Brasi's bulletproof vest is delivered with a fish inside]"
"I don't like violence, Tom. I'm a businessman; blood is a big expense. ~ Virgil Sollozzo."
"There are many things my father taught me here in this room. He taught me: keep your friends close, but your enemies closer. ~ Michael Corleone."
"I make him an offer he don't refuse ~ Vito Corleone."
"Never hate your enemies. It affects your judgement. ~ Michael Corleone."
"You know, Michael; now that you're so respectable, I think you're more dangerous than ever. I liked you better when you were just a common Mafia hood. ~ Kay Adams/Corleone."
"The richest man is the one with the most powerful friends ~ Don Altobello."
"And when the cops, when they assigned a whole army to stop Jimmy, what'd he do? He made 'em partners ~ Henry Hill."
"All they got from Paulie was protection from other guys looking to rip them off. That's what it's all about. That's what the FBI can never understand - that what Paulie and the organization offer is protection for the kinds of guys who can't go to the cops. They're like the police department for wiseguys. ~ Henry Hill."
"For most of the guys, killing's got to be accepted. Murder was the only way that everybody stayed in line. You got out of line, you got whacked. Everybody knew the rules. But sometimes, even if people didn't get out of line, they got whacked. I mean, hits just became a habit for some of the guys. Guys would get into arguments over nothing and before you knew it, one of them was dead. And they were shooting each other all the time. Shooting people was a normal thing. It was no big deal. ~ Henry Hill."
"Don't get high on your own supply. ~ Elvira Hancock"
"You see, Sykes, it's a fish-eat-fish world, you either take, or you get taken out. ~ Don Lino"
"It's a terrible thing, Don Lino. Everybody loved Frankie. May whoever did this die a thousand deaths. May his stinking, maggot-covered corpse rot in the fiery depths of hell! ~ Giuseppe"
"Hi, this is Luca the Octopu...I mean...forget about it. Just listen up and follow these instructions, to the letter like. File cabinet, bottom drawer, there's a package... [Oscar opens the package to find the necklace he gave Angie...] That's right, tough guy. We got your girl. Now there's gonna be a sit-down. Be there if you don't wanna see her sleeping with the fishes... [Oscar's confused] ...the DEAD ones! [Oscar became shocked] Now nod your head if you understand. [Oscar nods his head] Now tell me if you nodded your head. ~ Luca"
"I'm in the waste management business. Everybody immediately assumes you're mobbed up. It's a stereotype, and it's offensive. ~ Tony Soprano."
"There is no Mafia. ~ Tony Soprano."
"You can get further with a kind word and a gun than you can with just a kind word. ~ Al Capone."
"Oscar? Yeah, I know him. Just goes to show you that even a little fish can make a splash in a big pond, under the right circumstances. In his case, he's lucky he didn't end up as an hors d'oeuvre at a shark banquet. ~ Don Lino."
"Whoever sheds man's blood, his blood will be shed by man, for God made man in his own image."
"And if he smite him with an instrument of iron, so that he die, he is a murderer: the murderer shall surely be put to death. And if he smite him with throwing a stone, wherewith he may die, and he die, he is a murderer: the murderer shall surely be put to death. Or if he smite him with an hand weapon of wood, wherewith he may die, and he die, he is a murderer: the murderer shall surely be put to death. The revenger of blood himself shall slay the murderer: when he meeteth him, he shall slay him. But if he thrust him of hatred, or hurl at him by laying of wait, that he die; Or in enmity smite him with his hand, that he die: he that smote him shall surely be put to death; for he is a murderer: the revenger of blood shall slay the murderer, when he meeteth him."
"So ye shall not pollute the land wherein ye are: for blood it defileth the land: and the land cannot be cleansed of the blood that is shed therein, but by the blood of him that shed it."
"War can be and is mass murder, where the motive is wrong. It can be sacrifice and right action, where the motive is right. The slaying of a man in the act of killing the defenseless is not regarded as murder. The principle remains the same, whether it is killing an individual who is murdering, or fighting a nation which is warring on the defenseless."
"Thou shalt not kill."
"HOMICIDE, n. The slaying of one human being by another. There are four kinds of homocide: felonious, excusable, justifiable, and praiseworthy, but it makes no great difference to the person slain whether he fell by one kind or another -- the classification is for advantage of the lawyers."
"Of crimes injurious to the persons of private subjects, the most principal and important is the offense of taking away that life, which is the immediate gift of the great creator; and which therefore no man can be entitled to deprive himself or another of, but in some manner either expressly commanded in, or evidently deducible from, those laws which the creator has given us; the divine laws, I mean, of either nature or revelation."
"A subtler analogue occurs in treatments of murder and abortion in twentieth-century fiction. Both are the objects of real and urgent moral, emotional, and legal concerns among American citizens. Yet murder is depicted vastly more often than abortion: it is the single most common plot device in whole genres of imaginative literature-novels, movies, and television. Abortion occurs much less often as a plot device even in novels, and almost never in movies or on television. Is this because murder is a familiar part of most Americans’ lives and abortion is not? Or because Americans are more likely to be affected by a murder than by an abortion? Or because murder is less horrible and disapproved than abortion? On the contrary: there are enormously more abortions in the United States than murders, and vastly more members of the reading public are affected by abortion than by homicide (unless, of course, one categorized abortions as “murders,” but it is still not the act on which the bulk of mystery or action plots turn). Moreover, although substantial elements of the population are categorically opposed to it, many Americans do not regard abortion as immoral. Precisely because murder, although a real social problem is horrible enough and sufficiently removed form everyday life to provide the excitement of the extreme and perverse, it makes a useful subject for fiction, whereas abortion raises problems which are too familiar, too troubling, too ambivalent, and not sufficiently exotic to afford the same satisfaction in reading."
"In the United States in 1978, according to government figures, there were 1.4 million “legal” abortions- a figure doubtless much lower than the number of abortions of all kinds- as compared to 19,600 murders for the same year, including “nonnegligent homicides” (U.S. Dept. of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, “Statistical Abstract of the United States: 1980: National Data Book and Guide to Sources” [Washington, 1980], pp. 69 and 182)."
"Murder begins where self-defense ends."
""'Having abandoned the destruction of life, the recluse Gotama abstains from the destruction of life. He has laid aside the rod and the sword, and dwells conscientious, full of kindness, compassionate for the welfare of all living beings.' It is in this way, bhikkhus, that the worldling would speak when speaking in praise of the Tathāgata."
".....murder is not just a crime of lust or violence. It becomes possession. They are part of you … [the victim] becomes a part of you, and you [two] are forever one … and the grounds where you kill them or leave them become sacred to you, and you will always be drawn back to them."
"The murder of a human being is gravely contrary to the dignity of the person and the holiness of the Creator."
"The prohibition of murder does not abrogate the right to render an unjust aggressor unable to inflict harm. Legitimate defense is a grave duty for whoever is responsible for the lives of others or the common good."
"Human life is sacred because from its beginning it involves the creative action of God and it remains for ever in a special relationship with the Creator, who is its sole end. God alone is the Lord of life from its beginning until its end: no one can under any circumstance claim for himself the right directly to destroy an innocent human being… The deliberate murder of an innocent person is gravely contrary to the dignity of the human being, to the golden rule, and to the holiness of the Creator. The law forbidding it is universally valid: it obliges each and everyone, always and everywhere... The fifth commandment forbids direct and intentional killing as gravely sinful. The murderer and those who cooperate voluntarily in murder commit a sin that cries out to heaven for vengeance."
"Scripture notes a twofold equity on which this commandment is founded. Man is both the image of God and our flesh. Wherefore, if we would not violate the image of God, we must hold the person of man sacred—if we would not divest ourselves of humanity we must cherish our own flesh. The practical inference to be drawn from the redemption and gift of Christ will be elsewhere considered. The Lord has been pleased to direct our attention to these two natural considerations as inducements to watch over our neighbour's preservation, viz., to revere the divine image impressed upon him, and embrace our own flesh. To be clear of the crime of murder, it is not enough to refrain from shedding man's blood. If in act you perpetrate, if in endeavour you plot, if in wish and design you conceive what is adverse to another's safety, you have the guilt of murder. On the other hand, if you do not according to your means and opportunity study to defend his safety, by that inhumanity you violate the law. But if the safety of the body is so carefully provided for, we may hence infer how much care and exertion is due to the safety of the soul, which is of immeasurably higher value in the sight of God."
"Mordre wol out, that see we day by day."
"Oh dear, I never realized what a terrible lot of explaining one has to do in a murder!"
"Every murderer is probably somebody's old friend."
"It must be true that whenever a sensational murder is committed there are people who — though they are, quite properly, of no interest to law enforcers, attorneys, or newspaper reporters — weep, lie sleepless, and realize at last that their lives have been changed by a crime in which they played no part."
"To kill someone for committing murder is a punishment incomparably worse than the crime itself. Murder by legal sentence is immeasurably more terrible than murder by brigands."
"Keep far from a false charge, and don't kill the innocent and righteous: for I will not justify the wicked."
"True believing Christians are sheep among wolves. ... They employ neither worldly sword nor war, since with them killing is absolutely renounced."
"In vain do they think themselves innocent who appropriate to their own use alone those goods which God gave in common; by not giving to others that which they themselves receive, they become homicides and murderers, inasmuch as in keeping for themselves those things which would alleviate the sufferings of the poor, we may say that every day they cause the death of as many persons as they might have fed and did not. When, therefore, we offer the means of living to the indigent, we do not give them anything of ours, but that which of right belongs to them. It is less a work of mercy which we perform than the payment of a debt."
"The human race isn't worth fighting for, only worth killing. Give the Earth back to the animals. They deserve it infinitely more than we do. Nothing means anything anymore."
"You're not a homicidal, I checked that on your record before I came out after you. That is why I know you will join the Corps and get a great deal of pleasure out of going after the other kind of criminal who is sick, not just socially protesting. The man who can kill and enjoy it."
"One of television's great contributions is that it brought murder back into the home, where it belongs."
"By focusing on the entitlements of collectivities (notably nation states) as opposed to the well-being of individuals, the just war theory frames a rationale for war which omits the central moral issue...whether the massive, systematic and deliberate killing of human beings can ever be justified."
"Humans are basically good. That's why it takes so much training to march march march kill kill kill kill."
"Gentlemen of the Jury, the charge against the prisoner is murder, and the punishment of murder Is death; and that simple statement is sufficient to suggest to us the awful solemnity of the occasion which brings you and me face to face."
"If the masterpiece was murder, I'd major in art."
"No one joins the murder squad who hasn't a taste for death."
"To die is the lot of all, to commit homicide only of the weak man."
"I am not afraid to kill you for there is no death."
"For instance, if you have by a lie hindered a man who is even now planning a murder, you are legally responsible for all the consequences. But if you have strictly adhered to the truth, public justice can find no fault with you, be the unforeseen consequence what it may. It is possible that whilst you have honestly answered Yes to the murderer's question, whether his intended victim is in the house, the latter may have gone out unobserved, and so not have come in the way of the murderer, and the deed therefore have not been done; whereas, if you lied and said he was not in the house, and he had really gone out (though unknown to you) so that the murderer met him as he went, and executed his purpose on him, then you might with justice be accused as the cause of his death. For, if you had spoken the truth as well as you knew it, perhaps the murderer while seeking for his enemy in the house might have been caught by neighbours coming up and the deed been prevented."
"People try to excuse their brutality by saying that it is the custom; but a crime does not cease to be a crime because many commit it. Karma takes no account of custom; and the karma of cruelty is the most terrible of all. The fate of the cruel must fall also upon all who go out intentionally to kill God's creatures, and call it "sport"."
"Through violence you may murder a liar but you can't establish truth. Through violence you may murder a hater, but you can't murder hate. Darkness cannot put out darkness. Only light can do that."
"Some people will kill for second-rate reasons and that makes their act even more monstrous. The fact that a man will kill for a little money or kill for unnecessary reasons as the thrill of it might be looked down upon by a professional killer. He wouldn't kill for a few dollars or for the thrill of it. The professional murderer would kill for good money and good reasons and he would consider himself a craftsman."
