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“What good fortune for those in power that the people do not think.” -- Adolf Hitler

“It also gives us a very special, secret pleasure to see how unaware the people around us are of what is really happening to them.” -- Adolf Hitler

"The individual is handicapped by coming face to face with a conspiracy so monstrous he cannot believe it exists." -- J. Edgar Hoover, former head of the FBI and co-conspirator in the JFK and MLK assassinations, as well as other acts of extra-judicial violence.

"The Central Intelligence Agency owns everyone of any significance in the major media."– William Colby, CIA head during the Nixon and Ford administrations, quoted by David McGowan, in his book Derailing Democracy(2000)

"Through clever and constant application of propaganda people can be made to see paradise as hell, and also the other way around, to consider the most wretched sort of life as paradise." -- Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, 1923

The following quotes (except as noted) are from: https://newrepublic.com/article/120559/honduras-charter-cities-spearheaded-us-conservatives-libertarians

“In the early 1950s the United Fruit Company hired legendary public relations expert Edward Bernays to carry out an intense misinformation campaign portraying then-Guatamalan president Jacobo Arbenz as a communist threat.” -- Scott Price, IC Magazine

BANGKOK, Thailand -- When the CIA, Thai police, Chinese guerrillas and
others were linked to Southeast Asia's wealthy heroin dealers during
the 20th century, no one imagined fruit and vegetables would provide
delicious replacement crops to fight the official corruption and
rescue impoverished tribes growing opium in northern Thailand.
   "Our project is the only one in the world that has succeeded in
replacing opium with other crops. No other country has done it,"
Prince Bhisadej Rajani, director of the Royal Project opium crop
replacement program said in an interview.
   The project claims to enable more than 100,000 indigenous Hmong,
Yao, Akha, Karen and other ethnic tribal people to grow fruit,
vegetables, herbs, flowers, mushrooms, tea and coffee instead of
opium.
   Initiated in 1969 by King Bhumibol Adulyadej, the project was
helped by U.S. taxpayers but is now supported by Thai government
subsidies, packaging and marketing.
   The farms on land formerly used for opium fields also attract

With the recent release of Hillary Clinton’s emails by Wikileaks, the public now knows exactly how the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) went from a collective defense organization to the new Barbary Coast Pirates of imperialism.

During the 2011 Libyan uprising, the United Nations Security Council passed Resolution 1973 which called for a ceasefire and authorized military action to protect civilian lives. A coalition formed, centered around NATO with the March 17, 2011 passing of the Resolution. Its purpose -- a so-called "no-fly zone" over Libya.

The irony that the U.S.-dominated NATO military organization would be concerned with "protecting" Arab civilians is all too obvious since the United States is the nation most responsible for killing Arab civilians.

A new film narrated by Roger Waters, The Occupation of the American Mind , traces the rise of Israeli war propaganda in the United States. This propaganda, which has skillfully swayed U.S. public opinion in support of Israeli wars and occupations, has in fact been not so much a matter of skill as a matter of control.

You shouldn’t play with guns, unless you do it the way “Jim” apparently did.

His gun play — a (seemingly) satirical petition at change.org — has enveloped the looming Republican National Convention in Cleveland this summer in awkward surrealism and forced the three Republican presidential candidates to duck for cover from their own words.

The petition, posted by Hyperationalist, who later identified himself to certain curious reporters as a proponent of gun sanity named Jim, demanded that the Quicken Loans Arena, where the convention will be held, lift its ban on guns in the building and that the Republican National Committee explain “how a venue so unfriendly to Second Amendment rights” was chosen for the convention.

The U.S. State Department does not want the government of Syria to defeat or weaken ISIS, at least not if doing so means any sort of gain for the Syrian government. Watching a recent video of a State Department spokesperson speaking on that subject might confuse some U.S. war supporters. I doubt many residents of Palmyra, Virginia, or Palmyra, Pennsylvania, or Palmyra, New York could give a coherent account of the U.S. government's position on which enemy should control the ancient Palmyra in Syria.

One of the current top-selling games on Steam, the PC gaming equivalent of iTunes or Google Play, is a surprising little indie charmer. Right up there alongside super-realistic military and police state propaganda gunfests like Counter-Strike: Global Offensive and Tom Clancy’s The Division is a pixel-art game called Stardew Valley that lets you spend your days building a farm, raising crops and petting cows.

It’s a game of the sort that’s been familiar to console gamers – especially fans of Nintendo’s handhelds – for years, but which has never before caught on with the PC crowd. It bears more than a passing resemblance to the Japanese role-playing series released in America until recently as Harvest Moon (now Story of Seasons) which dates all the way back to the Super Nintendo.

After losing to the Portland Timbers 2-1 in the MLS Cup last December, the Columbus Crew SC came into the season with lofty goals and high expectations for its offense. Crew SC, which tied Toronto FC for the second-best attacking record in the MLS last year with 1.71 goals per game (58 goals in 34 regular season matches) in the regular season, returns its scoring threats in forward Kei Kamara and midfielder Ethan Finlay.

Kamara, the team’s MVP last year, scored 22 goals and had eight assists. Finlay became the second player in Crew SC history to reach double figures in goals (12 goals) and assists (13) in a single campaign.

However, it was a brutal March for the Black and Goal as Crew SC stumbled out of the gates with a 0-2-1 record. Offensively Columbus has had its lowest output since 2011, scoring just two goals in its first three games.

After the team’s 2-1 loss to the Philadelphia Union on March 12, Sporting director and head coach Gregg Berhalter said the team knows what it is supposed to do but has yet to bring it to the field.

This year’s presidential primaries have highlighted the importance of people of color to the Democratic Party coalition. Hillary Clinton’s lead in the party’s nomination race comes almost entirely from her strength among African-Americans and Latino voters. When people of color favor one candidate by large margins, they make the difference.

That will be true in the general election as well. Democratic nominees win if people of color vote in large numbers. If turnout is down or the vote is split, Democrats — who regularly lose the majority of white voters — will lose.

This reality means that African Americans, Latinos and Asian Americans can make political demands. Politicians must compete to win our votes. The power of this can be seen with the Dreamers and the Democrats’ embrace of comprehensive immigration reform, with Black Lives Matter and Democratic candidates putting criminal justice reform at the top of their agendas. Voting rights and equal rights under the law also gain traction.