"Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people. To destroy this invisible government, to befoul the unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics is the first task of the statesmanship of the day."-- Theodore Roosevelt, April 19, 1906
“It’s ridiculous to talk about freedom in a society dominated by huge corporations. What kind of freedom is there inside a corporation? They’re totalitarian institutions - you take orders from above and maybe give them to people below you. There’s about as much freedom as under Stalinism.” --Noam Chomsky
“There are two governments in the United States today. One is visible. The other is invisible…The first is the government that citizens read about in their newspapers and children study about in their civics books. The second is the interlocking, hidden machinery that carries out the policies of the United States in the Cold War…This second, invisible government gathers intelligence, conducts espionage and plans and executes secret operations all over the globe…The Invisible Government is not a formal body. It is a large, amorphous grouping of individuals and agencies drawn from many parts of the visible government. It is not limited to the Central Intelligence Agency, although the CIA is at its heart; nor is it confined to the other agencies which comprise what is known as the intelligence community…The Invisible Government includes, also, many other units and agencies, as well as individuals, that appear outwardly to be a normal part of the conventional government. to be a normal part of the conventional government. It even encompasses business firms and institutions that are seemingly private.” –David Wise and Thomas B. Ross, from their book titled“The Invisible Government (1963)”
“Corporations are the opposite of good citizens. They bribe politicians to write laws that cheat society on a mammoth scale, most significantly by allowing them to avoid paying many of the very real costs incurred in conducting their businesses.“ Those ‘very real costs’”include the social and environmental costs of destruction of valuable resources, pollution, the burdens on society of workers who become injured or ill and receive little or no health care, the indirect funding received when companies are permitted to market hazardous products, dump wastes into oceans and rivers, pay employees less than a living wage, provide substandard working conditions, and extract natural resources from public lands at less than market prices. Furthermore, most corporations are dependent on public subsidies, exemptions, massive advertising and lobbying campaigns, and complex transportation and communications systems that are underwritten by taxpayers; their executives receive inflated salaries, perks, and “golden retirement parachutes” which are written off as tax deductions.” -- John Perkins,author of “Confessions of an Economic Hit Man” and “The Secret History of the American Empire: The Truth About Economic Hit Men, Jackals, and How to Change the World”
“It does not matter to the corporate rich who wins the presidential election. It does not matter who is elected to Congress. The rich have the power. Money has replaced the vote. The wealthy can crush anyone who does not play by their rules. And the political elites—slobbering over the spoils provided by their corporate masters for selling us out—understand the game. Your elected representative in the House or Senate, if not a multimillionaire already, will be one as soon as he or she retires from government and is handed seats on corporate boards or positions in lobbying firms… We do not live in a democracy. We live in a political system that has legalized bribery, exclusively serves corporate power and is awash in propaganda and lies.”– Chris Hedges
“Capitalism is merely cannibalism without getting one's teeth dirty.”– Bernard Martin
“The economic system in the USA is not capitalism. Rather, it is corporate fascism, individualism and money worship, not capitalism.”-- Anonymous
“Our citizens should know the urgent facts...but they don’t because our media serves imperial, not popular interests. They lie, deceive, connive and suppress what everyone needs to know, substituting managed news misinformation and rubbish for hard truths..."-- Oliver Stone
“Apathy and indifference are nurtured in the modern age as most peoples’ free time is frittered away with worthless trivia like ball games, computer games, movies, soap operas, and fiddling with their mobile phones. These distractions might be fun, but after most of them you’ve learnt nothing of any value, and remain ignorant, malleable and suggestible, which is just how the elites want you.”-- Clive Maund
"(It isn’t) that US foreign policy is cruel because American leaders are cruel. It's that our leaders are cruel because only those willing to be inordinately cruel and remorseless can hold positions of leadership in the foreign policy establishment; it might as well be written into the job description. People capable of expressing a full human measure of compassion and empathy toward faraway powerless strangers…do not become president of the United States, or vice president, or secretary of state, or national security adviser or secretary of the treasury. Nor do they want to."--William Blum,from “Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower”
“Globalization is but another name for colonization -- nothing has changed but the name. And, just as the East India Company was the instrument for colonization, today's corporation is the instrument for globalization. And, corporatization is but another name for Fascism.”-- Urban Kohler
"Slavery is the legal fiction that a person is property. Corporate personhood is the legal fiction that property is a person."-- Anonymous
“We must bear in mind that imperialism is a world system, the last stage of capitalism and it must be defeated in a world confrontation. The strategic end of this struggle should be the destruction of imperialism. Our share, the responsibility of the exploited and underdeveloped of the world, is to eliminate the foundations of imperialism: oppressed nations, from where they extract capital, raw materials, technicians, and cheap labor, and to which they export new capital-instruments of domination-arms and all kinds of articles, thus submerging us in an absolute dependence.”-- Ernesto Che Guevara
“The news media is full of propaganda, due to the corrupting influence of huge corporations that own them or advertise on them. The overall agenda is to convince the audience to be in favor of and vote for their own victimization and abuse, willingly and voluntarily…The majority of the human population has allowed itself to be deceived through ignorance, deception, stupidity, chronic apathy or a serious lack of curiosity and questioning, all somewhat bolstered by cynicism…Consumerism rules, and as long as their bellies are full and their heads are filled with mindless entertainment or other gratuitous distraction, people are happy…Cloning has already been done because of the effects of mass media brainwashing.” – Paul A. Philips
“An ignorant population does not look to see the greater way,never questions authorities or understands rights and therefore provides little opposition to a dictatorship. If we want to grow as a race we must start educating ourselves.Be able to learn to discern. Recognize when the media is trying to manipulate us. Whatever it is we’re subjected to in the media, beware of the hidden ulterior motive. Perhaps it would be better to boycott this propagandist pap altogether and instead of being listless or unresponsive, do something worth-while; campaign for the truth.”-- Paul A. Philips
“In politics, nothing happens by accident. If it happens, you can bet it was planned that way.”– President Franklin Delano Roosevelt
“The first truth is that the liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private (corporate)power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism -- ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power...Among us today, is growing a concentration of private power without equal in history.” – Franklin Delano Roosevelt
"Fascism is a system of government in which there is no separation of powers and the Executive is in control of all branches of the State apparatus, including the judiciary. It is designed to maintain and expand the power of the State for the benefit of a capitalist ruling class. Fascism is characterized by the use of racism, misogyny, and xenophobia, in various proportions, as well as force and terror, to maintain its control. The State may have a single charismatic leader. There may be a single national ideology supported by law, but if not, certain ideologies are banned by law, and certain religious/non-religious views are criminalized. There are no independent media."- Steven Jonas, MD, MPH (Ret.), Deputy Editor for The Greanville Post