"Around his neck a ribbon clung, Close to his heart a picture hung : I saw the face — it was not mine ; I saw, too, a small dagger shine, A curious toy — you know the rest."
"Abel the victim—Cain the homicide, Were type and prophecy Of times that were to be, Thus reddened from the first life’s troubled tide."
"Murder, like talent, seems occasionally to run in families."
"The power to kill is less than the power to create, for it produces an ending rather than the beginning of something new."
"You must not murder.(Exodus 20:13) Q. What does this mean? A. We should fear and love God so that we may not hurt or harm our neighbor in his body, but help and befriend him in every bodily need [in every need and danger of life and body]."
"We have now completed both the spiritual and the temporal government, that is, the divine and the paternal authority and obedience. But here now we go forth from our house among our neighbors to learn how we should live with one another, every one himself toward his neighbor. Therefore God and government are not included in this commandment nor is the power to kill, which they have taken away. For God has delegated His authority to punish evil-doers to the government instead of parents, who aforetime (as we read in Moses) were required to bring their own children to judgment and sentence them to death. Therefore, what is here forbidden is forbidden to the individual in his relation to any one else, and not to the government."
"Problems or successes, they all are the results of our own actions. Karma. The philosophy of action is that no one else is the giver of peace or happiness. One's own karma, one's own actions are responsible to come to bring either happiness or success or whatever... As you sow, so shall you reap. It's a very old proverb of mankind. As you sow, so shall you reap. Sometime you may have killed that man, and then sometime now he comes to kill you... What we have done, the result of that comes to us whenever it comes, either today, tomorrow, hundred years later, hundred lives later, whatever, whatever. And so, it's our own karma. That is why that philosophy in every religion: Killing is sin. Killing is sin in every religion. Whosoever sins, whoever is killed, it doesn't matter. It's a sin. And sin.. is a punishable offense. Because when you sin, when you've killed some man, what you are killing? You are killing the cosmic potential within the individual. Individual is cosmic. Individual potential of life is cosmic potential. Individual is divine deep inside. Transcendental experience awakens that divinity in man...When you kill a man like that you deprive him from getting to his human right."
"Had Thomas Nash been an impressed American, the homicide on board the Hermoine, would, most certainly, not have been murder. The act of impressing an American is an act of lawless violence. The confinement on board a vessel is a continuation of that violence, and in additional outrage. Death committed within the United States, in resisting such violence, would not have been murder."
"I killed their innocence. I killed their ambitions. And I killed their sense of security. I not only physically killed people, I mentally killed people too. I don't know how to describe the sorrow I feel when I think of the victims."
"The amount of pain it [murder] causes to everyone who ever cared about you, and innocent people, outweighs anything you are going through right now."
"Why should murder be so over-represented in our popular fiction, and crimes of a sexual nature so under-represented? Surely it cannot be because rape is worse than murder, and is thus deserving of a special unmentionable status. Surely, the last people to suggest that rape was worse than murder were the sensitively reared classes of the Victorian era … And yet, while it is perfectly acceptable (not to say almost mandatory) to depict violent and lethal incidents in lurid and gloating high-definition detail, this is somehow regarded as healthy and perfectly normal, and it is the considered depiction of sexual crimes that will inevitably attract uproars of the current variety."
"The murder of one person is called unrighteous and incurs one death penalty. Following this argument, the murder of ten persons will be ten times as unrighteous and there should be ten death penalties; the murder of a hundred persons will be a hundred times as unrighteous and there should be a hundred death penalties. All the gentlemen of the world know that they should condemn these things, calling them unrighteous. But when it comes to the great unrighteousness of attacking states, they do not know that they should condemn it. On the contrary, they applaud it, calling it righteous."
"To test the idea, the scholars examined the correlation between state abortion rates from 1973-1976 and state crime rates from 1985-1997, ostensibly when the children, had they not been aborted, have reached the prime crime-committing age group of 18-24. After factoring out such influences as income, racial composition, unemployment and incarcerations, Donohue and Levitt found a statistically significant correlation between high abortion rates and lower crime rates. For example, Donohue noted, the 10 states with the lowest incidence of abortions saw their murder rate rise 16.9 percent between 1985-1997, while the 10 with the highest incidence of abortions saw their murder rate drop 31.5 percent."
"Hell of a thing killing a man... you take away all he has and all he's gonna have."
"One murder made a villain, Millions a hero. Princes were privileged To kill, and numbers sanctified the crime."
"As a social phenomenon, serial murder is only about a hundred and twenty-five years old, part of as swelling tide of interpersonal violence that has been since the middle of the nineteenth century."
"The first killer I ever studied had put bandages over the wounds of the people he stabbed after they were dead, Other killers have done the same thing."
"When bodies are assaulted or parts excised, the killer is signifying his wish to remove any vestiges of humanity from the victim."
"I believe too thoroughly that we create our own reality, for one thing -- an unpopular belief where violence is concerned -- but I'm convinced that the victim-to-be picks out the assailant with as much skill and craft as the murderer seeks his victim, and until we learn much more about both, we'll get nowhere battling crime. I'm not justifying murder by any means, but I'm saying that the victim wants to be murdered -- perhaps to be punished, if not by a vengeful god then by one of his fellows, and that a would-be murderer can switch in a minute and become the victim instead; and that the slayer wants to be slain."
"It is forbidden to murder, as it says "You shall not murder" (Exodus 20:13, Deuteronomy 5:17). A murderer must be put to death, as it says "He shall be avenged" (Exodus 21:20, see Leviticus 24:17,21); it is forbidden to accept compensation from him instead, as it says "You shall not take redemption for the life of a murderer...; and there shall be no atonement for the blood that was spilled... except the blood of him that spilled it" (Numbers 35:31-33). It is forbidden to execute a murderer before he has stood trial, as it says "And the murderer shall not die until he stands before the congregation for judgment" (Numbers 35:12). However, we are commanded to prevent an attempted murder by killing the would-be murderer if necessary, and it is forbidden to refrain from doing so, as it says "And you shall cut off her hand; you shall not be merciful" (Deuteronomy 25:12); and similarly for attempted fornication, as it says "[If the man seizes her and lies with her...] just as a man rises up against his friend and murders him, so is this thing"(Deuteronomy 22:26). It is forbidden to refrain from saving life when it is in one's power to do so, as it says "You shall not stand on your friend's blood"(Leviticus 19:16)."
"Kill one man, and you are a murderer. Kill millions of men, and you are a conqueror. Kill them all, and you are a god.""
"I say a murder is abstract. You pull the trigger and after that you do not understand anything that happens."
"If survival calls for the bearing of arms, bear them you must. But the most important part of the challenge is for you to find another means that does not come with the killing of your fellow man."
"Murder most foul, as in the best it is, But this most foul, strange, and unnatural."
"For murder, though it have no tongue, will speak With most miraculous organ."
"He took my father grossly, full of bread; With all his crimes broad blown, as flush as May; And how his audit stands who knows save heaven?"
"No place, indeed, should murder sanctuarize."
"O, pardon me, thou bleeding piece of earth, That I am meek and gentle with these butchers! Thou art the ruins of the noblest man That ever lived in the tide of times. Woe to the hand that shed this costly blood Over thy wounds now do I prophesy."
"Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood Clean from my hand? No, this my hand will rather The multitudinous seas incardine, Making the green one red."
"Blood hath been shed ere now i' the olden time, Ere humane statute purg'd the gentle weal; Ay, and since too, murders have been perform'd Too terrible for the ear: the time has been, That, when the brains were out, the man would die, And there an end; but now they rise again, With twenty mortal murders on their crowns, And push us from our stools: this is more strange Than such a murder is."
"The great King of kings Hath in the table of his law commanded That thou shalt do no murder: and wilt thou, then, Spurn at his edict and fulfill a man's?"
"Killing ain't fair, but somebody's got to do it."
"Bread is life to the poor; he who takes it from them is a murderer."
"Hiko Seijuro: Murder is the only art a swordsman may practice. No ornamental words can change that. You want to protect people with murder? You’ll slaughter legions so that a few may live. Many years, long before you were born, my sword was tearing asunder the lives of men. Yes, all of those men were evil, but they were human beings first and foremost, Kenshin. The world you ardently desire to enter will not know what to do with you. It will deceive you into believing that you are saving lives even as you destroy them. You will accept these lies all the while, your hands will be stained with the worst of offenses."
"We are concerned here only with the imposition of capital punishment for the crime of murder, and when a life has been taken deliberately by the offender, we cannot say that the punishment is invariably disproportionate to the crime. It is an extreme sanction suitable to the most extreme of crimes."
"This is my costume. I'm a homicidal maniac. They look just like everyone else."
"Do you not weep? Other sins only speak; murder shrieks out. The element of water moistens the earth, But blood flies upwards and bedews the heavens."
"I respect a person who's willing to die for his country, but I admire a person who is prepared to kill for his country."
"I've never murdered anyone in my life. The decisions are up to them."
"One to destroy is murder by the law, And gibbets keep the lifted hand in awe; To murder thousands takes a specious name, War's glorious art, and gives immortal fame."
"A man lusts to become a god...and there is murder. Murder upon murder upon murder. Why is the world of men nothing but murder?"
"Kay: There's something even thieves should never steal. Do you know what that is? Edgeworth: You really shouldn't steal anything, however, I'll bite. What shouldn't a thief steal? Kay: A life. It's too heavy of a burden on your soul to get away with, ever."
"Carcasses bleed at the sight of the murderer."
"Et tu, Brute fili."
"Blood, though it sleep a time, yet never dies. Trie gods on murtherers fix revengeful eyes."
"Murder may pass unpunish'd for a time, But tardy justice will o'ertake the crime."
"Neque enim lex est sequior ulla, Quam necis artifices arte perire sua."
"Cast not the clouded gem away, Quench not the dim but living ray,— My brother man, Beware! With that deep voice which from the skies Forbade the Patriarch's sacrifice. God's angel, cries, Forbear!"
"Killing no murder."
"Torture, encouraged from above, became a fact of life [in occupied Iraq]. Perhaps some good liberal apologist for Blair will soon explain how democratic torture is much nicer than authoritarian torture."
"APA has a long history of prohibiting torture. Since 1985, APA has issued numerous policies condemning torture, which have been reaffirmed and refined over the years. APA’s policies draw upon international human rights instruments and have expressly adopted the definitions of torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment in the U.N. Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. APA’s policy prohibits psychologists from participating in national security interrogations at detention settings operating in violation of the U.S. Constitution or international law. Jessen was never a member of APA. Mitchell resigned his APA membership in 2006."
"The American Medical Association and the Red Cross both condemn force-feeding as a form of torture. And yet, the U.S. government and the United Nations have both force-fed hunger-striking prisoners. The real problem? Most people probably don’t realize how complicated force-feeding is, and how much can go wrong."
"If I were not an atheist, I would believe in a God who would choose to save people on the basis of the totality of their lives and not the pattern of their words. I think he would prefer an honest and righteous atheist to a TV preacher whose every word is God, God, God, and whose every deed is foul, foul, foul. I would also want a God who would not allow a Hell. Infinite torture can only be a punishment for infinite evil, and I don't believe that infinite evil can be said to exist even in the case of Hitler. Besides, if most human governments are civilized enough to try to eliminate torture and outlaw cruel and unusual punishments, can we expect anything less of an all-merciful God? I feel that if there were an afterlife, punishment for evil would be reasonable and of a fixed term. And I feel that the longest and worst punishment should be reserved for those who slandered God by inventing Hell."
"RACK, n. An argumentative implement formerly much used in persuading devotees of a false faith to embrace the living truth. As a call to the unconverted the rack never had any particular efficacy, and is now held in light popular esteem."
"I was kept awake for many days straight. I was forced to remain in painful positions for hours at a time. These are things I do not want to write about; I want only to forget."
"If everyone could feel everyone else’s pain, who would torture?"
"Perhaps we cannot prevent this world from being a world in which children are tortured. But we can reduce the number of tortured children. And if you don’t help us, who else in the world can help us do this?"
"Question: Films like Funny Games (2007 films) have a strong streak of sadism in them, with psychological as well as physical torture. For me, it’s one of quite a few ‘blow your brains out’ movies of the last eighteen months [Carpenter laughs]. Are we trying to rationalise and digest events in the middle-east?"
