Violence... The story so far

"One billion people live on less than one dollar a day; one billion people go to bed hungry every night; a quarter of the world's people never get a clean glass of water;

every minute one woman dies in childbirth".

"A lot of people are angry because they want to be a part of tomorrow, but they cannot find the open door".

"There is no excuse ever for the deliberate killing of innocent civilians for political, religious or economic reasons". -- Bill Clinton

"One of the unacknowledged underlying causes of the September 11 events was the coincidence of globalised prosperity in the imperial world with disintegration in the states that achieved independence from the colonial empires of Europe in the 1960s. The collapse of state institutions has been exacerbated by urbanisation, by the relentless growth of lawless shantytowns that collect populations of unemployed or underemployed men who can see the promise of globalised prosperity on the TV in every caf, but cannot enjoy it themselves. In states like Pakistan, where the state no longer provides basic services to the poorest people, Islamic parties, funded from Saudi Arabia, step into the breach, providing clinics, schools, and orphanages where the poor receive protection at the price of indoctrination in hatred". -- Michael Ignatieff

"I returned only yesterday from Ecuador. The level of absolute poverty there has just risen from 35 per cent to 70 per cent. The links between poverty and terrorism there are obvious, immediate and local. I met Jennifer on Sunday. She is four-and-a-half years old. She had been kept in a cardboard kennel in a back yard until last Thursday by adults who were not her parents. She had been hit so hard that it broke her jaw. She had lost most of the sight in one eye and one ear was badly affected. She had also been sexually abused. Her story is not uncommon, and I believe that that is the terrorism which is linked to poverty." -- Lord Stone of Blackheath: 27 Feb 2002

"There is no religion in which everyday life is not considered a prison; there is no philosophy or ideology that does not think that we live in alienation." Eugene Ionesco Romanian-born French playwright.

"Without alienation, there can be no politics." Arthur Miller