People

"Exploitation"

"[A]fter the war... I got a note asking if I would dine with him one evening. It was from an address in Hill Street, and I... wondered how [Felix] Fenston came to be living in so select and expensive a neighborhood... [T]he mansion was in full swing, with waiters in tail-coats and white gloves on every landing, and pink champagne flowing freely. It seemed that it had been the Duke of Devonshire's residence... Later, when we sat talking, he explained how he had become a millionaire. It was terribly simple, he said, with noticeable irritation, as though this very simplicity was a mean trick depriving him of the the satisfaction of acquiring riches. There he was in war-time London, with no job, a meagre disability pension, no prospects. All alone. Thus situated, an idea of dazzling, almost ridiculous simplicity seized him. London was full of bombed-out sites which in the then circumstances had practically no value. If the war was won, they would recover their value anyway, and more; if lost, the question did not arise. ...[I]t recalled Pascal's famous wager. Why not, then, somehow raise some money and acquire a site or two? Then use them as collateral to raise more money, and so ad infinitum By the war's end he was, like Gogol's hero in Dead Souls, on paper at any rate, a large property-owner. Thereafter, it was easy to become a property-developer and millionaire. By this stage in his recital he was almost shaking with rage to think that he, a sort of genius, should have had to bend to such paltry devices, when he could have done things so much more difficult, requiring so much greater audacity and imagination. ...I think my presence somehow comforted him; I being a fairly obscure journalist, by no means well off, and so reassuring him that, by comparison with me, he had scored by becoming a millionaire, and acquiring all the hangers-on, male and female, that went therewith. He was always trying to dazzle me, too, with tales of big-game shooting in Kenya and India, of his financial deals and his country estate. Or producing smart people at his table. This culminated in a dinner party to meet Princess Alexaadra and her husband, . Paul Getty, a lugubrious figure reputed to be the richest man in the world, was another guest. After he had seen the Princess off, Fenston did a strange thing; he went pounding down the great stairway he had just come up, jumping ferociously from step to step, until he got to the bottom, sweating and triumphant. With his artificial leg and heavy build, the effect was frightening; he might so easily have fallen and killed himself. I took it to be a demonstration, primarily for my benefit, of his strength and virility despite his disability and millionaire status. Some months later I read in the paper that he had suffered a heart attack; then that he had died. It gave me a pang to think I had only responded to his showing off by my own kind of showing off; not trying to meet him on some other basis—stretching out a hand and receiving a hand."

"We may not appreciate the fact; but a fact nevertheless it remains: we are living in a Golden Age, the most gilded Golden Age of human history—not only of past history, but of future history. For, as Sir Charles Darwin and many others before him have pointed out, we are living like drunken sailors, like the irresponsible heirs of a millionaire uncle. At an ever accelerating rate we are now squandering the capital of metallic ores and fossil fuels accumulated in the earth’s crust during hundreds of millions of years. How long can this spending spree go on? Estimates vary. But all are agreed that within a few centuries or at most a few millennia, Man will have run through his capital and will be compelled to live, for the remaining nine thousand nine hundred and seventy or eighty centuries of his career as Homo sapiens, strictly on income. Sir Charles is of the opinion that Man will successfully make the transition from rich ores to poor ores and even sea water, from coal, oil, uranium and thorium to solar energy and alcohol derived from plants. About as much energy as is now available can be derived from the new sources—but with a far greater expense in man hours, a much larger capital investment in machinery. And the same holds true of the raw materials on which industrial civilization depends. By doing a great deal more work than they are doing now, men will contrive to extract the diluted dregs of the planet’s metallic wealth or will fabricate non-metallic substitutes for the elements they have completely used up. In such an event, some human beings will still live fairly well, but not in the style to which we, the squanderers of planetary capital, are accustomed."

"We think we have got freedom of the press. When one millionaire has ten newspapers and ten million people have no newspapers—that is not freedom of the press."