"I want to make sure that if my government ever does this horrible, terrible, extraordinary thing, that somebody takes responsibility for it and that it be out there in the open and subject to accountability. … Though I understand the danger of legitimating something that should not be legitimated, on balance in a democracy, I prefer accountability."
"Each local Cheka had its own speciality. In Kharkov they went in for the ‘glove trick’ — burning the victim’s hands in boiling water until the blistered skin could be peeled off: this left the victims with raw and bleeding hands and their torturers with ‘human gloves’. The Tsaritsyn Cheka sawed its victims’ bones in half. In Voronezh they rolled their naked victims in nail-studded barrels. In Armavir they crushed their skulls by tightening a leather strap with an iron bolt around their head. In Kiev they affixed a cage with rats to the victim’s torso and heated it so that the enraged rats ate their way through the victim’s guts in an effort to escape. In Odessa they chained their victims to planks and pushed them slowly into a furnace or a tank of boiling water. A favourite winter torture was to pour water on the naked victims until they became living ice statues. Many Chekas preferred psychological forms of torture. One had the victims led off to what they thought was their execution, only to find that a blank was fired at them. Another had the victims buried alive, or kept in a coffin with a corpse."
"Night and day among the tombs and in the hills he would cry out and cut himself with stones. When he saw Jesus from a distance, he ran and fell on his knees in front of him. He shouted at the top of his voice, "What do you want with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? In God's name don't torture me!" For Jesus had said to him, "Come out of this man, you impure spirit!" 9Then Jesus asked him, "What is your name?" "My name is Legion," he replied, "for we are many.""
"There are one or two rules of thumb which are useful in distinguishing sadism from exciting adventure in the comics. Threat of torture is harmless, but when the torture it’s self is shown it becomes sadism. When a lovely heroine is show bound to the stake, comics followers are sure that the rescue will arrive just in the nick of time. The readers wish is to see save the girl, not to see her suffer. A bound or chained person does not suffer even embarrassment in the comics, and the reader, therefore is not being taught to enjoy suffering."
"We will not torture... We will not torture people... It doesn't work, my friends. It doesn't work. If you inflict enough pain on somebody long enough, they're going to tell you whatever they think you want to hear to have it stopped... There are accomplished interrogators who can gain the confidence of the suspect and gain all the information that they could possibly want."
"Stripped of its bizarre excesses, Cameron's experiments, building upon Donald O. Hebb's earlier breakthrough, laid the scientific foundation for the CIA's two-stage psychological torture method."
"Yeahhh, torture, motherfucker, what? Torture, nigga, what?"
"Look, torture works on 24 and in movies because it has to. It’s a dramatic device to move the plot along, but ask terror experts and they’ll tell you it’s one of those movie tropes that’s got no basis in real life. Like a wedding being interrupted, or someone this handsome [Brad Pitt] feeling sad, or this character [Emma Stone in Aloha] being part-Asian. It works because it just says it does and we’re supposed to take it."
"Everything will be dead inside you. Never again will you be capable of love, or friendship, or joy of living, or laughter, or curiosity, or courage, or integrity. You will be hollow. We shall squeeze you empty and then we shall fill you with ourselves."
"You asked me once, what was in Room 101. I told you that you knew the answer already. Everyone knows it. The thing that is in Room 101 is the worst thing in the world."
"It's easy to convince oneself that things can't really be that bad, that the horror invoked is being overblown, that what is going on elsewhere in space-time is somehow less real than this here-and-now, or that the good in the world somehow offsets the bad. Yet however vividly one thinks one can imagine what agony, torture or suicidal despair must be like, the reality is inconceivably worse. Hazy images of Orwell's 'Room 101' barely hint at what I'm talking about. The force of 'inconceivably' is itself largely inconceivable here. For even if one's ancestral namesakes [aka "younger self"] underwent great pain, then the state-dependence of memory means, right this moment, that the utter dreadfulness of suffering is semantically, cognitively and emotionally inaccessible to the author and site visitors alike."
"We are relieved that James Mitchell and John ‘Bruce’ Jessen abandoned their ill-advised effort to fight the lawsuit alleging that they were responsible for harming three men who were imprisoned and tortured in a secret CIA prison. However, this settlement in no way absolves them of responsibility for violating the ethics of their profession and leaving a stain on the discipline of psychology. We hope that the settling of this case gives some solace to the three plaintiffs and others who endured similar treatment."
"The Porto Ricans (sic) are the dirtiest, laziest, most degenerate and thievish race of men ever to inhabit this sphere… I have done my best to further the process of extermination by killing off eight and transplanting cancer into several more… All physicians take delight in the abuse and torture of the unfortunate subjects."
"I mentioned to one of the gaolers my sense of this hardship, as an obstinate guilty person might deny the truth, whilst an innocent one, less courageous, might very readily, to relieve himself from such a state of misery, make a false confession. His answer was laconic: "Lago confess" … "They soon confess.""
"Torture is senseless violence, born in fear... torture costs human lives but does not save them. We would almost be too lucky if these crimes were the work of savages: the truth is that torture makes torturers."
"Jack Bauer saved Los Angeles. He saved hundreds of thousands of lives, are you going to convict Jack Bauer? Say that criminal law is against him? 'You have the right to a jury trial?' Is any jury going to convict Jack Bauer? I don't think so.""
"Torture was necessary to maintain slavery. It was integral to slavery. You cannot have slavery without some torture or the threat of torture; and you cannot have torture without slavery. You cannot imprison a free man for ever unless you have broken him; and you can only forcibly break a man's soul by torturing it out of him. Slavery dehumanizes; torture dehumanizes in exactly the same way. The torture of human beings who have no freedom and no recourse to the courts is slavery."
"The one thing we know about torture is that it was never designed in the first place to get at the actual truth of anything; it was designed in the darkest days of human history to produce false confessions in order to annihilate political and religious dissidents. And that is how it always works: it gets confessions regardless of their accuracy."
"On 9/11, Cheney immediately thought of the worst possible scenario: What if this had been done with WMDs? It has haunted him ever since - for good and even noble reasons. This panic led him immediately to think of Saddam. But it also led him to realize that our intelligence was so crappy that we simply didn't know what might be coming. That's why the decision to use torture was the first - and most significant - decision this administration made. It is integral to the intelligence behind the war on terror. And Cheney's bizarre view of executive power made it easy in his mind simply to break the law and withdraw from Geneva because torture, in his mind, was the only weapon we had."
"But torture gives false information. And the worst scenarios that tortured detainees coughed up - many of them completely innocent, remember - may well have come to fuel US national security policy. And of course they also fueled more torture. Because once you hear of the existential plots confessed by one tortured prisoner, you need to torture more prisoners to get at the real truth. We do not know what actual intelligence they were getting, and Cheney has ensured that we will never know. But it is perfectly conceivable that the torture regime - combined with panic and paranoia - created an imaginationland of untruth and half-truth that has guided US policy for this entire war. It may well have led to the president being informed of any number of plots that never existed, and any number of threats that are pure imagination. And once torture has entered the system, you can never find out the real truth. You are lost in a vortex of lies and fears. In this vortex, the actual threats that we face may well be overlooked or ignored, as we chase false leads and pursue non-existent WMDs."
"Particularly where it is associated with the more prosperous countries, or those that see themselves as bringers of civilization, torture may wear a humane, almost kindly face. It goes under euphemisms such as 'pressure', 'shock', 'stress' and 'duress'; and the perpetrators themselves will see a distinction between what they do and what they consider to be torture. However, this is as vicious a form of torture as any: it can leave people mentally and physically disabled—indeed, the practitioners acknowledge the potential to render people psychotic, in hours or days. The victim is typically subjected to physical punishments that do not leave obvious scars, and this means that, should the case ever come under legal scrutiny, physical evidence of torture may be lacking. However, many ways of causing extreme pain remain possible. The subject will be tightly handcuffed and restrained, often in a way that damages nerves and muscles; he may be suspended in painful postures, or forced to assume them himself, with damage to muscles and joints; he may be subjected to electric shocks. Typically, he will be kept in a small, dark, bedless cell, with inadequate food and variable toilet facilities, so that his own filth stains the floor and dampens his clothes. He may be exposed to extreme heat or cold, and perhaps forced to stare at the sun. Beatings with rifle butts and kicking with military boots can cause lasting damage; lashing on the soles of the feet can make walking painful for years. A doctor may well be present, persuading the prisoner that he is in the wrong and that all he must do is recant. The doctor may even provide medication—as a symbol of civilization, or to keep the patient alive (deaths in custody can be inconvenient), or to cause pain or disability."
"How can people do this to one another? In society, few people are actively sadistic or psychopathic. To impose one's will on another, particularly with brutality, is possible only if one views oneself as wiser or more valuable; and this notion is fostered by creeds that exalt certain groups and denigrate others. People torture in the name of ideals that, in their culture, would be held to be unassailable—democracy, freedom, Islam. What counts is the label, not the reality of these doctrines. Milgram demonstrated the power of labels when, in his experiment, men in white coats persuaded volunteers to deliver what they thought were lethal electric shocks to screaming individuals (who were acting the part). The quiet priestly authority of 'progress' outweighed the volunteers' own consciences."
"Human beings, regrettably, are easily conditioned to the notion that other sorts of people are different, inferior, intrinsically dangerous. Education is no protection against such conditioning—indeed, the leaders and propagators of political violence are commonly from among the well educated. But an intrinsic feeling of superiority, or necessity, is not enough: the torturer must be placed in an appropriate role. Zimbardo demonstrated the importance of this when he placed students in a mock jail, some as prisoners, others as guards. Within a few days the experiment had to be stopped, such was the treatment meted out to the prisoners by the guards. The torturer may see himself as a defender of humanity, when all the while his conduct is dominated by brutality and corruption. In areas where torture is well established, people are swept up off the streets on a suspicion or a word; bribery secures release, and maladministration results in detention or even execution of the innocent."
"Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) came to power 18 years ago pledging "" for torture. For a while, it seemed sincere. [...] Such hopes now lie in tatters."
"A house of atonement, or expiatory chapel, fitted with several stools of repentance, as distinguished from monogamy, which has but one."
"As for my two wives, what can I do about it? They married me off at thirteen, to my cousin. I was thirteen and she was twenty-three. I didn’t even know what it meant to have a wife, and when they tried to explain it to me, I went out of my mind with rage. With fury. I didn’t want a wife, I wanted to play cricket. I was very fond of cricket. To calm me down, they had to give me two new cricket bags. When the ceremony was over, I ran off to play cricket. There are so many things I must change in my country! And I was fortunate. They married my playmate off at the age of eleven to a woman of thirty-two. He always said to me, »Lucky you!«"
"When I fell in love with my second wife, I was twenty-three. She was also studying in England, and though she was an Iranian, that is, from a country where polygamy is the custom, it was hard for me to persuade her to marry me. I didn’t have many arguments except for the two words, »So what, dammit!« No, the idea of divorcing my first wife never went through my head. Not only because she’s my cousin, but because I have a responsibility toward her. Her whole life has been ruined by this absurd marriage to a boy, by the absurd custom in which we’ve been raised. She lives in my house in Larkana; we see each other every so often. She’s almost always alone. She hasn’t even had children—my four children are born of my second marriage. I’ve spent little time with her—as soon as I was an adolescent I went to the West to study. A story of injustice. I’ll do everything I can to discourage polygamy—besides it causes no small economic problem. Often the wives are separated in different houses or cities, as in my case. And not everyone can afford it, as I can."
"In pious times, ere priest-craft did begin, Before polygamy was made a sin; When man, on many, multipli'd his kind, Ere one to one was cursedly confin'd: When Nature prompted, and no Law deni'd Promiscuous use of concubine and bride; Then, Israel's monarch, after Heaven's own heart, His vigorous warmth did variously impart To wives and slaves: and, wide as his command, Scatter'd his Maker's image through the land."
"In the reign of James the Second, It was generally reckoned As a rather serious crime To marry two wives at a time."
"Moses has four wives, and so did Abraham...To this day, Judaism permits polygamy. The Hindus permit polygamy. The Buddhists permit polygamy. There is not a single religion on the face of the earth that bans polygamy, but all religions agree that women are not allowed to have more than one husband."
