Sunday, December 19, 2010

Quotes of the Week

From the Light:
“The irony of it is that, even as the government is justifying its unaccountable power based on the stuff it knows that we don’t, it’s simultaneously warning us not to acquire any knowledge it doesn’t want us to have.”
Kevin Carson

"Government does not exist of necessity, but rather by virtue of a tragic, almost comical combination of klutzy, opportunistic terrorism against sitting ducks whom it pretends to shelter, plus our childish phobia of responsibility, praying to be exempted from the hard reality of life on life's terms."
Wolf DeVoon

“When someone asks how much liberty you’re willing to trade for security, you should ask why they assume there is a tradeoff. What we’re purchasing with our liberty, privacy and wealth is not security. It is a society of submission. True security is founded on liberty at home and abroad.”
Darian Worden

“The question that is never asked is: Do I have any right to impose my will on my neighbor, who is doing me no harm? For to ask that simple but penetrating question – and to come to grips with the moral implications of the answer – would cause the ‘conservative’ and ‘liberal' authoritarian alike to suddenly see the blood each have on their hands."
Eric Peters

“In a state where the people are sovereign, state secrets are maintained for one reason and one reason only: to permit certain elements of the state to operate freely without taking into account the will of the other elements of the state. This is why state secrets are intrinsically authoritarian and invariably lead to the loss of human liberty over time.”
Vox Day

“No state regulations and no economic calculus can replace each individual’s plans for his daily needs. The free man is the best man for this job. And there’re no free men without self-ownership.”
Cristian Gherasim

“Even if Americans become convinced that their government is lying to them about something having to do with war, they'll assume that the government is honest in its overall message about war: anything that the U.S. government does that is bad is done to stop something that is worse.”
Anthony Gregory

“To recap 'Obama justice,' if you create an illegal worldwide torture regime, illegally spy on Americans without warrants, abduct people with no legal authority, or invade and destroy another country based on false claims, then you are fully protected. But if you expose any of the evils secretly perpetrated as part of those lawless actions -- by publishing the truth about what was done -- then you are an Evil Criminal who deserves the harshest possible prosecution.”
Glen Greenwald

“The poisonous pedagogy of statism and collectivism has institutionalized the sacrifice of the individual, one’s rights and one’s liberty to serve the collective needs of the community, and to obey the will of the State, the community’s hired guns.”
Scott Lazarowitz

“The leak, in other words, is only the catalyst for the desired counter-overreaction; Wikileaks wants to provoke the conspiracy into turning off its own brain in response to the threat. As it tries to plug its own holes and find the leakers, he reasons, its component elements will de-synchronize from and turn against each other, de-link from the central processing network, and come undone. Even if all the elements of the conspiracy still exist, in this sense, depriving themselves of a vigorous flow of information to connect them all together as a conspiracy prevents them from acting as a conspiracy.”
Julian Assange

“It has been said that the price of liberty is eternal vigilance. But such vigilance is a constant non-productive expenditure of energy, and it is grossly unreasonable to expect men to keep expending their energy non-productively out of ‘unselfish idealism.’ There is no area of the free market which requires the constant vigilance of the entire population to keep it from going awry.”
Morris & Linda Tannehill

“Stop playing by everyone else's rules. Refuse to be enslaved by the idea that it's your civic and moral responsibility to pay off the debts of your government's failures. Cast off the yoke of their control... and summon the courage to live a life by your own design.”
Simon Black

“If publishing is a crime, your editor is in trouble. If publishing 'sensitive' documents that make US officials look like fools is a crime, we're all in trouble.”
Bill Bonner

"You've got to stop this war in Afghanistan."
Richard Holbrooke, US diplomat, immediately before entering surgery he did not survive
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From the Darkness:
“New media has empowered citizens around the world to report on their circumstances, express opinions on world events, and exchange information in environments sometimes hostile to such exercises of individuals’ right to freedom of expression. At the same time, we are concerned about the determination of some governments to censor and silence individuals, and to restrict the free flow of information. We mark events such as World Press Freedom Day in the context of our enduring commitment to support and expand press freedom and the free flow of information in this digital age.”
From a US State Dept. press release , announcing that it will host UNESCO’s World Press Freedom Day event in 2011

“At this point, we are beyond indictments and courts. The damage has been done… Kill him.”
Jeffrey T. Kuhner, Washington Times, on Julian Assange

“I'm not advocating that we bring out of retirement the KGB proxy who, on a London street, killed a Bulgarian dissident with a poisoned umbrella tip. But it would be nice if people like [Julian] Assange were made to worry every time they go out in the rain.”
Charles Krauthammer

“In Washington, the view is that the banks are to be regulated, and my view is that Washington and the regulators are there to serve the banks.”
Spencer Bachus, Alabama Republican , the incoming chairman of the House banking committee

“Childhood obesity isn’t just a public health threat, it’s not just an economic threat, it’s a national security threat as well."
Michelle Obama [No more a threat than nosey, busy-body women with large, obese butts.]

"The Federal Reserve does not release specific information regarding the borrowings of individual institutions from our lending facilities. The approach is completely consistent with the long-standing practice of central banks."
Ben Bernanke

“I think it's understandable, and I'm very respectful of the feelings of the American people, but the question I would ask is, how do you feel about a continuing American commitment that is aimed at protecting you and your family now and into the future? Because that's the question we've asked, and this is how we've answered it.”
Queen Hillary, responding to a poll showing public disapproval of the Afghanistan war

"We've been taking a lot of heat for what we do. We just put a new face on TSA — I think a positive face."
Ernie Perez, a TSA security supervisor and tenor, commenting on the TSA choir serenading the human livestock at the airport.

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