"For Rothschild... the Avenue Marigny house was a home from home, but... I felt, a prison. Installed there, he was the the de facto if not the de jure head of the family. ...[H]is disposition was a curious, uneasy mixture of arrogance and diffidence. Somewhere between Club and the Ark of the Covenant, between the Old and the New Testament, between the Kremlin and the House of Lords, he had lost his way, and been floundering about ever since. Embedded deep down in him there was something touching and vulnerable and perceptive; at times lovable even. But so overlaid with the bogus certainties of science, and the equally bogus respect, accorded and expected, on account of his wealth and famous name, that it was only rarely apparent. Once when I was going to London he asked me to take over a case of brandy addressed in large letters to him at his English address. In the guard's van where it was put, among the porters who carried it, wherever it was seen or handled, it aroused an attitude of adoration, real or facetious, as though it had been some holy relic—the bones of a saint or a fragment of the True Cross. Even I partook of its glory, momentarily deputising for this Socialist millionaire, this Rabbinical sceptic, this epicurean ascetic, this Wise Man who had followed the wrong star and found his way to the wrong manger—one complete with chef, central heating and a lift. I think of him in the Avenue Marigny dictating innumerable memoranda, as though in the hope that, if only he dictated enough of them, one would say something; on a basis of the philosophical notion that three monkeys tapping away at typewriters must infallibly, if they keep at it long enough, ultimately tap out the Bible. Rothschild, anyway, did not lack for monkeys. After the war I caught glimpses of him at Cambridge, in think-tanks, once in the Weizmann Institute in Tel Aviv, still dictating memoranda."

"Nothing is more admirable than the fortitude with which millionaires tolerate the disadvantages of their wealth."

"Plutocracy"

"If wealth was the inevitable result of hard work and enterprise, every woman in Africa would be a millionaire. The claims that the ultra-rich 1% make for themselves—that they are possessed of unique intelligence or creativity or drive—are examples of the self-attribution fallacy. ...crediting yourself with outcomes for which you weren’t responsible... [owing] less to talent and intelligence than to a combination of the ruthless exploitation of others and accidents of birth..."

"Refugees are the bravest people on earth right now, don't dare look down on them. Each mind a universe swirling as many details as yours, as much love for a humble place."

"In your dream no one is a refugee. Everyone has clean sheets."

"Your enemy is not the refugee. Your enemy is the one who made him a refugee."

"Fled bloodthirsty regime bent on extermination; now shaken and stirred."

"Not long ago, two friends of mine were talking to a Cuban refugee, a businessman who had escaped from Castro, and in the midst of his story one of my friends turned to the other and said, 'We don't know how lucky we are.' And the Cuban stopped and said, 'How lucky you are? I had someplace to escape to.' And in that sentence he told us the entire story. If we lose freedom here, there's no place to escape to. This is the last stand on earth."

"The Kshatriyas [military caste]... will become the thorns of the earth... attacking and repeating their attacks upon the good and the honest, and feeling no pity for the latter... And men will be filled with anxiety as regards the means of living... overwhelmed with covetousness, men will kill... and enjoy the possessions of their victims... And when men become fierce and destitute of virtue and carnivorous and addicted to intoxicating drinks, then doth the Yuga come to an end... friends and relatives and kinsmen will perform friendly offices for the sake of the wealth only that is possessed by a person... When the end of the Yuga comes, men abandoning the countries and directions and towns and cities of their occupation, will seek for new ones, one after another. And people will wander over the earth, uttering, 'O father, O son', and such other frightful and rending cries. p. 392)"

"Since refugees are a global problem, the search for solutions must also be global."

"No country in the world has been host to so many refugees as a 'shrinking and shrunken' India has been since the Partition in 1947... According to the estimate of the Government of India, 7.30 million people entered India between 1947-51 from the two wings of Pakistan. Except a few thousand Hindu families in Sindh, almost the entire Hindu and Sikh population were forced to leave their homes... In East Pakistan, the process was slow and systematic. Between 1947-51, the total number of people moving into India was estimated at 2.55 million... While West Pakistan was cleansed of its Kafirs except for a microscopic minority - being reduced from 23% in 1947 to 3% at present, the non-Muslim communities of East Pakistan/Bangladesh were reduced from 29% to 12% of the population. It is estimated that another 2.5 million Hindus fled the eastern wing of Pakistan during 1951-61... One finds that 90% of the total who fled East Pakistan in course of the liberation war of Bangladesh were Hindus... The extent of the missing Hindu population is estimated around 1.22 million during the last inter-censal period of 1981-91... In the Indian subcontinent, wherever the Kafirs become a minority, they are bound to become refugees, a fate which is in store for the Hindus in West Bengal, the north-eastern states and possibly Ladakh and Jammu."

