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One mechanism of repression is the grand jury.

Michael Parenti

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Michael Parenti
Age: 91
Born: 1933
Born: January 1
Historian
Journalist
Political Scientist
New York City
New York
Mechanism
Grand
Political
Repression
Jury

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The nation, like the church, has its visible symbols and insignia, its parchments engrossed with the revealed word, its dogmas, hymns, liturgy, holy day celebrations, its early Fathers, prophets and martyrs, its priesthood and its lay sodality, its myths of sacred genesis and apocalyptic crises, its world-saving mission and its missionaries.
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America is a simplified ideological abstraction, an emotive symbol represented by other abstract symbols like the flag. It is the object of a faithlike devotion, unencumbered by honest history.
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The two party electoral system performs the essential function of helping to legitimate the existing social order.
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The enormous gap between what US leaders do in the world and what Americans think their leaders are doing is one of the great propaganda accomplishments.
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Our fear that communism might someday take over most of the world blinds us to the fact that anti- communism already has.
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The US government is usually on the wrong side against the poor and downtrodden, because the wrong side is the right side, given the class interests upon which the [US] policy is fixed.
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All economic and political institutions are contrivances that should serve the interests of the people. When they fail to do so, they should be replaced by something more responsive, more just, and more democratic. Marx said this, and so did Jefferson. It is a revolutionary doctrine, and very much an American one.
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The dirty truth is that many people find fascism to be not particularly horrible.
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One finds fortunes built on slave labor, indentured labor, prison labor, immigrant labor, female labor, child labor, and scab labor - backed by the lethal force of gun thugs and militia. 'Old money' is often little more than dirty money laundered by several generations of possession.
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The Federalists also used bribes, intimidation, and fraud against opponents of the Constitution.
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The close relationship between politics and economics is neither neutral nor coincidental. Large governments evolve through history in order to protect large accumulations of property and wealth.
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It is ironic that people of modest means sometimes become conservative out of a scarcity fear bred by the very capitalist system they support.
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Ecology's implications for capitalism are too momentous for the capitalist to contemplate. The plutocrats are more wedded to their wealth than to the Earth upon which they live, more concerned with the fate of their fortunes than with the fate of humanity. The present ecological crisis has been created by the few at the expense of the many.
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Maintaining silence about a dirty truth is another way of lying, a common practice in high places.
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Union busting has become a major industry with more than a thousand consulting firms teaching companies how to prevent workers from organizing and how to get rid of existing unions.
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The rich have grown richer, but their tax rate has declined. The poor have grown poorer, but their taxes have increased.
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Russia became a juicy chunk of the Third World, with immense reserves of cheap labor, a vast treasure of natural resources, and industrial assets to be sold off at giveaway prices.
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Every ruling class has wanted only this: all the rewards and none of the burdens. The operational code is: we have a lot we can get more we want it all.
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The first atrocity, the first war crime committed in any war of aggression by the aggressors is against the truth.
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The last four secretaries of defense have pointed out that defense spending creates jobs. So do pornography, prostitution, and narcotics.
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