We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Saturday, September 14, 2013

Syrian Complexities And The Geopolitical Context – Analysis

Click here to access article by Zaakir Ahmed Mayet from The Palestine Chronicle
The world seems to be spiraling out of control. As murder, death and wanton destruction becomes the order of the day; these realities are demonstrated in Syria. The mass slaughter occurring within the borders of Syria appeals to the humanitarian in most, except for those that seek to rain cruise missile democracy upon the Syrian populous.
The author carefully follows the evidence related to Syria's internal war and finds that the trail leads to Israel and Zionist regional ambitions.

Washington maneuvers in Syrian negotiations to lay groundwork for war

Click here to access article by Bill Van Auken from World Socialist Web Site.

The author lays out the evidence which supports the view that Western and Zionist forces are intent on using the current Syrian peace negotiations in order to provide a pretext for an attack.

Referring to a French resolution regarding Syrian chemical weapons, the author writes:
The resolution is designed to create a series of triggers for military attack. Like similar conditions imposed on the government of Saddam Hussein before the US invasion of Iraq, it aims at forcing the Syrian government to prove the impossible, that it is not hiding a single chemical weapon within its territory, and creates the conditions for riding roughshod over the country’s sovereignty in order to better prepare a war for regime change.

No More War for Israel?: The People Against the 800 Pound Gorilla

Click here to access article by Jean Bricmont and Diana Johnstone from CounterPunch.
An American friend who knows Washington well recently told us that “everybody” there knows that, as far as the drive to war with Syria is concerned, it is Israel that directs U.S. policy. Why then, we replied, don’t opponents of war say it out loud, since, if the American public knew that, support for the war would collapse?

Chemical weapons arsenals and the hidden truths about the "Convention"

Click here to access article by Manlio Dinucci from VoltaireNet
The hammering by politicians and the corporate media about chemical weapons use in Syria, which, according to secret CIA "evidence" was used by government forces, has generated the widespread false impression that it is only Syria that now possesses such weapons and threatens the rest of the world with them. That’s the power of the weapon of mass distraction....

Labor Leaders, Obamacare, and the Fate of the Unions

Click here to access article by Shamus Cooke from Workers Action.
A funny thing happened a couple of months ago: labor leaders finally awoke from their coma and realized that Obamacare was not only bad for unions, but for working families in general.

Once the biggest salespeople of the bill’s passage, union leaders are suddenly full of rage and “shock” at the realities of Obamacare.

Friday, September 13, 2013

China stitches up (SCO) Silk Rd

Click here to access article by Pepe Escobar from Asia Times Online.
... we have to come back to the ultimate adage of the times; while the (Washington) dogs of war bark, the (Chinese) caravan does deals.
While the Empire threatens more chaos in the Middle East, Escobar reports on all the quiet developments in Eurasia focusing on the Chinese capitalists to create an infrastructure...
..."economic belt along the Silk Road" is a supremely ambitious, Chinese-fueled trans-Eurasian integration mega-project, from the Pacific to the Baltic Sea; a sort of mega free-trade zone. Xi's rationale seems to be unimpeachable; the belt is the home of "close to 3 billion people and represents the biggest market in the world with unparalleled potential".
And the Chinese and Russians are increasingly seeing the need to collaborate to counter the imperial designs of the West. While such plans are seemingly motivated to create a "multi-polar" world, you can be certain that the future will be see deadly inter-capitalist rivalries just as we witnessed in the horrors of the 20th century world wars. Capitalist competition never remains in a benign state. Chinese and Russian capitalists are no more moral than our own or what we saw from fascist Germany, Italy, and Japan in the 20th century. That is precisely why the US Empire is now doing everything it can to thwart the plans of these rivals.

As ordinary people across the world, if we continue to be used as pawns in the rivalries between various capitalist gangs, we can only expect more wars with greater devastation, and the inevitable clash with our planet's ecosystem that is capable of sustaining human life.

Defeating AIPAC Starts with Syria

Click here to access article by Philip Giraldi from AntiWar.
AIPAC operates with a budget exceeding $50 million and has several hundred full time staff. Let there be no mistake about what the organization is and what it stands for: it wants the United States to start what almost certainly would quickly escalate into a major war on behalf of another country as a prelude to yet another war against yet another Middle Eastern country.

Thursday, September 12, 2013

Rania Masri and Chris Hedges On Obama's Syria Address

Click here if you wish to access the transcript of part 1 of this interview from Real News Network



Part 2 of 2 of this interview:

Repression and Violence in Honduras Do Not Just Happen--They Are Policy

Click here to access article by Dana Frank from Rights Action. (This post was forwarded to me from Rights Action, a humanitarian group working for social justice in Honduras and Guatemala.)

