Paul Craig Roberts - Brewing a Conflict with China

Washington has pressured the Philippines, whose government it owns, into conducting joint military exercises in the South China Sea. Washington's excuse is that China has territorial disputes with the Philippines, Indonesia, and other countries concerning island and sea rights in the South China Sea. Washington asserts that China's territorial disputes with the like of Indonesia and the Philippines are a matter of United States' national interests.

Washington has not made it clear what Washington's stake is in the disputes. The reason Washington cannot identify why China's disputes with the Philippines and Indonesia are threats to the United States is that there is no reason. Nevertheless, the undefined "threat" has become the reason Washington needs more naval bases in the Philippines and South Korea.

What this is all about is provoking a long-term cold war conflict with China that will keep profits and power flowing into Washington's military-security complex. Large profits flow to armaments companies. A portion of the profits reflow into campaign contributions to "the people's representatives" in DC and to presidential candidates who openly sell out their country to private interests.

Washington is going to construct new naval bases in the Philippines and on the environmentally protected Jeju Island belonging to South Korea. Washington will waste tax revenues, or print more money, in order to build the unnecessary fleets to occupy these bases. Washington is acquiring bases in Australia for US Marines to protect Australia from China, despite the lack of Chinese threats against Australia. Bush and Obama are the leading models of the "people's president" who sell out the people, at home and abroad, to private interests.

Read More:

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Brewing-a-Conflict-with-Ch-by-Paul-Craig-Roberts-120430-587.html

Robert Freeman - How to Destroy Education While Making a Trillion Dollars

The Vietnam War produced more than its share of iconic idiocies. Perhaps the most revelatory was the psychotic assertion of an army major explaining the U.S. bombing of the provincial hamlet of Ben Tre: “We had to destroy the village in order to save it.” If only such self-extinguishing claims for intelligence were confined to military war.

The U.S is ratcheting up a societal-level war on public education. At issue is whether we are going to make it better — build it into something estimable, a social asset that undergirds a noble and prosperous society — or whether we’re going to tear it down so that private investors can get their hands on the almost $1 trillion we spend on it every year. The tear-it-down option is the civilian equivalent of Ben Tre, but on a vastly larger scale and with incomparably greater stakes: we must destroy public education in order to save it. It’s still early in the game, but right now the momentum is with the wreckers because that’s where the money is. Whether they succeed or not will be up to you.

Here’s a three-step recipe for how to destroy education. It maps perfectly to how to make a prodigious profit by privatizing it. It is the essential game plan of the big money boys.

Read More:

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/04/29-0

Dan Sabbagh and Josh Halliday - Rupert Murdoch 'not fit' to lead major international company, MPs conclude

Rupert Murdoch is "not a fit person" to exercise stewardship of a major international company, a committee of MPs has concluded, in a report highly critical of the mogul and his son James's role in the News of the World phone-hacking affair.

The Commons culture, media and sport select committee also concluded that James Murdoch showed "wilful ignorance" of the extent of phone hacking during 2009 and 2010 – in a highly charged document that saw MPs split on party lines as regards the two Murdochs.

Labour MPs and the sole Liberal Democrat on the committee, Adrian Sanders, voted together in a bloc of six against the five Conservatives to insert the criticisms of Rupert Murdoch and toughen up the remarks about his son James. But the MPs were united in their criticism of other former News International employees.

The cross-party group of MPs said that Les Hinton, the former executive chairman of News International, was "complicit" in a cover-up at the newspaper group, and that Colin Myler, former editor of the News of the World, and the paper's ex-head of legal, Tom Crone, deliberately withheld crucial information and answered questions falsely. All three were accused of misleading parliament by the culture select committee.

Read More:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012/may/01/rupert-murdoch-not-fit-select-committee/print

James F. Tracy - Early "Psychological Warfare" Research and the Rockefeller Foundation

The Rockefeller Foundation was the principle source for funding public opinion and psychological warfare research between the late 1930s and the end of World War Two. With limited government and corporate interest or support of propaganda-related studies, most of the money for such research came from this powerful organization that recognized the importance of ascertaining and steering public opinion in the immediate prewar years.

Rockefeller philanthropic attention toward public opinion was twofold: 1) to review and establish the psychological environment in the United States for anticipated US involvement in the coming world war and 2) to wage psychological warfare and suppress popular dissent in foreign countries, particularly Latin America. Recognizing how the Franklin Roosevelt Administration was bogged down politically and less capable of planning for war in terms of domestic and foreign propaganda efforts, Rockefeller Foundation-funded projects and research institutes were established at Princeton University, Stanford University, and the New School for Social Research to monitor and analyze shortwave radio transmissions from abroad.

