Global

n her essay “Sexism in American Politics,” Barbra Streisand has written (or had ghostwritten) the sweeping and quite false claim that Hillary Clinton is “held to a pernicious double standard” only because she’s a woman, a claim that Streisand fails to support with any relevant, substantive evidence.  

BANGKOK, Thailand -- The British artist who drew the "V For Vendetta"
graphic novel and movie character's white pointy-chinned face mask
which now disguises anti-government protesters, Anonymous hackers and
others worldwide, says concealing your identity in public can protect
against police torture and death squads.
   "I think what Edward Snowden is doing, and what Anonymous is doing,
they are doing what they think is a good thing," Mr. Lloyd said in an
interview during a March 22 to March 29 exhibition of his work at
Bangkok's Chulalongkorn University.
   "The V mask itself? It's good to have a symbol that unifies. So if
you're wearing something as a mask that unifies and actually says
something -- says what you are doing, and is in sympathy with some
sort of concept -- that's good because it's a unification.
   "But any mask is quite acceptable. Everybody has the right to go
out on the street as an individual citizen, masked or otherwise, to
protest.
   "Your identity is not important. The fact that you are there as a

"This investigation identified a complete breakdown of safety at Enbridge. Their employees performed like Keystone Kops and failed to recognize that their pipeline had ruptured and continued to pump crude into the environment. Despite multiple alarms and a loss of pressure in the pipeline, for more than 17 hours and through three shifts, they failed to follow their own shutdown procedures. Enbridge restarted the pipeline twice in that 17-hour period, pumping oil that would account for 81 percent of the total spill.” -- National Transportation Safety Board Chairman Deborah Hersman (http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2012-07-24/-keystone-kops-bungling-led-to-costliest-u-s-pipeline-spill)

Do you think that ending human violence is impossible? Do you believe that even aiming to do so is unrealistic? Well, you might be right. But you might also be interested to know that there are a lot of people around the world who are committed to trying. And, if you think the aim is worthwhile, you could be one of them.

The most casual perusal of the media will confirm what most of us suspect: violence takes many forms and it is absolutely pervasive. But what the media might not report regularly is that there are some phenomenal people and organizations out there that are doing everything they can to tackle one or more aspects of this violence. And as they identify themselves as part of one or more worldwide networks working on violence, they acquire a fuller appreciation of what is being achieved.

“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.