"The decay of the Soviet experiment should come as no surprise to us. Wherever the comparisons have been made between free and closed societies -- West Germany and East Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia, Malaysia and Vietnam -- it is the democratic countries what are prosperous and responsive to the needs of their people. And one of the simple but overwhelming facts of our time is this: Of all the millions of refugees we've seen in the modern world, their flight is always away from, not toward the Communist world. Today on the NATO line, our military forces face east to prevent a possible invasion. On the other side of the line, the Soviet forces also face east to prevent their people from leaving."

"Cuba, along with China, is sending doctors and supplies to a number of countries around the world to help them fight the pandemic... Washington is demonstrating the very opposite... removing all of its Peace Corps staff from around the world, and, even worse, increasing sanctions against countries like Cuba, Iran, Venezuela and Nicaragua during the height of the COVID-19 outbreak. It is accurate to say that the U.S. is weaponizing the virus against these countries... As a number of religious scholars have warned, “plagues expose the foundations of injustice” in our societies. The current pandemic is exposing not only our government’s utter failures to protect its own citizens, but also its profound lack of human decency in dealing with other nations"

"For far too long, American politicians have been sanctions-crazed.... Last month, the Trump administration sanctioned Mexican companies for seeking to supply food to Venezuela.... Three senators introduced a bill designed to punish countries that accept help from Cuban doctors, which would include Italy, Ukraine, Jamaica, and South Africa.... Leaders of countries suddenly facing the threat of punishment for accepting Cuban doctors have reacted with anger and incredulity... it would leave more than 50 countries with the choice of either expelling Cuban doctors at a moment of global pandemic or facing American opprobrium. The prime minister of tiny Antigua and Barbuda, Gaston Browne, protested that his country relies on Cuban doctors and pointedly added, “Those who would like us to do otherwise should undertake to fill the breach.” ...Most remarkably, Congress is moving to sanction Germany, a major ally for generations, because it is building a gas pipeline to Russia."

"Some of the wars America fought were "simply for profit" and the sanctions it has imposed on certain countries have been as destructive as wars... Take Venezuela, which has suffered from U.S. sanctions for over 15 years, as an example. An estimated more than 40,000 people may have died in Venezuela from 2017 to 2018 as a result of U.S. sanctions that made it harder for ordinary citizens to access food, medicine, and medical equipment, according to a report published by the Center for Economic and Policy Research, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank, in 2019. The sanctions, Kovalik added, have also prevented Venezuela, which has the world's largest proven oil reserve, from "maintaining its oil industry and maintaining its power grids. Sanction is war by another means...You're just denying the people the economic benefits of their industries, and also, again, you're denying them electricity, other infrastructure, again in much the same way that you could or would through actual military means." However, most Americans don't see sanctions as war and they don't know the consequences so they "tolerate it more" and think the sanctions are "somehow a legitimate form of coercion," according to Kovalik. "When you look at the results, they're the same or similar to actual military warfare, but again, there are means that are more clandestine and do create more consent amongst the population of the Western world that might otherwise protest it," he concluded."

"Another exodus is happening halfway around the world as asylum seekers from Central America make the perilous journey to the U.S./Mexico border. There, they face draconian U.S. immigration policies that consign them to "Remain in Mexico."... these migrants live in constant danger in squalid, makeshift refugee camps in Mexican border cities, waiting for a chance at asylum in the United States.... The U.S. government reported a record 210,000 migrant apprehensions along the southern border in July. Many of these people hail from the so-called "Northern Triangle" countries of El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala, where widespread inequality, systemic corruption, food insecurity, gang violence and now climate change are forcing people from their homes. These problems have long been exacerbated by U.S. military, economic and political interventions in the region. The United States engaged in "dirty wars" in Central America and has supported coups against democratically elected governments there, from overthrowing the government of President Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala in 1954 to actively supporting the coup against President Manuel Zelaya in Honduras in 2009. The United States has a responsibility to provide a safe haven for refugees, from Afghanistan, Latin America, or elsewhere, and to cease interventions that fuel these crises and displace so many."