The “founding fathers” of mass communication research could not have established their field without Rockefeller largesse. Alongside World War One propagandist and University of Chicago political scientist Harold Lasswell, psychologist Hadley Cantril was a principal contributor to the knowledge and information that helped propel Rockefeller-controlled enterprises and American empire in the postwar era. Throughout this period Cantril provided the Rockefeller combine with important information and new techniques in public opinion measurement and management in Europe, Latin American, and the United States.

A roommate of Nelson Rockefeller’s at Dartmouth College in the late 1920s, Cantril took a doctorate in psychology at Harvard, coauthoring The Psychology of Radio with his doctoral mentor Gordon Allport in 1935. “Radio is an altogether novel medium of communication,” Cantril and Allport observed, “preeminent as a means of social control and epochal in its influence upon the mental horizons of men.”

Read More:

http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=30594

Aurora Geib - GMO alert: top 10 genetically modified foods to avoid eating

There is a conspiracy of selling out happening in America. Politics and personal interest it would seem determine government policies over and above health and safety issues. When President Obama appointed Michael Taylor in 2009 as senior adviser for the FDA, a fierce protest ensued from consumer groups and environmentalists. Why? Taylor used to be vice president for Monsanto, a multinational interested in marketing genetically modified (GM) food. It was during his term that GMO's were approved in the US without undergoing tests to determine if they were safe for human consumption.

The danger of GMO's 

The question of whether or not genetically modified foods (GMO's) are safe for human consumption is an ongoing debate that does not seem to see any resolution except in the arena of public opinion. Due to lack of labeling, Americans are still left at a loss as to whether or not what is on the table is genetically modified. This lack of information makes the avoiding and tracking of GM foods an exercise in futility. Below are just some of the food products popularly identified to be genetically modified:

Read More:

http://www.naturalnews.com/035734_GMOs_foods_dangers.html

Susie Madrak - Philadelphia Blows Up Its School District, And No One In The Complicit National Media Even Cares

The elites' plans are in place to close 40 schools, break the teacher and janitorial unions, and put the education of the City of Philadelphia's children up for bid. It just makes me sick.

I knew it was coming (when you see the Democratic city councilman expected to be the next mayor praising Michelle Rhee and philanthro-capitalists like the Gates Foundation, it's only a matter of time), but I never expected it to happen this fast. It feels like a kick to the gut.

Our schools were taken over by the state in 2001 (you can read the gruesome history here) and instead we're run by a five-person School Reform Commission. (The governor gets to appoint three members, the mayor gets to appoint two.) And even though the reason for declining results may have more to so with the fact that the state contribution to public education has dropped from 55 percent in 1975 to 36 percent in 2001, the hillbilly politicians in the Pennsyltucky parts of the state have done a fine job convincing voters outside the more educated areas that funding schools in Philadelphia is throwing money down a "black hole." (Emphasis on the word "black," since color plays a very large part in these funding decisions.)

But don't worry, the charter schools-privatization crowd has bought off some prominent black politicians, too, so at least the payoffs are color-blind.

Here's the thing: It's not the school district's fault that Pennsylvania funds its schools through an inequitable system of property taxes, nor that the state voters rejected attempts to fix that. It's not the district's fault that Gov. Tom Corbett (PA's own Scott Walker) has once again drastically cut education funding (especiallyreimbursement toward the same charter schools that were pushed on districts) — even though the same old divisive voices convince voters it is.

Read More:

http://crooksandliars.com/susie-madrak/philadelphia-blows-its-school-distric

David Swanson - The Global War on Terror, in the Original German

In 1939, Sebastian Haffner sat down and wrote a pre-history of Nazism.

Nazism had not been inevitable. It had not progressed steadily without setbacks. But it had been growing for many years, even before the name for it existed. It had been coming since the end of the Great War.

By the late 1920s, according to Haffner, "Berlin became quite an international city. Admittedly, the sinister Nazi types already lurked in the wings, as 'we' could not fail to notice with deep disgust. They spoke of 'Eastern vermin' with murder in their eyes and sneeringly of 'Americanization.' Whereas 'we,' a segment of the younger generation difficult to define but instantly and mutually recognizable, were not only friendly toward foreigners, but enthusiastic about them."

