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It is much easier to rule over those people who have lost all their dignity.

There is no reason to fear resistance where cynical consumerism, lack of knowledge, and constant anxiety are shaping the behavioral patterns of a nation; of most of its citizens.

The West made an art form out of controlling the world. Its once rough and simple ‘divide and rule’ tactics have reached, with time, great virtuosity. What Richter, Rostropovich or Argerich did for the art of Western classical music, people like Brzezinski, Kissinger and Negroponte matched with their brilliance in the art of destruction and terror.

In today’s …

As Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting points out, until a video surfaced of South Carolina policeman Michael Slager murdering Walter Scott, the media was reporting a package of lies manufactured by the police: a fight that never occurred, witnesses who didn’t exist, the victim taking the policeman’s taser, etc. The lies collapsed because the video appeared.

I find myself asking why videos of missiles blowing children into little bits and pieces can’t dissolve the stories churned out by the Pentagon. With several qualifications, I think part of the answer is that there are not enough videos. The struggle for …

In their article “Revisiting Marx and Liberalism,” the authors, Edward Martin and Mateo Pimentel, repeat the old myth that “socialism for Marx is the first stage of communism.”

Marx and Engels, as anyone who is familiar with their writings knows, used the terms ‘socialism’ and ‘communism’ interchangeably to describe what they stood for. They did not think of them as separate systems of society but merely as different names for a system based on the social or common ownership of the means of production.

Why they used one and then the other was explained quite clearly by Engels in one of …

You might think that after seeing the consequences of their campaign for “freedom and democracy” in Libya, journalists like Nicholas Kristof and “humanitarian campaigners” like Avaaz would have some qualms.

Unfortunately they have learned nothing. They have generally not been held to account, with a few nice exceptions such as this Greenwald/Hussain article. And now they are at it again. Many well-intentioned but naive members of the U.S. and international public are again being duped into signing an Avaaz petition based on fraud and misinformation. If the campaign succeeds in leading to a No Fly Zone in Syria, it …

It was, of course, to be expected that, having shown herself to be a better representative of Scotland than Cameron, Milband and Farage can ever hope to be of the United Kingdom, a right wing paper should immediately come out with a baseless smear against Nicola Sturgeon. But that is Westminster for you, and yet again I feel shamed by our politics.

I loathe the efforts of politicians and media to persuade me that the Scots hate me or that I hate the Scots.  What have we ever done that would generate such feelings?  I am, however, experiencing a …

The sudden cancellation of an academic conference on Israel, as well as the lack of outcry from ‘mainstream’ media, demonstrates once again the skewed limits to ‘free speech’ in ‘advanced’ Western democracies. “Je suis Charlie” already feels like ancient history. It certainly does not apply when it comes to scrutiny of the state of Israel.

The conference, titled “International Law and the State of Israel: Legitimacy, Responsibility and Exceptionalism,” was to be held at the University of Southampton from 15-17 April 2015. Planned speakers included Richard Falk, the former UN special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories, …

On Tuesday April 7th, Ukravtoprome (the Ukrainian Association of Automobile Manufacturers) reported that, in the three-month period January-March 2015, as compared to the same three months of 2014, production of passenger cars plunged 96%, commercial vehicles 23%, buses 43%, for an overall decline of 92%.

In March alone, as compared to March 2014, passenger-car production plunged 94.3%, commercial vehicles fell 31%. The figure for buses was not shown.

March figures were a considerable improvement over the month before: “compared to February, the number of cars produced has doubled.”

On April 2nd was reported that “Sales of new cars in …

The great leveler for those children with developmental and intellectual disabilities (I/DD) is they end up being born into families comprising of every ethnic, religious, cultural and economic origin and background.

Obviously, for parents, the challenge is living in a go-go-go society where physical prowess, drop-dead looks, and PhD smarts are valued over anything else.

“Having a child with a developmental disability is like having your brain rewired,” said Arc of Spokane’s Brian Holloway. “It forces this philosophical crisis in your life.”

All the things Holloway was taught – he has a master’s in composition and was ready to do the community college …

As usual, western media are deliberately confusing in communicating on the latest Mid-East conflict which eventually led to the recent atrocious bombing of Yemen by the US-directed Saudi alliance, including Qatar and other Gulf monarchies. They are proxies, to be sure, for their Washington masters. My heart is bleeding for Yemen, a country of warm and generous people I got to know well, working with them in the 1990s and early 2000s.

Yemen is a patchwork of tribes, the result of former colonies, therefore made vulnerable for conflicts; easily ignitable conflicts. A situation left behind on purpose by the old …

As readers know, I have emphasized for years that European governments are regarded by Washington as vassals who behave according to Washington’s wishes. It has been 70 years–two or three generations–since former world powers, such as Great Britain and Germany had an independent foreign policy.

In addition to this ignobility, European governments are also vassals to the EU, so on the sovereignty front European countries are twice damned. They simply have no sovereignty.

This is why it is so easy for Washington to spin a web of lies and drive its vassals into a “crisis” with Russia that does not serve the …

“They” in my title refers to the major players in our food system. First is Big Ag—Monsanto and Dow being prominent—and those industrial farms that use Big Ag’s products. Second are large food corporations—General Mills and the like—who churn out processed foods and store their goods in warehouses before moving them to market. Third are those who breed and raise the livestock we eat. Fourth are those who import food from overseas. Many “theys” are involved in the food we eat, and many of those “theys” could care less about the safety of our food …

Been listening and watching Mucho Mucho people of the white persuasion, many from those elite and so inflated follow-the-great-white-professor Ivy League schools, talking about, hmm, Kenya, Middle East, Blacks in America, undocumented from Latin America. You get the picture.

A sensibility, a common narrative, upbringings sort of liberal white Jewish (some non-Jews) but still keyed into their own internal story-telling, these novelists and playwrights, something about how their rhetoric is subsumed by so many unsuspecting folk. I never knew how collectively worthless in a very real sense all that education and all those millions of shelves weighted down with their tomes …

The American public seems not to clearly recognize that since “troops on the ground” went out of fashion, its government has devoted itself to arming terrorists and tyrants to do its bidding by proxy. This is no accident. Since the majority of the population seems to disagree with Washington policy choices—such as impoverishing its citizenry to pay for imperial wars in far-flung lands—and since it often responds to poll queries with alarmingly socialist views, pains must taken to deceive it. This is an ever more sophisticated practice, now requiring banks of slick public relations professionals and a colossal media …

The White House has announced a new sanctions program that will authorize the executive branch to penalize malicious cyber “actors” whose behavior endangers “the national security, foreign policy, or economic health or financial stability of the United States.” Sadly the President is opting for theater that creates the perception of security rather than actually making it more difficult for attacks to succeed.

Obama’s new executive order rests on a strategy of deterrence, a cold war idea that’s been revived by the likes of former NSA director Mike McConnell and more recently by current NSA Director Mike Rogers. …

John W. Whitehead is a constitutional attorney. As head of the Rutherford Institute he is actively involved in defending our civil liberties. Being actively involved in legal cases, he experiences first hand the transformation of law from a shield of the American people into a weapon in the hands of the government.

American civil liberty was seriously eroded prior to 9/11 and the rise of the police/warfare state, a story I tell in How America Was Lost. Lawrence Stratton and I documented the loss of law as a shield of the American people in our book, The Tyranny of …