"There was not an inch of space to spare in West Bengal for the refugees from East Bengal."

"Look at today’s politicians... keen to be viewed as the virile leaders of their respective countries; eager to inflate their image by harming migrants and refugees, the most vulnerable in society. If there is courage in that, I fail to see it. Authoritarian leaders, or elected leaders inclined toward it, are bullies, deceivers, selfish cowards. If they are growing in number it is because (with exceptions) many other politicians are mediocre... Too busy with themselves, or too afraid to stand up to the demagogues and for others, they seem to shelter in the safety of silence and shuffled papers. Only when they leave public office do some speak up, discovering their courage rather belatedly. Many come and go; no one really notices... In consequence, too many summits and conferences held between states are tortured affairs that lack profundity but are full of jargon and tiresome clichés that are, in a word, meaningless."

"Collective punishment of entire nations is immoral and wrong... Collective punishment can cause the people targeted by it to become more nationalistic, and in countries with a strong nationalist tradition this is even more likely.... When the U.S. government is seeking to make them miserable and poor, Iranians are unlikely to take enormous risks to do Washington’s bidding by toppling their own government. The overuse of sanctions is itself an abuse of power... The impulse to sanction one country after another is the same impulse behind wanting to “do something” militarily against this or that regime: we do it because we can and because we think we have the right to do whatever we want to others. The same arrogance and the same contempt for the sovereignty of other nations are on display. We should be opposed to the interventionists that want to use American military power to cause unnecessary death and destruction in other parts of the world, and in the same way we should reject the capricious and cruel use of economic sanctions to inflict misery and suffering on tens of millions of innocent people."

"The refugees in Germany constitute a substantial proportion of the German population. The United States Government, in planning economic measures of assistance with the authorities of the German Federal Republic, has always taken the refugees into account. Along with the indigenous population, they have in large part contributed to and benefited from the rising level of the German economy. The achievement of economic balance and the expansion of employment opportunities in Germany have been primary objectives of United States measures of assistance to the German economy. The United States Government will persist in these efforts in collaboration with the German Federal authorities. This collaboration has been particularly close and continuous in recent months since the flow of refugees into Berlin has increased."

"Most Westerners have never heard about the Hindu refugee problem, for most journalists including reputed India hands have simply kept it out of the picture."

"Thou shalt not oppress an hired servant that is poor and needy, whether he be of thy brethren, or of thy strangers that are in thy land within thy gates."

"…a national policy of the government of Poland to put people into homes as soon as they arrive here, not to put them in refugee centers, or have them stay in the parks or something like that. They’re put in people’s homes and they’re given a stipend. They’re given access to education. They’re given access to health care, and importantly, they’re given access to the job market."

"Meeting the needs of the world’s displaced people—both refugees and the internally displaced—is much more complex than simply providing short-term security and assistance. It is about addressing the persecution, violence and conflict which bring about displacement in the first place. It is about recognizing the human rights of all men, women and children to enjoy peace, security and dignity without having to flee their homes."

"Well, I was myself recently also in Afghanistan, and I sat down with the mothers in these displacement camps around Kabul. And I asked them, “What about the future? What do you think of the future?” And they told me very clearly, “We believe we will starve and freeze to death this harsh winter, unless there is an enormous aid operation coming through and unless there is a public sector again that is able to provide services.” It is as acute as that. Forty million civilians were left behind when the NATO countries went for the door in August."

"If you isolate a country, you isolate yourself, as the United States, from being influential and effective in the course of events, unless you are talking about the negative influence, like making the embargo that could kill the people slowly, or launching a war and supporting terrorists that could kill them in a faster way."