"In polygamy, children are mere extensions of their mothers and normally are their fathers’ property. With so many children, they are thought of by fathers as a group rather than as individuals. Men, who believe they are the God of the home and who already live outside of societal norms, often make their children victims of ever more deviant and unimaginable abuses. Polygamy is patriarchy spun off into its furthest possible extreme."
"With the power of the scriptures, polygamy continues its enslavement of women who are manipulated into believing that to do otherwise is to reap eternal damnation; by believing, however, they make of their lives a hell on earth."
"The abusive nature of polygamous relationships often extend to women within one household vying with one another for the affections and attention of one man. As Vicky and Rowenna explain, “What is going on with a sister-wife, or wives, is that you are sharing one penis. That’s what it all revolves around.”"
"Vicky says that she has never seen any truly happy families within these polygamous groups. “Every man has his favorite wife,” she explains. “It causes a lot of hurt.”"
"In keeping with her reputation for outspokenness against the lifestyle she endured for too long, Rowenna says, “You can tell a man dreamed all this up. Polygamy is one big eternal fuck.”"
"As a dedicated male in the AUB, George rose quickly in the hierarchy to become a councilman under the prophet, Owen Allred. “George ended up with eight total wives but two left him,” says Lillian. “I grew up with six mothers and 39 siblings, but only six of us were my mom’s kids and two of my dad’s wives never had children.”"
"“It’s the sickest way of living ever; and women do it for a ticket to heaven, thinking the hell they live now is worth it,”she says. “I look back and recognize the signs of a cult: fear and the parade of ‘how happy people are’ bullshit. They’re conditioned to say that. It’s what you’re taught because if you don’t say you’re happy, you'll go to hell. They don’t recognize that. It took me a long time.”"
"Perhaps no one else has seen and lived through more of the inner workings and daily lives of as many varied Mormon fundamentalist polygamist groups as Laura Chapman. Based on her firsthand experiences and observations, there is one message above all that she wants to convey about living in polygamy: incest, statutory rape, physical, sexual and emotional abuse, deprivation of education and forced marriages of young girls are endemic to all of the polygamist communities and not, as some have proclaimed, no worse than in the general monogamous population or isolated to only a few polygamous groups."
"Her diagnosis was a cancerous brain tumor requiring chemotherapy….Because a pregnancy would aggravate her fragile medical condition, the doctor ordered Abby not to have been any more children. But polygamist women are to have a child per year so she had three more babies. The last one she delivered while dying—unconscious, without knowing she had given birth."
"“Some women are afforded autonomy in polygamy, but it’s at the expense of other women having to live in complete servitude,” says Cora. “And not a single woman I've ever known is happy even though they all say they are. And believe me, a lot of them confided in me.”"
"As far as polygamy goes, it never works out. It’s first and foremost a way to subjugate women. No woman can have any worth because value is dictated by the husband, so she has no inherent value."
"I do not believe that in Egypt we can prohibit it [polygamy] by law....Polygamy cannot be prevented by force, but through education."
"So then if, while her husband is living she marries another man, she shall be called an adulteress, but if her husband has died, she is free from that law, so that she is not an adulteress, even though she marries another man."
"We have laws in states, like the one at the Supreme Court right now, that has sodomy laws and they were there for a purpose. Because, again, I would argue, they undermine the basic tenets of our society and the family. And if the Supreme Court says that you have the right to consensual sex within your home, then you have the right to bigamy, you have the right to polygamy, you have the right to incest, you have the right to adultery. You have the right to anything. Does that undermine the fabric of our society? I would argue yes, it does."
"I will now say, not only to our delegate to Congress, but to the Elders who leave the body of the Church, that he thought that all the cats and kittens were let out of the bag when brother Pratt went back last fall, and published the Revelation concerning the plurality of wives: it was thought there was no other cat to let out. But allow me to tell you, Elders of Israel, and delegates to Congress, you may expect an eternity of cats, that have not yet escaped from the bag. Bless your souls, there is no end to them, for if there is not one thing, there will always be another."
"This is the reason why the doctrine of plurality of wives was revealed, that the noble spirits who are waiting for tabernacles might be brought forth"
"[I]f you have in your hearts to say…”we will not, therefore, be polygamists lest we should fail in obtaining some earthly honor, character and office, etc,"-the man that has that in his heart, and will continue to persist in pursuing that policy, will come short of dwelling in the presence of the Father and the Son, in celestial glory. The only men who become Gods, even the Sons of God, are those who enter into polygamy. Others attain unto a glory and may even be permitted to come into the presence of the Father and the Son; but they cannot reign as kings in glory, because they had blessing offered unto them, and they refused to accept them. The Lord gave a revelation through Joseph Smith, His servant; and we have believed and practiced it."
"Just ask yourselves, historians, when was monogamy introduced on to the face of the earth? When those buccaneers, who settled on the peninsula where Rome now stands, could not steal women enough to have two or three apiece, they passed a law that a man should have but one woman. And this started monogamy and the downfall of the plurality system. In the days of Jesus, Rome, having dominion over Jerusalem, they carried out the doctrine more or less. This was the rise, start and foundation of the doctrine of monogamy; and never till then was there a law passed, that we have any knowledge of, that a man should have but one wife."
"[W]e shall continue to do it until God tell us to stop, or until we pass into sin and iniquity, which will never be."
"A man may marry many wives, for Rabba saith it in lawful to do so, if he can provide for them. Nevertheless, the wise men have given good advice, that a man should not marry more than four wives."
"Like the jury and the district court, we have been forced to view the images in this case in order to determine the issues raised--a decidedly distasteful and depressing duty."
"Every day of my life I live in constant fear that someone will see my pictures and recognize me and that I will be humiliated all over again. It hurts me to know someone is looking at them -- at me -- when I was just a little girl being abused for the camera. I did not choose to be there, but now I am there forever in pictures that people are using to do sick things. I want it all erased. I want it all stopped. But I am powerless to stop it just like I was powerless to stop my uncle...I am horrified by the thought that other children will probably be abused because of my pictures. Will someone show my pictures to other kids, like my uncle did to me, then tell them what to do? Will they see me and think it's okay for them to do the same thing? Will some sick person see my picture and then get the idea to do the same thing to another little girl?"
"We're agreed that child sexual imagery is a case apart, it's illegal everywhere in the world, there's a consensus on that. It's absolutely right that we identify this stuff, we remove it and we report it to the authorities."
"If you make virtual child pornography under strict government control with some kind of label explaining that no child was abused, you can give pedophiles a way of regulating their sexual urges."
"I think that repressing your fantasies can lead to frustration and, ultimately, for some types of paedophile, to a greater likelihood of doing something wrong."
""Chaku Ero", which means "erotically clothed" is a kind of soft porn - it doesn’t involve nudity, but it can get very, very close and is often overtly sexual. Stacey asks a Chaku Ero producer (who wanted to remain anonymous) how young the girls in his shoots are. “My youngest was six years old,” he says. “We filmed her in her bathing costume playing with some toys. Her mum was standing behind the camera holding her favourite toy so she would face the camera.” He makes much more money filming children than older girls. The DVD of the six-year-old made him “four million (£28,500) or five million yen (£35,500),” he says. “The senior high school girls will make about one million (£7000)”."
"As long as Chaku Ero photos don’t show the child’s naked genitals, buttocks or chest, it isn’t categorised as child pornography. But, according to Kazuko Ito, a Human Rights Lawyer who is trying to challenge this definition, “Chaku Ero is child pornography. That’s the reality.”"
"My name is sweetie, I'm 10 years old. I live in the Philippines. Every day I have to sit in front of the webcam and talk to men. Just like tens of thousands of other kids. The men ask me to take off my cloths [sic]. They undress. They play with themselves, they want me to play with myself. As soon as I go online, they come to me. Ten, hundred, every hour. So many. But what they don't know: I'm not real."
"An indecent image of a child is just a picture of a rape in progress. And they look so real, that it’s difficult to tell the difference between real and a computer generated image."
"The goal of the state is to find some practice that is universally reviled and pose as the one and only way of expunging it from society. The best example today is child pornography, a grim and ghastly industry that every decent person would like to see eradicated from the earth. But in the name of doing so, the state invades everyone's privacy, controls speech, interferes with families, and otherwise uses the issue as a wedge to eliminate every freedom."
"Children who willingly participate in sexual acts have the right to make that decision as well, even if it's distasteful to us personally. Some children will make poor choices just as some adults do in smoking and drinking to excess; this is part of life. When we outlaw child pornography, the prices paid for child performers rise, increasing the incentives for parents to use children against their will."
"Child pornography is great. Politicians do not understand file sharing, but they understand child pornography, and they want to filter that to score points with the public. Once we get them to filter child pornography, we can get them to extend the block to file sharing. We must filter the Internet to win over online file sharing. But politicians don’t understand that file sharing is bad, and this is a problem for us. Therefore, we must associate file sharing with child pornography. Because that’s something the politicians understand, and something they want to filter off the Internet."
"There is no evidence that demonstrates a significant increase in the danger to children caused by pornography. A person who is prone to act on his fantasies will likely do so irrespective of the availability of pornography."
"Christopher DeVries, who organized a protest in support of Black Lives Matter and defunding the police, pleaded guilty to 20 counts of possession of child pornography. DeVries received a minimum of a three to six-year prison sentence, which started on December 27th, a $4,000 fine, and must register as a sex offender and comply with probation. DeVries could be incarcerated for as long as 15 years, with one year potentially being washed from the sentence if he completes sex offender treatment."
"The first and worst of all frauds is to cheat one's self."
"Fraud includes the pretense of knowledge when knowledge there is none."
"Perplexed and troubled at his bad success The Tempter stood, nor had what to reply, Discovered in his fraud, thrown from his hope."
"So glistered the dire Snake, and into fraud Led Eve, our credulous mother, to the Tree Of Prohibition, root of all our woe."
"Some cursed fraud Of enemy hath beguiled thee, yet unknown, And me with thee hath ruined."
"His heart as far from fraud as heaven from earth."
"Am I a fraud or a scholar? I am both of course, as we all are. Because half of what I know I don't believe. And half of what I know I cannot prove."
""Fraud in point of law" is, to my mind, the oddest expression."
"It is fraud in law if a party makes representations which he knows to be false, and injury ensues, although the motives from which the representations proceeded may not have been bad."
"I do not understand legal fraud. To my mind it has no more meaning than legal heat or legal cold, legal light or legal shade. There never can be a well-founded complaint of legal fraud, or of anything else, except where some duty is shown and correlative right, and some violation of that duty and right."
"No man is bound to presume a fraud."
"Non decipitur qui scit se decipi"
"There is always fraud presumed or inferred from the circumstances or conditions of the parties contracting : weakness on one side, usury on the other, or extortion or advantage taken of that weakness."
"It is impossible in a Court of justice to call a particular act a bona fide act simply because a man says that he did not intend to commit a fraud."
"Fraud and deceit abound in these days more than in former times."
"The Statute of Frauds is a weapon of defence not offence."
"I must confess to such an abhorrence of fraud in business that I am always most unwilling to come to a conclusion that a fraud has been committed, and I have very strong views with regard to what is the legal definition of fraud. It seems to me that no recklessness of speculation, however great, and that no extortion, however enormous, is fraud. It seems to me that no man ought to be found guilty of fraud unless you can say he had a fraudulent mind and an intention to deceive."
"Collusion is not necessary to constitute fraud."
"The strongest mind cannot always contend with deceit and falsehood."
"I know of no case where by implication of law the duty of clearing himself from an imputed fraud rests on the defendant."
"The manner of the transaction was to gild over and conceal the truth; and whenever Courts of law see such attempts made to conceal such wicked deeds they will brush away the cobweb varnish and show the transactions in their true light."
"I think that it must in every case depend upon the nature of the transaction, whether the fact not disclosed is such, that it is impliedly represented not to exist; and that must generally be a question of fact proper for a jury."
"The Court exercises its jurisdiction for the enforcement of the truth, and makes a man's acts square with his words, by compelling him to perform what he has undertaken."
