Winning Hearts & Minds

The Permanent Overclass’s Propaganda System: A Century In The Making

"Two major social engineering projects were underway: one, the manufacture of ideology, largely the initiative of philanthropic foundations (and the social sciences), and the other, public relations as a modern form of propaganda. Through the educational system, the social sciences, philanthropic foundations, public relations, advertising, marketing, and the media, America and the industrialized states of the world developed a unique and complex system of social control and propaganda for the 20th century and into the 21st. It is imperative to recognize and understand this complex system if we are to challenge and change it." Continue reading →

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Amsterdam forced Jews to pay rent while in WWII concentration camps

"Amsterdam council has vowed to probe revelations that it forced Jews returning from World War II concentration camps to pay rent arrears, even if their homes had been destroyed or occupied by Nazis. The scandal, involving an unknown number of Jews and non-Jews living in city-owned properties, was uncovered by a young art history student in Amsterdam’s archives. Less than a quarter of Amsterdam’s Jewish population survived the war, with the Netherlands occupied by the Nazis from 1940 to 1945. The council even issued fines for late rent payments for homes that were confiscated and occupied by Nazi forces or members of the Dutch collaborationist NSB movement." Continue reading →

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Jim Bovard: How ‘Food for Peace’ Hurts Foreign Farmers

"The United States government is the world's largest food donor but its aid consistently wreaks havoc abroad. The Obama administration is pushing reforms that could slightly reduce the number of Third World farmers bushwhacked by American food dumped into their marketplaces. But there is scant enthusiasm in Washington for any fix of a program that is beloved by many special interests. The U.S. launched the Food for Peace program in 1954 during the Eisenhower administration, largely to dispose of embarrassing crop surpluses that had been encouraged by federal farm programs. The annual cost to taxpayers? Last year, it was roughly $1.5 billion." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingJim Bovard: How ‘Food for Peace’ Hurts Foreign Farmers

Spain: This Is What A Permanent Underclass Looks Like

"Spain is in a great depression, and it is one of the most terrifying things I have ever seen. Five years after its housing boom turned to bust, Spanish unemployment hit a record high of 27.2 percent in the first quarter of 2013. It's almost too horrible to comprehend, but 19.5 percent of the total workforce has not had a job in the past six months; 15.3 percent have not in the past year; and 9.2 percent have not in the past two years. You can see this 1930s-style catastrophe in the chart below from the National Statistics Institute." Continue reading →

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‘No frills’ Indian hospitals offer $800 heart surgery

"What if hospitals were run like a mix of Wal-Mart and a low-cost airline? The result might be something like the chain of 'no-frills' Narayana Hrudayalaya clinics. Using pre-fabricated buildings, stripping out air-conditioning and even training visitors to help with post-operative care, the group believes it can cut the cost of heart surgery to an astonishing 800 dollars. Already famous for his 'heart factory' in Bangalore, which does the highest number of cardiac operations in the world, the latest 'Temple of the Heart' projects are ultra low-cost facilities. 'Our target is to build and equip a hospital for six million dollars and build it in six months.'" Continue reading →

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Sheriff Bradshaw and the Palm Beach County Psihuska

"Although they were dealing with a sickly, unarmed homeless man who was not a criminal suspect, the Berserkers treated the incident as a combat situation. As they approached the encampment, Gaydos – who was holding his cell phone – stood up. Without a word of warning, he was shot twice in the head with rubber bullets. The first round damaged an ear; the second one destroyed his left eye. The assailants later tried to justify the head shots by claiming that they had seen a knife in Gaydos’s hand – but since no knife was ever recovered, this can be dismissed as a self-serving lie of the kind routinely offered by police officers after they kill or mutilate an innocent person." Continue reading →

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Nigel Farage and His UKIP Party Win Big in Britain Once More

"Tony Blair – thanks for small mercies – has not had a comfortable retirement, though it has been a lucrative one. He works for big Wall Street houses but when he makes a speech, former constituents often show up to try to make citizens' arrests for war crimes. The farce has continued within the British government, as well. Cameron is widely seen as inept even within his own party and has trouble enunciating what he actually stands for. There is a huge vacuum in British politics that the classical liberal wing of English political philosophy used to occupy. This is an honorable tradition that surely continues to exert a powerful attraction. Now we can see the evidence." Continue reading →

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The Market Shall Set North Korea Free

"Today, when North Koreans are ordered by their state employer to take part in political activities, they know their time is being wasted. Fewer North Koreans show up for their state jobs. This growing economic and psychological independence among regular people is becoming the greatest thorn in the regime’s side. It is also the key to change. Instead of focusing on the regime and its agents as possible instigators of reform, we must recognize the power of the flourishing marketplace to slowly but definitively transform North Korea from the bottom up." Continue reading →

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Stark Scenes From the Guantanamo Hunger Strike

"For more than two weeks, 100 detainees at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba have been on hunger strike to protest conditions at the prison and their indefinite confinement. First denied and downplayed by the military, the strike has now become a full-blown emergency. Twenty-three detainees are currently being force-fed. At least twice a day, guards in riot gear tie each detainee to a chair or bed, and medical personnel force a tube up his nose and down his throat, and pump a can of Ensure or other dietary supplement into his stomach. There are so many detainees being force-fed that Guantanamo's medical personnel are working around the clock." Continue reading →

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The case against cronies: Libertarians must stand up to corporate greed

"In the age of crony capitalism, libertarians must declare that some means of pursuing profit are immoral and call on executives to reject them. This would create a positive case for capitalism -- arguing that the pursuit of profit, in the context of fair and open competition, helps the whole society. The new corporate social responsibility, redefined for libertarians, must stand athwart crony corporatism yelling 'stop.'" Continue reading →

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