"My father tells a story about his father dying in a refugee camp. His father was a titled man in Igboland, which meant that he was a great man. He had one of the highest titles a man could have. But his hometown fell, so he had to leave and go to a refugee camp, and he died and he was buried in a mass grave. Which is just heartbreaking for a man, particularly a man like him. My father, who's the first son, and who takes his responsibilities very seriously, couldn't go to bury his father because the roads were occupied. He was in a different part of Biafra and so it took a year until ... he could go to the refugee camp. ... And he goes there and he says, 'I want to know where my father was buried.' And somebody waved very vaguely and said, 'Oh we buried the people there.' So it was a mass grave. So many people had died. And my father says he went there and he took a handful of sand, and he said he's kept the sand ever since. For me, that was one of the most moving things I had ever heard.""

"The sanctions on the Syrian people that made the situation much worse and this is another reason for the refugees that you have in Europe now. How do you don't want refugees at the same time you created all the situation or the atmosphere that will tell them: 'Go outside Syria, somewhere else' ? and of course they'll go to Europe..."

"Money should not go to the military political group called the Taliban that took power by force. The money should go to the people, and it is possible. So, number one, there has to be trust funds, as we call it, that is held by U.N. agencies, that funnel money directly to the hospitals, that you just showed, where people are dying at the moment. It can go straight to the teachers that were on the payroll of the World Bank previously, can go straight to them. So, the money can go through us, international organizations, straight to the people. Secondly, unfreeze those funds that will enable banks to function again. At the moment, we cannot even buy relief items in Afghanistan. We have to ship them over, take them over from Pakistan and Iran, which means that employment is dying in Afghanistan. And thirdly, donors, come down from the fence. See that we are there. We are reliable channels for funding. The money will go to the people. Transmit funding, not just come with pledges. This will not become Switzerland in a long time. You have to share the risk with us to save lives this winter."

"When a foreigner lives with you in your land, you must not oppress him. You must regard the foreigner who lives with you as the native-born among you. You are to love him as yourself, for you were foreigners in the land of Egypt; I am Yahweh your God."

"In some parts of the world, states have collapsed as a result of internal and communal conflicts, depriving their citizens of any effective protection. Elsewhere, human security has been jeopardized by governments which refuse to act in the common interest, which persecute their opponents and punish innocent members of minority groups."

"Perhaps the most striking Indian policy was something that it did not do. India did not stop masses of Bengali refugees from flooding into India. Unimaginably huge numbers of Bengalis escaped into safety on Indian soil, eventually totaling as many as ten million—five times the number of people displaced in Bosnia in the 1990s. The needs of this new, desperate population were far beyond the capacities of the feeble governments of India’s border states, and Indira Gandhi’s government at the center. But at that overcharged moment, the Indian public would have found it hard to accept the sight of its own soldiers and border troops opening fire to keep out these desperate and terrified people. Here, at least, was something like real humanitarianism. As payment for this kindness, India found itself crushed under the unsustainable burden of one of the biggest refugee flows in world history—which galvanized the public and the government to new heights of self-righteous fury against Pakistan."

"The events of this decade—and, indeed, those of the past year—indicate very clearly that refugee issues cannot be discussed without reference to security."

"The land shall not be sold for ever: for the land is Mine, for ye are strangers and sojourners with Me."

"In the most difficult days people of Iran won't forget those who turned their backs on them."

"Humanity is entering a new orbit. The old powers are declining. They are the "past" and we are the "future". I repeat that they are the "past" and we are the "future".Our view of the future is hopeful. The world is waiting for the saviour promised by the divine religions. This saviour exists and is present."

"Being black in America has little to do with skin color. Being black means that your heart, your soul, your mind, and your body are where the dispossessed are."

"The typical black family in this country has one-tenth the wealth of the typical white family. Black women die in childbirth at four times the rate of white women. And there is, of course, the shame of this land of the free boasting the largest prison population on the planet, of which the descendants of the enslaved make up the largest share."

"History has thrown the colored man out. You look in vain to Bancroft and other historians for justice to the colored. The historian passes it by."

"It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others. … One ever feels his twoness, — an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warrings ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder."

"Boxing is a lot of white men watching two black men beat each other up."

"The devil damn thee black, thou cream-faced loon!"

"In the old age black was not counted fair, Or if it were, it bore not beauty's name; But now is black beauty's successive heir, And beauty slander'd with a bastard shame."

"I hate the Moor."

"The lover, all as frantic, Sees Helen's beauty in a brow of Egypt."