"The Court never loses the power of unravelling cases of fraud."
"An action cannot be supported for telling a bare naked lie: but that I define to be, saying a thing that is false, knowing or not knowing it to be so, and without any design to injure, cheat, or deceive another person. Every deceit comprehends a he; but a deceit is more than a lie, on account of the view with which it is practised, its being coupled with some dealing, and the injury which it is calculated to occasion, and does occasion, to another person."
"Collusion between two persons, to the prejudice and loss of a third, is, in the eye of the Court, the same as a fraud."
"If every untrue statement which produces damage to another would found an action at law, a man might sue his neighbour for any mode of communicating erroneous information, such (for example) as having a conspicuous clock too slow, since plaintiff might thereby be prevented from attending to some duty or acquiring some benefit."
"It would be an absurdity in law to hold that if a man draws another into a snare, the party suffering should have no remedy by action."
"I do not see any sound distinction between the case of money paid in a concern which is malum in se and money paid in a concern which is malum prohibitum. The latter as well as the former tends to encourage a breach of the law."
"Whatever may be the case in a Court of morals, there is no legal obligation on the vendor to inform the purchaser that he is under a mistake, not induced by the act of the vendor."
"As no Court has ever attempted to define fraud, so no Court has ever attempted to define undue influence, which includes one of its many varieties."
"Fraud is an extrinsic collateral act which vitiates the most solemn proceedings of Courts of justice. Lord Coke says it avoids all judicial acts, ecclesiastical or temporal."
""Fraud," in my opinion, is a term that should be reserved for something dishonest and morally wrong, and much mischief is, I think, done, as well as much unnecessary pain inflicted, by its use where " illegality" and "illegal " are the really appropriate expressions."
"Secrecy is a mark of Fraud."
"Fraus est celare fraudem: It is fraud to conceal fraud."
"Fraud is infinite in variety; sometimes it is audacious and unblushing; sometimes it pays a sort of homage to virtue, and then it is modest and retiring; it would be honesty itself if it could only afford it."
"Fraud may consist as well in the suppression of what is true as in the representation of what is false. If a man professing to answer a question, select those facts only which are likely to give a credit to the person of whom he speaks, and keep back the rest, he is a more artful knave than he who tells a direct falsehood."
"Fraud is sometimes mere matter of fact, and sometimes the conclusion of law from facts."
"There cannot be a greater Paradox, than that a man should be guilty of a fraud in lending his money with no other prospect but the chance of being repaid it."
"No man shall set up his own iniquity as a defence any more than as a cause of action."
"A man shall not avail himself of an iniquity or blunder of his own. Allegans turpitudinem suam shall not be heard."
"You shall not stipulate for iniquity. All writers upon our law agree in this, no polluted hand shall touch the pure fountains of justice."
"No man can avail himself of his own fraud to avoid the law. We have instances even in the criminal law where a man shall not be permitted to avoid the law by fraud."
"As to relief against fraud, no invariable rules can be established, Fraud is infinite; and were a Court of equity once to lay down rules, how far they would go, and no farther, in extending their relief against it, or to define strictly the species or evidence of it, the jurisdiction would be cramped and perpetually eluded by new schemes, which the fertility of man's invention would contrive."
"You cannot imply an authority to do an illegal act."
"You may discuss the question of legality on legal grounds, but not by an argumentum ad hominem."
"Fraud is the daughter of greed."
"The house of every one is to him as his castle and fortress, as well for his defence against injury and violence, as for his repose."
"For a man's house is his castle, Et domut sua cuique tutissimum refugium."
"By the laws of England, every invasion of private property, be it ever so minute, is a trespass. No man can set his foot upon my ground without my licence, but he is liable to an action, though the damage be nothing."
"Though it is not always of necessity, nor perhaps here, to go upon the original foundation of a right of law, yet I will beg leave to observe, when we apply the maxim, that every man's house is his castle, we mean not to persuade the inhabiter of a poor hut, that it is provided with draw-bridges or portcullises, but only that it is under such sufficient protection as may provide for his security in a more pleasant, or perhaps, a better way—that it is fortified by the law."
"The rule that every man's house is his castle, when applied to arrests on legal process, has been carried as far as political justice will warrant; and perhaps farther than the scale of reason and sound policy this will warrant. In the case of life, as we have before hinted generally,—but in the case of life more particularly,—this privilege, and the maxim which supports it, will admit of no extension. It must be confined to breaking the outer door, or window, for the protection of the family, and security from without; and it belongs to those whose domicile it is; for it is not the sanctuary of a stranger. And when a man escapes from the arrest, he is not privileged by his house."
"Whenever a person has any authority by law to do any particular act, and he abuses that authority, he makes himself a trespasser ab initio."
"The more corrupt a society, the more numerous its laws."
"Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority: still more when you superadd the tendency or the certainty of corruption by authority. There is no worse heresy than that the office sanctifies the holder of it."
"Tacitus appears to have been as great an enthusiast as Petrarch for the revival of the republic and universal empire. He has exerted the vengeance of history upon the emperors, but has veiled the conspiracies against them, and the incorrigible corruption of the people which probably provoked their most atrocious cruelties. Tyranny can scarcely be practised upon a virtuous and wise people."
"The furnace of affliction produces refinement in states as well as individuals. And the new Governments we are assuming in every part will require a purification from our vices, and an augmentation of our virtues, or they will be no blessings. The people will have unbounded power, and the people are extremely addicted to corruption and venality, as well as the great. But I must submit all my hopes and fears to an overruling Providence, in which, unfashionable as the faith may be, I firmly believe."
"We have now, it Seems a National Bible Society, to propagate King James's Bible, through all Nations. Would it not be better to apply these pious Subscriptions, to purify Christendom from the Corruptions of Christianity; than to propagate those Corruptions in Europe, Asia, Africa and America! … Conclude not from all this, that I have renounced the Christian religion, or that I agree with Dupuis in all his Sentiments. Far from it. I see in every Page, Something to recommend Christianity in its Purity and Something to discredit its Corruptions … The Ten Commandments and the Sermon on the Mount contain my Religion."
"The corrupt fear us · the honest support us · the heroic join us."
"He that accuses all mankind of corruption ought to remember that he is sure to convict only one."
"I have nothing against the smell of rot but something against what hides the smell of rot in the United States of America."
"Such corruption feeds on its own success when it meets no correction."
"Corruption exists because there is too much, not too little, market."
"History shows that, at earlier stages of economic development, corruption is difficult to control. The fact that today no country that is very poor is very clean suggests that a country has to rise above absolute poverty before it can significantly reduce venality in the system."
"Thieves at home must hang; but he that puts Into his overgorged and bloated purse The wealth of Indian provinces, escapes."
"The Lord looked down from heaven upon the children of men, to see if there were any that did understand, and seek God. They are all gone aside, they are all together become filthy: there is none that doeth good, no, not one."
"The whole idea of using markets to figure out who gets what is predicated on corruption — it’s a way to paper over the fact that some people get a lot, most of us get not much, and so we invent a deus ex machina called market forces that hands out money based on merit. How do we know that the market is giving it to deserving people? Well, look at all the money they have! It’s just circular reasoning."
"Der Umgang mit einem Egoisten ist darum so verderblich, weil die Notwehr uns allmählich zwingt, in seine Fehler zu verfallen."
"Corruption is a tree, whose branches are Of an immeasurable length: they spread Ev'rywhere; and the dew that drops from thence Hath infected some chairs and stools of authority."
"Corrupted freemen are the worst of slaves."
"When rogues like these (a sparrow cries) To honours and employments rise, I court no favor, ask no place, For such preferment is disgrace."
"Corruption destroys fraternity and peace, tries to manipulate the consciences through slander and fake news, and produces injustices."
"A key point of the texts attributed to Shotoku is that if rulers and bureaucrats believe they are the owners rather than the servants of the law, corruption will follow. Corruption was already a problem in the 7th century, and the Shotoku writings define it as privileging the officials’ private interests over the public ones. …Manipulating the public in the interest of the private is the very definition of corruption."
"אֵיכָה֙ הָיְתָ֣ה לְזֹונָ֔ה קִרְיָ֖ה נֶאֱמָנָ֑ה מְלֵאֲתִ֣י מִשְׁפָּ֗ט צֶ֛דֶק יָלִ֥ין בָּ֖הּ וְעַתָּ֥ה מְרַצְּחִֽים׃ כַּסְפֵּ֖ךְ הָיָ֣ה לְסִיגִ֑ים סָבְאֵ֖ךְ מָה֥וּל בַּמָּֽיִם׃ שָׂרַ֣יִךְ סֹורְרִ֗ים וְחַבְרֵי֙ גַּנָּבִ֔ים כֻּלֹּו֙ אֹהֵ֣ב שֹׁ֔חַד וְרֹדֵ֖ף שַׁלְמֹנִ֑ים יָתֹום֙ לֹ֣א יִשְׁפֹּ֔טוּ וְרִ֥יב אַלְמָנָ֖ה לֹֽא־יָבֹ֥וא אֲלֵיהֶֽם׃ פ"
"As the world changes, the forms of corruption also gradually become more cunning, more difficult to point out - but they certainly do not become better."
"In the developing world, corruption is public enemy number one. Every dollar that a corrupt official or a corrupt business person puts in their pocket is a dollar stolen from a pregnant woman who needs health care; or from a girl or a boy who deserves an education; or from communities that need water, roads, and schools. Every dollar is critical if we are to reach our goals to end extreme poverty by 2030 and to boost shared prosperity."
"We are in the midst of formulating laws and ways of administration so that we can reduce corruption and maybe even eradicate corruption in Malaysia. We see the US which has a system of lobbyists and they are paid to influence the government to do certain things for the people who paid the money. That, to us, is corruption. We will not allow that in Malaysia."
"The level of corruption we're seeing now... I'm a nonpartisan attacker of the corruption I see. I've been doing it for 40 years, and what you're seeing in the public space now is the type of arrogance and criminal activity that we were always working our way towards. Now you see it. ...[H]ow do the people at large respond to this? ...The judicial system is not saving us the way it should. ...[W]e have to wake up and say "we're tired of this..." And... if we don't, we're going to be just like all the other things that could've been something."
"In 2004, Transparency International listed the ten worst kleptocratic rulers of recent times. Mobutu came in third, followed by Sani Abacha (Nigeria, 1993-98; stole US$2-5 billion); Slobodan Milošević (Serbia/Yugoslavia, 1989-2000, US$1 billion); Jean-Claude Duvalier (Haiti, 1971-86, US$300-800 million); Alberto Fujimori (Peru, 1990-2000, US$600 million); Pavlo Lazarenko, Ukraine (1996-7, US$114-200 million); Arnoldo Aleman (Nicaragua, 1997-2002, US$100 million); and Joseph Estrada (Philippines, 1998-2001, US$78-80 million). Second was Ferdinand Marcos, Philippine president from 1965 to 1986, who with his wife Imelda — famed for her vast collection of shoes — plundered the Philippine economy through a system of ‘crony capitalism’, amassing a vast fortune while ordinary Filipinos went hungry. Opponents were arrested by the military — over 60,000 from 1972 to 1977 —- and many tortured and murdered, including opposition leader Benigno Aquino. A popular rebellion in 1986 finally forced him from office and he fled with his wife to Hawaii. Transparency International put his stolen wealth at US$5-10 billion, others much higher. Marcos died in 1989 before he could stand trial. The worst kleptocrat was Mohamed Suharto, Indonesian president from 1967 until 1998 but virtual military ruler from 1957. His brutal regime saw 2 million massacred following an attempted Communist coup in 1965, 250,000 killed in his 1975 invasion of East Timor and hundreds of thousands tortured and murdered during his dictatorship."
