The leading student of business propaganda, Australian social scientist Alex Carey, argues persuasively that “the 20th century has been characterized by three developments of great political importance: the growth of democracy, the growth of corporate power, and the growth of corporate propaganda as a means of protecting corporate power against democracy.

It is not a war. It is murder.

The escalation to attack undefended civilian targets is just a classic illustration of terrorism.

As soon as questions of will or decision or reason or choice of action arise, human science is at a loss.

...a very terrifying aspect of our society, and other societies, is the equanimity and the detachment with which sane, reasonable, sensible people can observe [war and human suffering]. I think that's more terrifying than the occasional Hitler ...or other that crop up - these people would not able to operate were it not for this apathy and equanimity - and therefore I think that it is in some sense the sane and reasonable and tolerant people who should share a very serious burden of guilt, that they very easily throw on the shoulders of others who seem more extreme and more violent.

When I wrote about the Spanish Civil War many years later, I used documents that I picked up when I was a child, as a lot hadn't been published (a lot more resources are available now).

If commissars in Soviet Russia agreed to subordinate themselves to state power, they could at least plead fear in extenuation. Their counterparts in more free and open societies can plead only cowardice.