I receive postings like this constantly from sources in Central America. Honduras and Guatemala are disasters as societies, and have been made that way with the close supervision of US and Canadian authorities. Occasionally liberals in Congress make moralistic noises about the many human rights crimes and civil rights violations against indigenous and opposition groups by multi-national corporations operating there or by the Honduran and Guatemalan militaries, but nothing is ever done to hold them accountable. News of these violations are rarely reported in US media with an occasional exception as we see here in this guest article published by the Miami Herald.

Wednesday, September 11, 2013

The (farcical) emperor is naked

Click here to access article by Pepe Escobar from Asia Times Online.

In this article Escobar shows real insight on the fake government that millions are led to believe governs the US while pointing at the real people who manage the puppets from behind the screen of corporate media. However, it appears that fooling people is getting harder and harder.
It's as if Dick Cheney had never left the building; paperboy Barack is Dick Cheney with a ''human'' face. The only good outcome in this multi-sorrowful tale is that the real ''international community'', all around the world, has seen the naked Emperor in all its (farcical) glory.

Kevin Ryan Exposes “Another 19″ 9/11 Suspects

Click here to access the 44:53m audio interview with Kevin Ryan by James Corbett.

Author Kevin Ryan's research has come up with another list of  9/11 suspects who had the means, motive, and opportunity to carry off the 9/11 operation.
9/11 researcher Kevin Ryan...joins us once again to discuss his new must-read book, “Another Nineteen: Investigating Legitimate 9/11 Suspects.” We discuss some of the individuals and corporations identified in his book and those who have helped to cover up investigations of them, as well as what works like this can accomplish and where the 9/11 truth movement should head from here.
Also, you might be interested in this 45:07m video which suggests that much of what we saw on TV during and following 9/11 might have been a Photoshop-type production.

Too Many Years Of Lies from Mossadeq to 9/11

Click here to access article by Paul Craig Roberts from his website.

The plutocracy through their corporate propaganda organs commemorates 9/11 today so that you will never forget that we are are constantly threatened and must pursue wars of self-defense and humanitarianism indefinitely. Besides, it's good for the stock market, and the stock market is good for America.

I hear some doubters out there who claim that the true story will inevitably come out about 9/11. Ha, ha. Well yes, but you will have to wait a bit.
If 60 years is the time that must pass before Washington’s crimes can be acknowledged, the US government will admit the truth about September 11, 2001 on September 11, 2061. 

Tuesday, September 10, 2013

Russia Throws Obama a Life Preserver on Syria

Click here to access article by Jim Lobe from Inter Press Service
With President Barack Obama facing increasingly certain defeat in his quest for Congressional authorisation to carry out military strikes against Syria, the Russian government Monday appeared to offer the White House a way out of the crisis.
Seizing on what seemed to be an offhand remark by Secretary of State John Kerry during a London press conference, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov pledged that Moscow would support any effort to put Syria’s chemical weapons under international control and eventually destroy them.
The "offhand remark"?
“Sure, he could turn over every single bit of his chemical weapons to the international community in the next week – turn it over, all of it, without delay and allow the full and total accounting,” ... “But he isn’t about to do it, and it can’t be done.”

Why the US, UK, EU & Israel hate Syria

Click here to access article by Adrian Salbuchi from RT



A young, soft-spoken girl living the Syrian tragedy spells it out with far more common sense, truth and honesty than powerful Western governments and their money-controlled mass media puppets.









In this article the author expands on comments made by her in a YouTube video in which she cited “eight reasons why the NWO (New World Order) hates Syria.” 

Also, you might want to watch her and her friend debate so-called "Free Syrian Army" advocates on an Australian TV political program. 

By viewing her YouTube videos you will learn a lot about Syria that is never reported in corporate media.

Does your local government have a “black budget” too?

Click here to access article by Matthew Cagle from American Civil Liberties Union.
As we learn more about the US intelligence community's top secret, multi-billion dollar "Black budget" and how the NSA pays technology companies to comply with the Prism spying program, another mostly unnoticed pipeline moves billions of federal surveillance dollars from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to local governments for dragnet surveillance systems that include video camera networks, automated license plate readers, facial recognition, and even drones and tanks.