"What about the other parts of the world? The criminologist Gary LaFree and the sociologist Orlando Patterson have shown that the relationship between crime and democratization is an inverted U. Established democracies are relatively safe places, as are established autocracies, but emerging democracies and semi-democracies (also called anocracies) are often plagued by violent crime and vulnerable to civil war, which sometimes shade into each other. The most crime-prone regions in the world today are Russia, sub-Saharan Africa, and parts of Latin America. Many of them have corrupt police forces and judicial systems which extort bribes out of criminals and victims alike and dole out protection to the highest bidder. Some, like Jamaica (33.7), Mexico (11.1), and Colombia (52.7), are racked by drug-funded militias that operate beyond the reach of the law. Over the past four decades, as drug trafficking has increased, their rates of homicide have soared. Others, like Russia (29.7) and South Africa (69), may have undergone decivilizing processes in the wake of the collapse of their former governments. The decivilizing process has also racked many of the countries that switched from tribal ways to colonial rule and then suddenly to independence, such as those in sub-Saharan Africa and Papua New Guinea (15.2)."
"False words are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the soul with evil."
"None of the governments, as they now exist, is worthy of the philosophic nature, and hence we see that nature warped and corrupted; just as a foreign seed, when sown in an alien soil, generally loses its native quality, and tends to be subdued and pass into the plant of the country, even so this philosophic nature, so far from preserving its distinctive power, now suffers a decline and takes on a different character."
"At length corruption, like a general flood (So long by watchful ministers withstood), Shall deluge all; and avarice, creeping on, Spread like a low-born mist, and blot the sun."
"A corrupted mind can't recognize the beauty of the world."
"If some infringement of traditional liberties and privacy is involved, then I believe it is a price which the community ought to be prepared to pay, if it really wishes to see corruption ousted from our public life. If it is not ready to surrender some of these liberties, then it cannot easily, in the future, complain that the Government is reluctant to tackle the evil with sufficient vigour."
"Corruptissima re publica plurimae leges."
"I will not pay bribes"
"I will not seek bribes"
"I will work with others to campaign against corruption"
"I will speak out against corruption and report on abuse"
"I will only support candidates for public office who say no to corruption and demonstrate transparency, integrity and accountability"
"We believe that transparency in government activities leads to reduced corruption, better government and stronger democracies. All governments can benefit from increased scrutiny by the world community, as well as their own people. We believe this scrutiny requires information. Historically that information has been costly - in terms of human life and human rights. But with technological advances - the internet, and cryptography - the risks of conveying important information can be lowered."
"Spiritalis enim virtus sacramenti ita est ut lux: etsi per immundos transeat, non inquinatur."
"'Tis the most certain sign, the world's accurst That the best things corrupted, are the worst; 'Twas the corrupted Light of knowledge, hurl'd Sin, Death, and Ignorance o'er all the world; That Sun like this (from which our sight we have) Gaz'd on too long, resumes the light he gave."
"I know, when they prove bad, they are a sort of the vilest creatures: yet still the same reason gives it: for, Optima corrupta pessima: the best things corrupted become the worst."
"So true is that old saying, Corruptio optimi pessima."
"The men with the muck-rake are often indispensable to the well-being of society, but only if they know when to stop raking the muck."
"There is a stubbornness about me that never can bear to be frightened at the will of others. My courage always rises at every attempt to intimidate me."
"Courage, also known as fortitude, is the ability to confront fear, pain, danger, uncertainty or intimidation . It can be divided into : a) Physical courage, in the face of physical pain, hardship and pain of death; b)Moral courage in the face of shame, scandal and discouragement"
"...in no instance has a system in regard to religion been ever established, but for the purpose, as well as with the effect of its being made an instrument of intimidation, corruption, and delusion, for the support of depredation and oppression in the hands of governments."
"Azevedo Bandeira is an expert in the art of progressive intimidation, in the satanic maneuver of gradually humiliating his interlocutor by combining verities and gibes."
"It is also a fact that America is too democratic at home to be autocratic abroad. This limits the use of America's power, especially its capacity for military intimidation. Never before has a populist democracy attained international supremacy."
"A person commits the offense of intimidation when, with the purpose to cause another to perform or to omit the performance of any act, the person communicates to another, under circumstances that reasonably tend to produce a fear that it will be carried out, a threat to perform without lawful authority any of the acts of: (a)inflict physical harm on the person threatened or any other person; (b) subject any person to physical confinement or restraint; or (c) commit any felony. A person commits the offense of intimidation if the person knowingly communicates a threat or false report of a pending fire, explosion, or disaster that would endanger life or property."
"A person is guilty of ethnic intimidation if that person maliciously, and with specific intent to intimidate or harass another person because of that person's race, color, religion, gender, or national origin, does any of the following:(a) Causes physical contact with another person.(b) Damages, destroys, or defaces any real or personal property of another person.(c) Threatens, by word or act, to do an act described in subdivision (a) or (b), if there is reasonable cause to believe that an act described in subdivision (a) or (b) will occur. Ethnic intimidation is a felony punishable by imprisonment for not more than 2 years, or by a fine of not more than $5,000.00, or both. Regardless of the existence or outcome of any criminal prosecution, a person who suffers injury to his or her person or damage to his or her property as a result of ethnic intimidation may bring a civil cause of action against the person who commits the offense to secure an injunction, actual damages, including damages for emotional distress, or other appropriate relief."
"Some of these guys wear beards to make them look intimidating, but they don’t look so tough when they have to deliver the ball. Their abilities and their attitudes don’t back up their beards."
"Domestic violence and abuse are used for one purpose and one purpose only: to gain and maintain total control over you. An abuser doesn't play fair. Abusers use fear, guilt, shame, and intimidation to wear you down and keep you under his or her thumb. Your abuser may also threaten you, hurt you, or hurt those around you."
"Despite our repeated warnings, Qadhafi continued his reckless policy of intimidation, his relentless pursuit of terror. He counted on America to be passive."
"The basis of intimidation as I practiced it was mystery. I wanted the hitter to know nothing about me."
"The goal toward which all history tends is peace — not peace through the medium of war; not peace through a process of universal intimidation; not peace through a program of mutual impoverishment; not peace by any means that leaves the world too frightened or too weak to go on fighting but peace pure and simple, based on that will to peace which has animated the overwhelming majority of mankind through countless ages."
"Threat of harm is defined as, all actions, statements, written or non-verbal messages conveying threats of physical or mental injury which are serious enough to unsettle the child's mind. It includes: expressions of intent to inflict pain, injury, or punishment on the child."
"It is very important to a lot of people to make unmistakably clear to themselves and to the universe that they love the universe but are not intimidated by it and will not be shaken by it, no matter what it has in store. Moreover, they demand something from themselves early in life that can be taken ever after as a demonstration of this abiding feeling."
"Those children who are beaten will in turn give beatings, those who are intimidated will be intimidating, those who are humiliated will impose humiliation, and those whose souls are murdered will murder."
"I don't think ethical people deal with intimidation as a method to achieve success. Undermining someone's self-esteem isn't a method to achieve success."
"In all their polemics, the anti-creationists invariably avoid discussing the actual scientific evidence for macro-evolution. If there were any such evidence, they could easily settle the whole conflict, merely by presenting the evidence! Instead they seem compelled to resort to bombast, ridicule, defamation, intimidation, and distortion."
"He has spoken out strongly against the fact that when belligerents see freedom of expression as an enemy to their cause and the media as a tool for propaganda, journalists who attempt to report in a nonpartisan way face pressure, manipulation, intimidation or even elimination."
"Faith is something that cannot be won through intimidation and fear."
"It is also a violent crime because it normally involves force, or the threat of force or intimidation, to overcome the will and the capacity of the victim to resist. Rape is very often accompanied by physical injury to the female and can also inflict mental and psychological damage. Because it undermines, the community’s sense of security, there is public injury as well."
"A man who is intimate with God is not intimidated by man."
"Torture is any act by which severe torment, whether physical or psychological, is intentionally inflicted on a person as a means of intimidation, deterrent, revenge or punishment, or as a method for the extraction of information or confessions]] (i.e., “third-degree methods” of interrogation)."
"Every honest man knows why Trade Unions insist on the right to a strong numerical picket:... But though arguments may never persuade them, numbers may easily intimidate them. And it is just because argument has failed and intimidation has succeeded that the Labour Party insists upon its right to a picket."
"...their own rightness bring on them an intellectual stasis which they project on to the nation at large. Intimidation and propaganda work in a duet of oppression, while the people, lapped in fear and distrust, learn to dissemble and to keep silent."
"The experienced mountain climber is not intimidated by a mountain — he is inspired by it. The persistent winner is not discouraged by a problem, he is challenged by it. Mountains are created to be conquered; adversities are designed to be defeated; problems are sent to be solved. It is better to master one mountain than a thousand foothills."
"Qui semel a veritate deflexit, hic non majore religione ad perjurium quam ad mendacium perduci consuevit."
"It is not uncommon for ignorant and corrupt men to falsely charge others with doing what they imagine that they themselves, in their narrow minds and experience, would have done under the circumstances of a given case, and the surest check, often the only check, on such perjury, is to recognize the impossibility that men of larger instruction and resources and experience could have been guilty of such conduct."
"And hast thou sworn on every slight, pretence, Till perjuries are common as bad pence, While thousands, careless of the damning sin, Kiss the book's outside, who ne'er look'd within?"
"It is not possible to found a lasting power upon injustice, perjury, and treachery."
"I think it is a canon, which any one who is familiar with Courts of justice will recognise as a just one, that instead of assuming that people are perjuring themselves, you should, if there is a view by which you can reconcile all the testimony, prefer that to the view which places people in the position of contradicting each other, so that they must necessarily be swearing what is false. . . . The point as to having seen the witnesses and having had an opportunity of judging whether they were speaking the truth or not is generally a very powerful one."
"We can judge only from appearances, and from the evidence produced to us."
"[W]e better know there is fire whence we see much smoke rising than we could know it by one or two witnesses swearing to it. The witnesses may commit perjury, but the smoke cannot."
"My suit has nothing to do with the assault, or battery, or poisoning, but is about three goats, which, I complain, have been stolen by my neighbor. This the judge desires to have proved to him; but you, with swelling words and extravagant gestures, dilate on the Battle of Cannæ, the Mithridatic war, and the perjuries of the insensate Carthaginians, the Syllæ, the Marii, and the Mucii. It is time, Postumus, to say something about my three goats."
"Iuppiter ex alto periuria ridet amantum."
"An oath, an oath, I have an oath in heaven: Shall I lay perjury upon my soul? No, not for Venice."
"Nec iurare time: veneris periuria venti inrita per terras et freta summa ferunt. gratia magna Iovi: vetuit Pater ipse valere, iurasset cupide quidquid ineptus amor."
"Towards this fine honor of a trade converged all the finest, all the most noble sentiments—dignity, pride. Never ask anything of anyone, they used to say. … In those days a workman did not know what it was to solicit. It is the bourgeoisie who, turning the workmen into bourgeois, have taught them to solicit."
"I hope, Mr. President, that we can pass a law that criminalizes flag burning and desecration."
"Without the right to burn the flag, without that freedom of expression, the flag is just a piece of cloth. It means nothing. With that freedom, with our Bill of Rights, it's the greatest symbol on earth. It's magic."
"If we set the precedent of limiting the First Amendment, in order to protect the sensibilities of those who are offended by flag burning, what will we say the next time someone is offended by some other minority view, or by some other person's exercise of the freedom the Constitution is supposed to protect?"
"I have consistently opposed a flag-burning amendment, and voted against its passage. Flag desecration is hateful and worthy of condemnation, and I would support any statutory means possible to curtail desecration of the flag. But I believe that the importance of the Bill of Rights -- our nations founding document -- requires us to establish a very high threshold for agreeing to change it. Does the amendment address some extreme threat to our country, or redress some outrageous wrong? In this case, abhorrent though flag desecration may be, it simply does not meet that test."
"I have never seen anyone burn a flag. And if I did, it would take every ounce of restraint I had not to haul off and hit them."
"Values in a free society are accepted voluntarily, not through coercion, and certainly not by law... every time we write a law to control private behavior, we imply that somebody has to arrive with a gun, because if you desecrate the flag, you have to punish that person. So how do you do that? You send an agent of the government, perhaps an employee of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Flags, to arrest him. This is in many ways patriotism with a gun – if your actions do not fit the official definition of a "patriot," we will send somebody to arrest you."
"If I were king, I would not allow people to go about burning the American flag. However, we have a First Amendment which says that the right of free speech shall not be abridged. And it is addressed, in particular, to speech critical of the government."
