American still sets the tone for the world. Jerry Maguire 1996 starring Tom Cruise & Cuba Gooding & Renee Zellweger & Kelly Preston & Jerry O'Connell & Jay Mohr & Regina King & Bonnie Hunt & Jonathan Lipnicki & Lisa Stahl Sullivan & Todd Louiso et al, director Cameron Crowe
A wise man’s life is based around ‘fuck-you’. The United States of America is based on ‘fuck-you’. The Gambler 2014 starring Mark Wahlberg & John Goodman & Brie Larson & Michael K Williams & Jessica Kange & Anthony Kelly & Alvin Ing & Domenick Lombardozzi & Emory Cohen & Steve Park & Leland Orser & George Kennedy et al, director Rupert Wyatt, gangster
Ten years after September 11th ... The creation of Top Secret America. Frontline: Top Secret America, PBS 2011
The President initiated Greystone. ibid.
A covert international war. ibid.
It didn’t take long for the Taliban to fall. ibid.
In more than a dozen countries operatives were fighting a secret global war. ibid.
In secret the administration had authorised the CIA to use what they called Enhanced Interrogation Techniques. ibid.
The president needed a convincing reason for war with Hussein ... By the Spring of 2003 the US had attacked Iraq. ibid.
By the night of 9/11 the CIA had planned a secret war abroad. At home another front had been opened: the battle to protect the American homeland. ibid.
The Terrorist Surveillance Program authorised the NSA to intercept certain phone calls and emails of American citizens without a warrant. ibid.
The NSA turned to a new force in the covert war: private contractors. ibid.
It was an Intelligence failure that reverberated around Washington ... George Tenet and the CIA took most of the blame. ibid.
The president had re-authorised almost all of the dark side operations. ibid.
Obama exported the covert war against Al Qaeda and the Taliban. ibid.
The president decided to expand the growth of Top Secret America. ibid.
He had a daring joint CIA/JASOC cross-border raid into Pakistan. ibid.
That’s why I say, I, like every American I’m speaking with, we’re ill about this position that we have been put in where it is the tax payers looking to bail out, but ultimately, what the bailout does is help those who are concerned about the healthcare reform that is needed to help shore up our economy, helping tho – uh, oh, it’s got to be all about job creation too, shoring up our economy, and putting it back on the right track. So healthcare reform and reducing taxes and reining in spending has got to accompany tax reductions and tax relief for Americans. And trade, we’ve got to see trade as opportunity, not as – competitive, um, scary thing, but one in five jobs being created in the trade sector today, we’ve got to look at that as more opportunity. All those things under the umbrella of job creation. This bailout is a part of that. Sarah Palin, interview Katie Couric 2008
What is so unnerving about the candidacy of Sarah Palin is the degree to which she represents – and her supporters celebrate – the joyful marriage of confidence and ignorance. Ask yourself: how has ‘elitism’ become a bad word in American politics? There is simply no other walk of life in which extraordinary talent and rigorous training are denigrated. We want elite pilots to fly our planes, elite troops to undertake our most critical missions, elite athletes to represent us in competition and elite scientists to devote the most productive years of their lives to curing our diseases. And yet, when it comes time to vest people with even greater responsibilities, we consider it a virtue to shun any and all standards of excellence. When it comes to choosing the people whose thoughts and actions will decide the fates of millions, then we suddenly want someone just like us, someone fit to have a beer with, someone down-to-earth – in fact, almost anyone, provided that he or she doesn’t seem too intelligent or well educated. Sam Harris
Genetic fingerprinting studies indicate that the Anthrax spores mailed to Capitol Hill are identical to stocks of the deadly bacteria maintained by the US Army since 1980. Those labs can trace back their samples to a single military source ... Fort Detrick in Maryland. Washington Post article Weiss & Schmidt 16 December 2001
1954: US overthrows democratically elected President Arbenz of Guatemala. 200,000 civilians killed. Michael Moore, Bowling for Columbine, 2002
1989: CIA agent Manuel Noriega (also serving as President of Panama) disobeys orders from Washington. US invades Panama and removes Noriega. 3,000 Panamanian civilian casualties. ibid.
1990: Iraq invades Kuwait with weapons from the US. ibid.
1991: US enters Iraq. Bush reinstates dictator of Kuwait. ibid.
1998: Clinton bombs ‘weapons factories’ in Sudan. Factory turns out to be making Aspirin. ibid.
1991 to present: US planes bomb Iraq on a weekly basis. UN estimates 500,000 Iraqi children die from bombing and sanctions. 2000-2001: US gives Taliban-ruled Afghanistan $245 million in ‘aid’. ibid.
11th September 1991: Osama bin Laden uses his expert CIA training to murder 3,000 people. ibid.
Guns don’t kill people, Americans kill people. Michael Moore Hates America, 2004
We live in a free and open society where dissent is not to be stifled or silenced. ibid.
So I’m stuck in a car that doesn’t run, in a country where nothing works, everything sucks, and it’s every man, woman and state-tested child for themselves. ibid.
Was it all just a dream? It was the night before the election 2016. Everything seemed to be going to plan. Amateurs and experts alike had already called the election months ago. She had no idea who any of these rappers were but it didn’t matter. Michael Moore, Fahrenheit 11/9, 2018
Our new leader’s image was projected on to the Empire State Building. How the fuck did this happen? ibid.
Yes, it was the Russians. ibid.
He’s always committed his crimes in plain sight. ibid.
‘All I want to do is see this guy’s [Obama’s] birth certificate.’ ibid. Trump
Taking one position after another that was more liberal than hers. ibid.
There seems to be a misunderstanding about who the real America is. ibid.
You can’t call it a democracy if the person who gets the most votes doesn’t win. ibid.
So when did all this compromising start? ibid.
As the Democrats became more like Republicans, so did the entire liberal establishment. ibid.
Bernie Sanders won all fifty-five counties in West Virginia with Hillary not winning a single county. ibid.
No terrorist organisation has yet to figure out how to poison an entire American city [Flint]. That took the Republican party of Michigan and its CEO governor to pull off. ibid.
Teenagers organised this [March for Our Lives] all by themselves … The largest single day of protest in the history of our nation’s capital. ibid.
The worst thing that President Obama did was pave the way for Donald Trump. ibid.
Under President Obama it became OK to imprison whistleblowers more than all previous presidents combined; he used drone strikes to bomb civilian populations; and he deported a record number of immigrants and refugees: what Flint needed was for President Obama to dig up the toxic pipes and have them replaced, but instead of sending in the army corps of engineers, he just sent in the army. ibid.
Why save this America? … It didn’t need to end up like this and it still doesn’t … We have to get rid of the whole rotten system that gave us Trump. ibid.
Americans are possibly the dumbest people on the planet ... We Americans suffer from an enforced ignorance. We don’t know about anything that’s happening outside our country. Our stupidity is embarrassing. Michael Moore
On January 2nd I was quietly summoned to the Pentagon to meet with the Joint Chiefs of Staff … ‘Michael,’ they said to me, ‘we don’t know what the fuck we’re doing.’ Michael Moore, Where to Invade Next, 2016
There are to be no more invasions … My advice, Send in me. ibid.
Italy: a nice relaxing two-hour lunch … numerous weeks of paid vacation … and a strong union. ibid.
There was something else we could steal from France. As usual the French offered little resistance. ibid.