The Stresemann Era, 1924-1929, saw Gustav Stresemann serve as Foreign Minister. He made peace with France, joined the League of Nations, won a Nobel Peace Prize, wandered the streets of Berlin unarmed and unguarded, and his signature is first at the bottom of the Kellogg-Briand Pact. Who studies him today? His spirit is far more powerful in Germany now than Hitler's, so powerful as to go unnoticed.

But Hitler was coming. When Stresemann died in 1929, "we were seized with icy terror. . . . The era of peace was at an end. So long as Stresemann had been there, we had not quite believed it. Now we knew."

Read More:

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/david-swanson/42845/the-global-war-on-terror-in-the-original-german

Tom Engelhardt - The Obama Contradiction

He has few constraints (except those he’s internalized).  No one can stop him or countermand his orders.  He has a bevy of lawyers at his beck and call to explain the “legality” of his actions.  And if he cares to, he can send a robot assassin to kill you, whoever you are, no matter where you may be on planet Earth.

He sounds like a typical villain from a James Bond novel.  You know, the kind who captures Bond, tells him his fiendish plan for dominating the planet, ties him up for some no less fiendish torture, and then leaves him behind to gum up the works.

As it happens, though, he’s the president of the United State, a nice guy with a charismatic wife and two lovely kids.

How could this be?

Crash-and-Burn Dreams and One That Came to Be

Sometimes to understand where you are, you need to ransack the past.  In this case, to grasp just how this country’s first African-American-constitutional-law-professor-liberal Oval Office holder became the most imperial of all recent imperial presidents, it’s necessary to look back to the early years of George W. Bush’s presidency.  Who today even remembers that time, when it was common to speak of the U.S. as the globe’s “sole superpower” or even “hyperpower,” the only “sheriff” on planet Earth, and the neocons were boasting of an empire-to-come greater than the British and Roman ones rolled together?

Read More:

http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175535/

Chris Hedges - Welcome to the Asylum

When civilizations start to die they go insane. Let the ice sheets in the Arctic melt. Let the temperatures rise. Let the air, soil and water be poisoned. Let the forests die. Let the seas be emptied of life. Let one useless war after another be waged. Let the masses be thrust into extreme poverty and left without jobs while the elites, drunk on hedonism, accumulate vast fortunes through exploitation, speculation, fraud and theft. Reality, at the end, gets unplugged. We live in an age when news consists of Snooki’s pregnancy, Hulk Hogan’s sex tape and Kim Kardashian’s denial that she is the naked woman cooking eggs in a photo circulating on the Internet. Politicians, including presidents, appear on late night comedy shows to do gags and they campaign on issues such as creating a moon colony. “[A]t times when the page is turning,” Louis-Ferdinand Celine wrote in “Castle to Castle,” “when History brings all the nuts together, opens its Epic Dance Halls! hats and heads in the whirlwind! Panties overboard!”

The quest by a bankrupt elite in the final days of empire to accumulate greater and greater wealth, as Karl Marx observed, is modern society’s version of primitive fetishism. This quest, as there is less and less to exploit, leads to mounting repression, increased human suffering, a collapse of infrastructure and, finally, collective death. It is the self-deluded, those on Wall Street or among the political elite, those who entertain and inform us, those who lack the capacity to question the lusts that will ensure our self-annihilation, who are held up as exemplars of intelligence, success and progress. The World Health Organization calculates that one in four people in the United States suffers from chronic anxiety, a mood disorder or depression—which seems to me to be a normal reaction to our march toward collective suicide. Welcome to the asylum.

Read More:

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/welcome_to_the_asylum_20120430/

Power really does corrupt as scientists claim it's as addictive as cocaine

More than a hundred years after noted historian Baron John Acton coined the phrase 'power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely' scientists claim the saying is biologically true.

The feeling of power has been found to have a similar effect on the brain to cocaine by increasing the levels of testosterone and its by-product 3-androstanediol in both men and women.

This in turn leads to raised levels of dopamine, the brain’s reward system called the nucleus accumbens, which can be very addictive. 

Cocaine works in a similar way, which can have varied effects from increasing alertness, confidence, energy, feelings of well-being and euphoria, but also anxiety, paranoia and restlessness.

Power has almost identical effects to cocaine and too much of it can produce too much dopamine leading to more negative effects such as arrogance and impatience. 

Read More:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2136547/Power-really-does-corrupt-scientists-claim-addictive-cocaine.html