"What is this thing anyway? Nothing but a piece of cotton with a little paint on it, and some other marks in the corner there. I will not kiss that thing. It might be covered with microbes."
"Nobody should be allowed to burn the American flag - if they do, there must be consequences - perhaps loss of citizenship or a year in jail!"
"Seditiosus est qui dissensionem animorum facit et discordias gignit."
"Some of the key aspects of the are no longer relevant and have not been relevant for a long time. [...] For instance, the excitement of disaffection against the Government should not be criminalised. I think if it is, a lot of people including many in this House, would be considered criminals."
"A 95-year-old Berlin resident has been charged with being an accessory to the murder of over 36,000 people at the Mauthausen death camp in Austria during World War Two, the Berlin prosecutor's office said. "During the time of the crime, at least 36,223 people were killed at the Mauthausen concentration camp. "...The prosecutor's office said it was bringing the charges under new laws that allow the prosecution of people involved in the Nazi "machinery of death" even if they did not personally kill anyone... the 2011 conviction of John Demjanjuk, a guard at Sobibor death camp... established a new precedent that no proof of a specific crime was needed to convict a defendant."
"It’s sickening to hear these clowns repeatedly claim that “Assad murdered 500,000 of his people,” as though the U.S.-backed terrorists have played no role in the killings. I’ve viewed hundreds of beheadings and crucifixions online but none committed by Syria troops – all were proudly posted by the hellish filth that we’ve recruited, armed and trained for the past eight years. Major war crimes, like beheading 250 Syrian soldiers after running them across the desert in their underpants, were scarcely mentioned by the MSM."
"With each day, the war crimes mount. Rape. Torture. Extrajudicial executions. Disappearances. Forced deportations. Attacks on schools, hospitals, playgrounds, apartment buildings, grain silos, water and gas facilities...[the atrocities are] not the acts of rogue units. They fit a clear pattern, across every part of Ukraine touched by Russian forces. And they fit a clear pattern with Russia’s previous actions in conflicts in Chechnya, Georgia, Syria, and Ukraine starting in 2014.""
"War crimes are only committed by defeated powers. (But as the Nazis learned in 1945, unemployed war criminals can usually find work with the new hegemonic power.)"
"The Native population (in the US) suffered a migrant crisis of an incredible kind … where the immigrants come in with the intention of exterminating and expelling the population... Should they institute war crimes trials...? It would not make a lot of sense. It would make a lot of sense to bring out understanding of what happened, to call for reparations and so on... Is it genocide? … The Western hemisphere had about 80 million people when Columbus arrived, and pretty soon about 90 percent of them were gone (killed)."
"There had been fearful slaughters of soldiers in the First World War, and much of the accumulated treasure of the nations was consumed. Still, apart from the excesses of the Russian Revolution, the main fabric of European civilisation remained erect at the close of the struggle. When the storm and dust of the cannonade passed suddenly away, the nations despite their enmities could still recognise each other as historic racial personalities. The laws of war had on the whole been respected. There was a common professional meeting-ground between military men who had fought one another. Vanquished and victors alike still preserved the semblance of civilised states. A solemn peace was made which, apart from unenforceable financial aspects, conformed to the principles which in the nineteenth century had increasingly regulated the relations of enlightened peoples. The reign of law was proclaimed, and a World Instrument was formed to guard us all, and especially Europe, against a renewed convulsion. In the Second World War every bond between man and man was to perish. Crimes were committed by the Germans, under the Hitlerite domination to which they allowed themselves to be subjected, which find no equal in scale and wickedness with any that have darkened the human record. The wholesale massacre by systematised processes of six or seven millions of men, women, and children in the German execution camps exceeds in horror the rough-and-ready butcheries of Genghis Khan, and in scale reduces them to pigmy proportions. Deliberate extermination of whole populations was contemplated and pursued by both Germany and Russia in the Eastern war. The hideous process of bombarding open cities from the air, once started by the Germans, was repaid twenty-fold by the ever-mounting power of the Allies, and found its culmination in the use of the atomic bombs which obliterated Hiroshima and Nagasaki. We have at length emerged from a scene of material ruin and moral havoc the like of which had never darkened the imagination of former centuries. After all that we suffered and achieved, we find ourselves still confronted with problems and perils not less but far more formidable than those through which we have so narrowly made our way."
"US national security adviser John Bolton announced... that the US will use "any means necessary" to protect its citizens and allies from prosecution by the International Criminal Court. "United States will use any means necessary to protect our citizens and those of our allies from unjust prosecution by this illegitimate court,""
"The verdict finding Manning guilty of Espionage Act offenses, however, sends an ominous warning that could deter future whistle-blowers from exposing government wrongdoing. It’s important to keep in mind that Manning provided information indicating the U.S. had committed war crimes... After WikiLeaks published his documentation of Iraqi torture centers established by the United States, the Iraqi government refused Obama’s request to extend immunity to U.S. soldiers... As a result, Obama had to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq. The American public needed to know the information Manning provided. He revealed evidence of war crimes in the "Collateral Murder" video, which depicts a U.S. Apache attack helicopter crew killing 12 unarmed civilians and wounding two children in Baghdad in 2007. The crew then killed people attempting to rescue the wounded. A U.S. tank drove over one of the bodies, cutting it in half. Those actions constitute war crimes under the Geneva Conventions. The Bush administration waged an illegal war in Iraq in which thousands of people were killed. ... Yet it is Bradley Manning [and Julian Assange], not the Bush officials ... being prosecuted."
"The Trump administration is seeking extradition of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to the United States for trial on charges carrying 175 years in prison... The treaty between the U.S. and the U.K. prohibits extradition for a “political offense.” Assange was indicted for exposing U.S. war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan. That is a classic political offense. Moreover, Assange’s extradition would violate the legal prohibition against sending a person to a country where he is in danger of being tortured."
"WikiLeaks... published nearly 400,000 field reports about the Iraq War, which contained evidence of U.S. war crimes, over 15,000 previously unreported deaths of Iraqi civilians, and the systematic murder, torture, rape and abuse by the Iraqi army and authorities that were ignored by U.S. forces. In addition, WikiLeaks published the Guantánamo Files, 779 secret reports that revealed the U.S. government’s systematic violation of the Geneva Conventions and the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, by abusing nearly 800 men and boys, ages 14 to 89."
"One of the most notorious releases by WikiLeaks was the 2007 “Collateral Murder” video, which showed a U.S. Army Apache helicopter target and fire on unarmed civilians in Baghdad. More than 12 civilians were killed, including two Reuters reporters and a man who came to rescue the wounded. Two children were injured. Then a U.S. Army tank drove over one of the bodies, severing it in half. Those acts constitute three separate war crimes prohibited by the Geneva Conventions and the U.S. Army Field Manual."
"If the U.S. government had prosecuted Bush administration officials for their war crimes during the “war on terror,” the ICC would not now take jurisdiction. But after Barack Obama said, “Generally speaking, I’m more interested in looking forward than I am in looking backwards,” his administration refused to prosecute those implicated in the torture and willful killings of detainees during the Bush administration."
"It has often been remarked but seldom remembered that war itself is a crime. Yet a war crime is more and other than war. It is an atrocity beyond the usual barbaric bounds of war. It is legal definition growing out of custom and tradition supported by every civilized nation in the world including our own. It is an act beyond the pale of acceptable actions even in war. Deliberate killing or torturing of prisoners of war is a war crime. Deliberate destruction without military purpose of civilian communities is a war crime. The use of certain arms and armaments and of gas is a war crime. The forcible relocation of population for any purpose is a war crime. All of these crimes have been committed by the U.S. Government over the past ten years in Indochina. An estimated one million South Vietnamese civilians have been killed because of these war crimes. A good portion of the reported 700,000 National Liberation Front and North Vietnamese soldiers killed have died as a result of these war crimes and no one knows how many North Vietnamese civilians, Cambodian civilians, and Laotian civilians have died as a result of these war crimes."
"The Trump administration has barred International Criminal Court investigators from entering the United States. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced Friday that the U.S. will start denying visas to members of the ICC who may be investigating alleged war crimes by the U.S. military in Afghanistan. In September, national security adviser John Bolton threatened U.S. sanctions against ICC judges if they continued to investigate alleged war crimes committed by U.S. troops in Afghanistan."
"John Bolton, the national security adviser to the U.S. president, held a speech last September in which he wished death on the International Criminal Court. ... The American security adviser held his speech at a time when The Hague was planning preliminary investigations into American soldiers who had been accused of torturing people in Afghanistan. The American threats against international judges clearly show the new political climate. It is shocking."
"What is a war criminal? Was not war itself a crime against God and humanity and, therefore, were not all those who sanctioned, engineered, and conducted wars, war criminals? War criminals are not confined to the Axis Powers alone. Roosevelt and Churchill are no less war criminals than Hitler and Mussolini. Hitler was “Great Britain’s sin”. Hitler is only an answer to British imperialism, and this I say in spite of the fact that I hate Hitlerism and its anti-Semitism. England, America and Russia have all of them got their hands dyed more or less red — not merely Germany and Japan. The Japanese have only proved themselves to be apt pupils of the West. They have learnt at the feet of the West and beaten it at its own game."
"Our governments feel threatened by Chelsea Manning, Edward Snowden, and Julian Assange, because they are whistleblowers, journalists, and human rights activists who have provided solid evidence for the abuse, corruption, and war crimes of the powerful, for which they are now being systematically defamed and persecuted. They are the political dissidents of the West, and their persecution is today’s witch-hunt, because they threaten the privileges of unsupervised state power that has gone out of control. The cases of Manning, Snowden, Assange and others are the most important test of our time for the credibility of Western rule of law and democracy and our commitment to human rights."
"Israeli forces’ repeated use of lethal force in the Gaza Strip since March 30, 2018, against Palestinian demonstrators who posed no imminent threat to life may amount to war crimes, Human Rights Watch said today. Israeli forces have killed more than 100 protesters in Gaza and wounded thousands with live ammunition... The killings... highlight the need for the International Criminal Court to open a formal investigation into the situation in Palestine. Third countries should impose targeted sanctions against officials responsible for ongoing serious human rights violations"
"A Saudi-led coalition airstrike that killed at least 26 children and wounded at least 19 more...in northern Yemen, on August 9, 2018, is an apparent war crime, Human Rights Watch said today. Countries should immediately halt weapons sales to Saudi Arabia and support strengthening a United Nations independent inquiry into violations by all parties to Yemen’s armed conflict.... Witnesses... said there was no evident military target in the market at the time.... Under the laws of war, parties must do everything feasible to verify that targets are valid military objectives. Witnesses said there were no armed men in the market or on the bus, and videos taken on the bus before the attack do not show any fighters or weapons."
"The International Criminal Court (ICC's) mandate to investigate war crimes has thus been hampered by the unwillingness of the world’s sole superpower to commit to the organization.... Recent statements...suggest that the United States is now preparing to go to war against the ICC itself, motivated largely by an effort to silence investigations into alleged American war crimes committed in Afghanistan, as well as alleged crimes committed by Israel during the 2014 war in the Gaza Strip....The unwillingness or inability of U.S. courts to seriously investigate war crimes carried out by American citizens is part of why the ICC mandate in Afghanistan has been viewed as an important effort to bring a minimum level of accountability over the conflict."
"I would like to talk representing all those veterans and say that several months ago in Detroit we had an investigation at which over 150 honorably discharged, and many very highly decorated, veterans testified to war crimes committed in Southeast Asia. These were not isolated incidents but crimes committed on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command. It's impossible to describe to you exactly what did happen in Detroit -- the emotions in the room and the feelings of the men who were reliving their experiences in Vietnam. But they did. They relived the absolute horror of what this country, in a sense, made them do. They told the stories of times that they had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in the fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam in addition to the normal ravage of war and the normal and very particular ravaging which is done by the applied bombing power of this country."
"There is no purgatory for war criminals. They go straight to hell, Ambassador ."
"The most alarming aspect of the video to me was the seeming delightful blood-lust the aerial weapons team happened to have. They dehumanized the individuals they were engaging and seemed to not value human life, and referred to them as "dead bastards," and congratulated each other on their ability to kill in large numbers. ... For me, this seemed similar to a child torturing ants with a magnifying glass. I believed that if the general public, especially the American public, had access to the information contained [in the leaks], it could spark a domestic debate on the role of the military and our foreign policy in general as it related to Iraq and Afghanistan."
