By Martha Rosenberg - March 22, 2013

Do you fall asleep at night and wake up in the morning? Do you wake up…hungry for food? You may be suffering from……fill in the disease du jour...Selling symptoms to suggestible people has been a gold mine for Big Pharma since it started advertising directly to the consumer almost 15 years ago. Thanks to disease mongering ads, millions of people who were once fine now have depression, insomnia, season allergies, GERD and assorted attention and pain disorders.

By Glenn Greenwald - March 23, 2013

Nobody has been subjected to...vapid discrediting techniques more than Noam Chomsky...[W]hat is so striking is that virtually every mainstream profile or discussion of him at some point inevitably recites the same set of personality and stylistic attacks designed to malign his advocacy without having to do the work to engage the substance of his claims. Notably, these attacks come most frequently and viciously from establishment liberal venues...

By Jeff Lincoln - WSWS

A report released in early February by the Open Society Justice Initiative titled Globalizing Torture: CIA Secret Detention and Extraordinary Rendition establishes that the Central Intelligence Agency, acting under the direction of the highest levels of the US government, has utilized a global network of secret prisons, foreign intelligence agents, and interrogation and torture centers to send detainees to without any legal protections.

By Gerry Caplan - March 18, 2013

It is a phenomenon rarely noted that virtually every left-wing government since the Second World War, almost all of them elected, has faced vicious, sometimes violent, obstruction by its enemies both internal and foreign. Many were overthrown...Not surprisingly, the histories of all such governments have, for better or worse, been deeply influenced by such hostile interventions.

By HARRY BROWNE - Counterpunch

...Bono’s “inner nerd” really needs to meet my outer skeptic, because in fact his optimistic message about the trajectory of poverty eradication, and the reasons for it, is a flimsy tissue of truths, half-truths and statistics, conveniently skewed to suggest that he and his Western partners in Africa (governments, corporations, foundations) have been doing a great job entirely.

By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS - March 19, 2013

By its gratuitous murder of Muslims in seven or eight countries, Washington has ignited a Muslim response: bitter hatred of the United States. This response is termed “terrorism” by Washington and the war against terrorism serves as a source of endless profits for the military complex and for a police state to “protect” Americans from terrorism, but not from the terrorism of their own government.

It's largely a US imperial tool. It's been so from inception. With few exceptions, the UN Human Rights Council (HRC) marches in lockstep with Washington. It does so shamelessly.

By Bill Van Auken - 16 March 2013

Placed on the papal throne is not only another hard-line opponent of Marxism, the Enlightenment and all manner of human progress, but a man who is deeply and directly implicated in...Argentina’s “Dirty War”...[T]he Vatican spokesman was compelled to address the past of the new Pope Francis — the former Archbishop of Buenos Aires, Jorge Bergoglio. He dismissed the accusations against him as the work of “anti-clerical left-wing elements.”

By Jordy Cummings - March 15, 2013

Hitchens...was not like other political or religious apostates, notably the first generation of neoconservatives who rejected their early political impulses...But the truth is that Hitchens was never really on our side to begin with...Hitchens was a petit-bourgeois social climber who wanted to be close to power whatever the source, whether that be the movers and shakers of the socialist left, the American left intelligentsia, the world of "letters," even the department of Homeland Security.

By Patrick O’Connor - 14 March 2013

Former cardinal of Buenos Aires, Argentina, Jorge Mario Bergoglio, was yesterday installed as the new head of the Catholic Church...Within Latin America, the Church has long worked hand in hand with the most reactionary political forces, in league with US imperialism, against left-wing movements of the working class and oppressed peasantry...“History condemns him...It shows him to be opposed to all innovation in the church and above all, during the dictatorship, it shows he was very cosy with the military.”

By John Pilger - March 14, 2013

Today's "message" of grotesque inequality, social injustice and war is the propaganda of liberal democracies. By any measure of human behavior, this is extremism. When Hugo Chavez challenged it, he was abused in bad faith; and his successor will be subverted by the same zealots of the American Enterprise Institute, Harvard's Kennedy School and the "human rights" organizations that have appropriated American liberalism and underpin its propaganda.

March 5, 2013 - AlterNet

Now control of government is narrowly concentrated at the peak of the income scale, while the large majority “down below” has been virtually disenfranchised. The current political-economic system is a form of plutocracy, diverging sharply from democracy, if by that concept we mean political arrangements in which policy is significantly influenced by the public will.

By Nikos Raptis - February 21, 2013

The owners of the world and their proxies in the various parts of the world, historically had two main tools to protect their "property", the professional soldier and the policeman...[T]he policeman has the "privilege" to attack, fully armed, his unarmed enemy; the citizen...He has the "privilege" to shoot and ask questions later. Finally, and most importantly, he has the "privilege" of full protection by his employer and "owner", no matter what his...crime.

Kerry replaced Clinton at State. He didn't miss a beat. He continues her imperial arrogance. He prioritizes war. He deplores peace. He supports Israel's worst crimes.

Dangerous demagoguery may become policy. Doing so reflects madness. Warmongers don't seem to care.