ordered disorder
blessed britons
One day [British colonial officer] Smith was given a secret file containing a minute that ordered him to get involved in regional elections taking place in the late 1950s in the run up to independence [in Nigeria]. He was to make vehicles, staff and other resources available to the NCNC colleagues of Okotie-Eboh who was standing in the elections. Smith was shocked at the request. He explained that the election had to be fixed because the plan was that the Northern region would hold power on independence...
Asked if such manipulation of an election result could have happened Professor Anderson, Director of the African Studies Centre at Oxford University, replied: “In almost every single colony the British attempted to manipulate the result to their advantage.... I would be surprised if they had not done so.”
— Barry Mason, in Rigging Nigerian Elections
mad world
the WTO ruled that the U.S. corporation RiceTec has the patent rights to all the many varieties of basmati rice, grown for centuries by India’s farmers. It also ruled that a Japanese corporation had exclusive rights in the world to grow and produce curry powder.
— Michael Parenti, in Globalisation and Democracy
mad and bad
"... Standard procedure, when I was there, you [i.e., the detainees] had twenty-four hour inside the Conex [container] . . . you’re blind-folded, you’re zip-stripped, your hands are behind your back; your feet usually weren’t, unless there was a particularly volatile prisoner—somebody who’d caused a lot of trouble, they’d hitch the feet as well. You were there, twenty-four hours: no sleep, no food, no water."
The temperatures inside the container, Nick said, were extreme:
"Early on, when I first got there, it only got up to about 115, but by July and August, we were regularly between 135 and 145 [Fahrenheit]. [Inside the container] it was really extremely hot, to the point where it was irritating to go into the back of the Conex to get somebody out to use the restroom, which is usually the only thing they were allowed to do... there was no talking, none of that inside there."
...millions die while the rest of the population obediently goes about its business. Howard Zinn