"The first instance of a judicial response to atrocity focused on Sir Peter von Hagenbach who was charged with murder and other violations in a court created by the Archduke of Austria in 1474 specifically to create a legal forum rather than summary execution. Von Hagenbach defended himself on the grounds that he was just following orders to maintain security as governor of a town in the Upper Rhine; thus, his case launched both the legal response to atrocity and the debate over the defense of following orders."
"Some would call the total annihilation of intelligent life, while preserving inanimate matter, a perverse war crime. We would call it efficient."
"In the last days of the battle against the Islamic State in Syria, ... a large crowd of women and children huddled against a river bank. Without warning, an American F-15E attack jet streaked across the drone’s high-definition field of vision and dropped a 500-pound bomb on the crowd, swallowing it in a shuddering blast. As the smoke cleared, a few people stumbled away in search of cover. Then a jet tracking them dropped one 2,000-pound bomb, then another, killing most of the survivors. ... A legal officer flagged the strike as a possible war crime that required an investigation. But at nearly every step, the military made moves that concealed the catastrophic strike. The death toll was downplayed. ... Reports were delayed, sanitized and classified. The Defense Department’s independent inspector general began an inquiry, but the report containing its findings was stalled and stripped of any mention of the strike. United States-led coalition forces bulldozed the blast site. ... Civilian observers who came to the area of the strike the next day described finding piles of dead women and children."
"The story starts March 18, 2019, in a big Air Force combat operations center in Al Udeid in Qatar. And there we have, it almost looks like mission command for NASA. You have banks of computers, big screens, all of them watching the air war against the Islamic State ... on this day, a lot of people in the command center are watching a drone that was flying up overhead. Now, what they saw was a field that was just littered with a tangle of cars and makeshift tents of debris of the leftovers from weeks of combat. But also within there was a lot of people. And the drone hovered over and focused in on a group of women and children who had found refuge down by the river against a steep sand bank. The drone, it lingered for several minutes, slowly circling with its cameras focused on these folks, either sleeping or just laying down low to take cover from whatever combat might be coming. And the people in the operation center were calmly watching this when, suddenly ... an American F-15 attack jet came right through and dropped a large bomb dead center into this group of women and children ... killing nearly all of them."
"If Russia has intelligence that Ukraine is using an otherwise protected civilian target for military purposes, and if a decision is made to attack the target using force deemed proportional to the threat, then no war crime has been committed. Indeed, given what The Washington Post has documented, it appears that it is Ukraine, not Russia, which is committing war crimes."
"The first martyr in the American national war of liberation against the British colonialists in the eighteenth century was an African descendant, ; and both slave and free Africans played a key role in Washington’s armies. And yet, the American Constitution sanctioned the continued enslavement of Africans. In recent times, it has become an object of concern to some liberals that the U.S.A. is capable of war crimes of the order of My Lai in Vietnam. But the fact of the matter is that the My Lais began with the enslavement of Africans and American Indians. Racism, violence, and brutality were the concomitants of the capitalist system when it extended itself abroad in the early centuries of international trade."
"What it actually reveals is a far darker, more shameful truth. The truth of a Saudi-led coalition armed by Britain and the United States, which from the very start of the conflict in 2015 has sought to use starvation as a weapon of war. Most obviously, their on-off blockades of any ports and airports controlled by the Houthi rebels have drastically cut supplies of food to a Yemini population that relies on imports to eat. But far more insidiously, and in the absence of imports, the Saudi air force has systematically and deliberately destroyed the domestic means of producing and distributing food inside Yemen. Their bombs have constantly targeted agricultural land, dairy farms, food processing factories, and the markets where food is sold."
"We need accountability for the states and individuals that have caused this crisis, brought us to the brink of a famine that the UN says would be the worst in the past 100 years, and – by using starvation as a weapon of war – are in clear breach of international humanitarian law. ... When I asked Jeremy Hunt yesterday in parliament why the resolution that will go before the security council today did not mention the need for an investigation of all alleged war crimes, and full accountability for those responsible, and whether the crown prince (of Saudi Arabia) had insisted on the removal of that demand, he did not answer."
"On April 18, 2006, I had my first confirmed killed. This man was innocent. I don’t know his name. I called him “the fat man.” He was walking back to his house, and I shot him in front of his friend and his father. The first round didn’t kill him, after I had hit him up here in his neck area. And afterwards he started screaming and looked right into my eyes. So I looked at my friend, who I was on post with, and I said, “Well, I can’t let that happen.” So I took another shot and took him out. He was then carried away by the rest of his family. It took seven people to carry his body away. We were all congratulated after we had our first kills, and that happened to have been mine. My company commander personally congratulated me, as he did everyone else in our company. This is the same individual who had stated that whoever gets their first kill by stabbing them to death will get a four-day pass when we return from Iraq."
"I just want to say that I am sorry for the hate and destruction that I have inflicted on innocent people, and I’m sorry for the hate and destruction that others have inflicted on innocent people. At one point, it was OK. But reality has shown that it’s not..and that until people hear about what is going on with this war, it will continue to happen and people will continue to die. I am sorry for the things that I did. I am no longer the monster that I once was."
"The Prosecutor mandated to oversee the Occupied Palestinian Territory for the International Criminal Court (ICC) stated on Wednesday that her office is keeping “a close eye” on the planned demolition of a Palestinian village in the West Bank by Israeli authorities...“It bears recalling, as a general matter,” said the ICC Prosecutor, “that extensive destruction of property without military necessity and population transfers in an occupied territory constitute war crimes under the Rome Statute.”"
"There have been a litany of war crimes. ... Saudi planes, using American munitions, bombed a school bus killing dozens of Yemeni schoolchildren. Second, the U.S. government has responded to these crimes with silences that might seem chastened, but in truth must be classified as defiant, given the bureaucratic maneuvering undertaken to obscure the United States’ unthinking complicity both to outsiders and to itself."
"The reason why the U.S. Government must be prosecuted for its war-crimes against Iraq is that they are so horrific and there are so many of them, and international law crumbles until they become prosecuted and severely punished for what they did. We therefore now have internationally a lawless world (or “World Order”) in which “Might makes right,” and in which there is really no effective international law, at all. This is merely gangster “law,” ruling on an international level. ...The seriousness of this international war crime is not as severe as those of the Nazis were, but nonetheless is comparable to it. ...On 15 March 2018, Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J.S. Davies headlined at Alternet, “The Staggering Death Toll in Iraq” and wrote that “our calculations, using the best information available, show a catastrophic estimate of 2.4 million Iraqi deaths since the 2003 invasion,” and linked to solid evidence, backing up their estimate."
"America’s leaders deceived the American public into perpetrating this invasion and occupation, of a foreign country (Iraq) that had never threatened the United States; and, so, this invasion and subsequent military occupation constitutes the very epitome of “aggressive war” — unwarranted and illegal international aggression. ... Hitler, similarly to George W. Bush, would never have been able to obtain the support of his people to invade if he had not lied, or “deceived,” them, into invading and militarily occupying foreign countries that had never threatened Germany, such as Belgium, Poland and Czechoslovakia. This — Hitler’s lie-based aggressions — was the core of what the Nazis were hung for, and yet America now does it."
"The destruction of animals for food, in its details and tendencies, involves so much of cruelty as to cause every reflecting individual — not destitute of the ordinary sensibilities of our nature — to shudder."
"Every system of law is a system of education, and, in extending legal sanction to the scientific torture of animals, the State educates the nation in a false view of the relations of man to the lower creatures, encourages selfishness and cruelty and the disregard of the rights of the weak by the strong."
"The FBI has found that a history of cruelty to animals is one of the traits that regularly appear in its computer records of serial rapists and murderers, and the standard diagnostic and treatment manual for psychiatric and emotional disorders lists cruelty to animals as a diagnostic criterion for conduct disorders."
"One of the odd aspects of animal mistreatment in the U.S. is that species regarded as more intelligent and emotionally complex — dogs, dolphins, cats, primates — generally receive more public concern and more legal protection. Yet pigs – among the planet’s most intelligent, social, and emotionally complicated species, capable of great joy, play, love, connection, suffering and pain, at least on a par with dogs — receive almost no protections, and are subject to savage systematic abuse by U.S. factory farms."
"In general, the core moral and philosophical question at the heart of animal rights activism is now being seriously debated: Namely, what gives humans the right or justification to abuse, exploit, and torture non-human species? If there comes a day when some other species (broadly defined) — such as machines — surpass humans in intellect and cognitive complexity, will they have a valid moral claim to treat humans as commodities whose suffering and death can be assigned no value? The irreconcilable contradiction of lavishing love and protection on dogs and cats, while torturing and slaughtering farm animals capable of a deep emotional life and great suffering, is becoming increasingly apparent."
"There is a temptation to turn away from and ignore this mass suffering and cruelty because it’s so painful to confront, so much more pleasant to remain unaware of it. Animal rights activists are determined to prevent us from doing so, and we should all feel gratitude for their increasing success in making us see what we are enabling when we consume the products of this barbaric and sociopathic industry."
"After looking at this building there appeared a white dome on the top of a hill, to which men were coming from all quarters. When I asked about this they said that a Jogi lived there, and when the simpletons come to see him he places in their hands a handful of flour, which they put into their mouths and imitate the cry of an animal which these fools have at some time injured, in order that by this act their sins may be blotted out. I ordered them to break down that place and turn the Jogi out of it, as well as to destroy the form of an idol there was in the dome."
"I have this small but sure voice deep inside me that says ‘NO’ every time I witness violence and I don’t ever want to stifle that voice with apathy. Supporting animal abuse in any way quiets that voice. To hurt animals is to disconnect me from that most caring, compassionate voice. I see them as such spiritual creatures, much more awake than humans and I feel if I can accept the abuse of these innocent, sentient creatures and my role in it then I could easily become apathetic about…well, everything, and that is a scary thought. […] I don’t know why we are still using our power and our blessings to quash animals. Why have we not yet assumed our rightful role as their caretakers? And every time I look into a cow’s eyes and see the gentle soul dwelling in that enormous powerful body, I feel like the animals are patiently waiting, quietly willing us to just catch on."
"All breathing, existing, living, sentient creatures should not be slain, nor treated with violence, nor abused, nor tormented, nor driven away."
"Every thing of persecution and revenge between man and man, and every thing of cruelty to animals, is a violation of moral duty."
"1. One who unlawfully, systematically, and deliberately intrudes into someone's personal environment with the intention to force the other to act in a way, or to prevent one to act in a certain way or to induce fear, will be prosecuted for harassment, for which the maximal punishment is three years and a fine of the fourth monetary category. 2. The prosecution will only take place after a complaint of the person who is the victim of the crime."
"Engaging in a course of conduct directed at a specific person that would cause a reasonable person to— (A) fear for his or her safety or the safety of others; (B) suffer substantial emotional distress."
"It's not called stalking...it's called "passionately following"."
"Every breath you take; Every move you make; Every bond you break; Every step you take, I'll be watching you."
"There is something singularly enticing in the idea of going, rent-free, into a ready-made house."
"For years, Beijing’s defenders insisted that testimonies from Uyghur, Kazakh, Kyrgyz, and Tibetan survivors were fabrications, that satellite images were misinterpretations, and that leaked documents were forgeries. They mocked the evidence as “Western propaganda.” But now the United Nations—an institution they once claimed as the ultimate neutral party—has confirmed the core truth: China’s labor transfer system is coercion on a massive scale. The experts detail how State-mandated “poverty alleviation through labor transfer” programs force minorities into jobs they cannot refuse, under such close surveillance that rejecting an assignment becomes unthinkable. Xinjiang’s own five-year plan projects “13.75 million instances of labor transfers,” a number that highlights the absurdity of claiming voluntariness. When millions are “transferred,” choice becomes statistically impossible."
"Money is a new and terrible form of slavery, and like the old form of personal slavery it demoralizes both slave and slave-owner, only much more, for it frees the slave and the slave-owner from personal, human relations with one another."