The art of building a new world: Freedom according to the Zapatistas

Click here to access article by Raúl Zibechi from Americas Program
It takes seven hours to traverse the 100 kilometers that separate San Cristóbal and the Morelia caracol. The caravan (containing thirty cars and trucks) left late and advanced at a tortoise pace. Around 2:00 am, we arrived at the caracol, and a maze of buildings that house the institutions of the autonomous region, made up of three municipalities, twelve regions, and dozens of communities governed by the Good Government Board. 
In August the author attended "La Escuelita", or Little School, arranged for people in other lands to come to Chiapas and learn about the new society that the Zapatistas are creating. This is a report on his visit and his observations about the new society.

One week of protests: what’s going on in Romania?

Click here to access article by Grecu Cristian-Dan from Reflections on a Revolution
In the last couple of years, people from Romania forgot that they had a voice, that they had power, that they could change something. Many accepted the current situation of poverty and corruption, and forgot that they could unite and fight together. But Chevron and RMGC (the Roşia Montană Gold Corporation, which is the Romanian arm of the Canadian mining corporation) with the complicity of the state obliged us to wake up!

Monday, September 9, 2013

Is The United States Going To Go To War With Syria Over A Natural Gas Pipeline?

Click here to access article by Michael Snyder from MND

The author presents considerable evidence that this is, indeed, the case. But, is this reason so surprising given the history of the US? Read General Butler's book entitled War is a Racket on how he saw his career:
I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.
If you had read independent historical sources, you would know that both world wars in the 20th century were primarily over which capitalist empire ruled the world: Anglo-American or German. As we know, the Anglo-American capitalists won and they have continued fooling the American people about their wars with some of the more recent wars being the Gulf of Tonkin incident and the Vietnam War, the Kuwaiti incubators and the first Gulf War, the Racak massacre and the war in Kosovo, Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction and the second Gulf War, and threats of a humanitarian nature to the people of Libya and the Libyan war). 

Now the Empire is threatening another war in the Middle East and pretending that it is for humanitarian reasons while it is actually over pipelines which are essential conduits for control of energy in their competition with Russian and Chinese capitalists. To sell the public on these wars, they must always justify them using humanitarian or security reasons. The latest form of this old ploy is now being used again to fool the American people.

Dogs of War Slaver over Syria, Powder keg for Disaster

Click here if you wish to access the source of this interview from RT via YouTube. 

At 4:25m into the interview Galloway refers to an attack on a Christian community called Maaloula in Syria by Al Qaeda affiliated rebels. One can find more information on this from Al Akhbar here.

Preparations for regional war

Click here to access article by Thierry Meyssan from VoltaireNet.
Both the United States and France are busy with preparations for the bombing of Syria, although such action corresponds to no strategic objective for either state. Russia and the Axis of Resistance are therefore preparing their riposte. The major difficulty consists in transforming this aggression into a regional war while avoiding the Third, (and final?) World War. Whatever happens, if they engage in war, the Western world will have to deal with a long and wide-ranging conflict like nothing they’ve experienced since Vietnam.

An Interview with Naomi Klein on the Climate Crisis

Click here to access article from Earth Island Journal.

The author of No Logo and The Shock Doctrine discusses her upcoming book on climate change. She sees some promising changes in the fight against climate chaos.
Right now it’s under the radar, but I’m following it quite closely.

Sunday, September 8, 2013

Depravity Redefined: Selling US Slaughter in Syria

Click here to access article by Tony Cartalucci from Land Destroyer Report
The corporate interests driving the United States, its resources, and policy, have invoked dead children in the latest and grisliest propaganda campaign yet, directed at the American public to build support for an otherwise unjustified and universally unwanted war with Syria.

The Senate's Syria Resolution Has a Huge Secret Giveaway to the President

Click here to access article by Garrett Epps from The Atlantic.

The Obama administration has claimed that Obama has the authority to attack Syria based on the 1973 War Powers Act even without Congressional approval. This is clearly false. However, this article specifically focuses on the evolution of this false interpretation of war making powers of the president from the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) that congress passed after the 9/11 event. The latest attempt to strengthen the powers of the executive branch is revealed by Epps in the resolution just passed by the Senate's Foreign Relations Committee. This is another lie compounding all the other lies in relation to Syria that a faction of the shadow government is using to justify the Obama administration's commitment to attack Syria. 
Though Congress plays at narrowing Obama's authority, the draft authorization could actually give him and future presidents sweeping new powers to intervene overseas.
For another take on this evolution toward dictatorship, read Mickey Z's article which compares the Empire's management of a crisis (for Empire directors the crisis was a democratically elected socialist government!) located in Chile in 1973 with that of present day Syria.