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Lanny Cotler and I lived the 60s.  He was involved in the Berkeley Free Speech dust-up and I was Bobby Kennedy’s film crew director to the end in L.A.  We were both in Vietnam, he in State and I for CARE, and saw that debacle in all its hideous depth. We were radicalized then, and it only deepened and matured over the decades of Nixon, Reagan, Clinton et al.  The insane response to 911 under Bush and the congealing of Congress into an American Reichstag pushed us both into a sense that whatever we could do, however slight, we simply …

If there was ever any doubt about the purpose of intervention in Syria, it has been dispelled as hoards of lobbyists from AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, including 250 Jewish leaders, descend upon Capitol Hill.  Their mission is to make sure that each and every member of Congress knows how important it is to vote in favor of American military intervention in Syria.

With apologies to the original quote, “It is better to remain silent and be thought a traitor than to speak and remove all doubt.”  The Israel lobby pushed the U.S. into wars with Iraq and …

IPS – Contrary to the general impression in Congress and the news media, the Syria chemical warfare intelligence summary released by the Barack Obama administration August 30 did not represent an intelligence community assessment, an IPS analysis and interviews with former intelligence officials reveals.

Contrary to the general impression in Congress and the news media, the Syria chemical warfare intelligence summary released by the Barack Obama administration August 30 did not represent an intelligence community assessment, an IPS analysis and interviews with former intelligence officials reveals.

The evidence indicates that Director of National Intelligence James Clapper culled intelligence analyses from various agencies …

In a bold and surprising move to expand union brotherhood, Richard Trumka, president of the 11.5-million member AFL-CIO, announced that his Federation would consider inviting non-union workers to join up. And in an equally surprising move, Trumka also suggested inviting progressive environmental and civil rights groups (e.g., the Sierra Club, the NAACP, the National Council of La Raza, etc.) to form partnerships or quasi-coalitions with the House of Labor.

This announcement was made on the eve of the AFL-CIO’s convention, which began on Sunday, September 8, in Los Angeles. Although Trumka and his advisors deserve enormous credit for …

“This,” cried the mayor, “is your town’s darkest hour!
The time for all Whos who have blood that is red
to come to the aid of their country!” he said.
“We’ve GOT to make noises in greater amounts!
So, open your mouth, lad! For every voice counts!”
Thus he spoke as he climbed. When they got to the top,
the lad cleared his throat and he shouted out, “Yopp!”
And that Yopp… That one small extra Yopp put it over!
Finally, at last! From that speck on that clover
their voices were heard!

— Horton Hears a Who, by Dr. Seuss

The American people are rejecting war with …

The Obama administration is looking to attack Syria. If they go forward without UN approval, the US would once again be violating international law and would likely inflame a conflict that’s already left 100,000 dead and displaced millions more.

For its part, Ottawa seems to want military action. Last week Prime Minister Stephen Harper said, “We do support our allies who are contemplating forceful action [in Syria]” and on Friday he added “we are simply not prepared to accept the idea that there is a Russian veto [at the UN Security Council] over all of our actions.”

At the same …

Ellen Hodgson Brown, a West Coast writer with a law degree, or perhaps more accurately, an attorney who likes to write in order to right, is one of the few people around who talks sense about banksters in general, central banking in particular, and the international excuse for both that prevails these days.

Ms Brown talks about the leveraged buyout of America, how giant “bancorps,” as they like to style themselves, perhaps because it sounds so new-worldy cool, have gluttonized to the point where they own just about everything private and public: airports and other ports, acres of green plants and …

Historical analogies can be effective tools to command attention. They can also be grotesque fabrications and dangerous distortions. Each historical event has its own locale of development, its own forces, and distinctiveness. Analogy, for that reasons, can only be suggestive, never conclusive.

The Munich Analogy is one such object of abuse. In 1938, Czechoslovakia was effectively surrendered to Nazi Germany by agreement at Munich, part of Western Europe’s appeasement strategy in the wake of a rampant Adolf Hitler. This was a crude version of land for peace – give the land to Nazi Germany, and keep the …

Having just passed the first hurdle (The Senate Foreign Relations Committee) towards military action in Syria and awaiting congressional approval; I can help but be reminded of Smedley Butler’s stance on the justifications for actions by military apparatus: “I believe in adequate defense at the coastline and nothing else.”

In the modern context of nation states, if diplomacy was the predominating factor, we would face a considerably different geopolitical landscape. The military rational would adopt a non interventionist approach. Few are those who argue, from an ethics perspective, that self-defense is unjustified, but empires old and new pervade this sense of …

Israel loves anniversaries. The media fill up with revelations and memories of the event commemorated, eye-witnesses recite their stories for the umpteenth time, old photos flood the pages and the TV screens.

In the coming days, two main memorial dates will play this role. True, the Yom Kippur war broke out only in October (1973), but already the newspapers and TV programs are full of it.

The Oslo agreement was signed on September 13 (1993). Hardly any mention. It has been almost expunged from the national memory.

Oslo? Oslo in Norway? Anything happened there? Tell me about it.

Actually, for me …

Despite Secretary of State John Kerry’s statement this week that there is “irrefutable” evidence the Bashar Assad government in Damascus ordered the chemical gas attack in Syria last month, no direct proof of this allegation has been revealed. The best the White House can offer are repeated assurances it has “confidence” or even “high confidence” that Syria (or Assad) used chemical weapons.

Proof or not, it is obvious President Obama is exploiting the crisis in order to deliver a staggering blow to the Syrian military in its fight against rebel armed forces. The New York Times reported Sept. 6 that “Obama …

With the announcement by the Obama administration that it intends to launch an attack on Syria in response to the chemical attack alleged to have been carried out by the Syrian government, the U.S. Administration has again assumed for itself the role of global “gendarme,” policing, punishing, and as it’s drone warfare program demonstrates, even executing the natives of the global village at will. In its single-minded dedication to this global role, the Obama administration has also freed itself from the constraints of international law as the President shamelessly declared that he was “comfortable” operating outside of the global …

Gilad Atzmon was slandered in a TRNN interview with senior editor Paul Jay and guest Max Blumenthal. At having his chance for rebuttal denied Atzmon seemed (and rightfully so) angry, saying: “Because, above all, Jay is a coward and must have realised that he doesn’t stand a chance of countering my ideas in front of a camera, not even in his own studio.”

Atzmon called Jay an “anti-Zionist Zionist,” which is going overboard. Jay is obviously opposed to Zionism. He takes exception to Atzmon’s “ideology.” That is fine. But Jay cast a dismal shadow over his own and The Real News …

Oscar Wilde referred to Western history as a “calendar of infamy.” 1963 should stand as a prominent mark on such a calendar. It was in this year that covert CIA operations assisted the Ba’ath Party in its overthrow of the governments of both Syria and Iraq. These two U.S.-organized and -funded coups were directly responsible for the eventual rise of power of dictators Hafez al-Assad (the father of Bashar al-Assad) in Syria and Saddam Hussein in Iraq.

You won’t read about the ’63 coups in a U.S. newspaper, however.

Contemporary journalism has a horrendous habit of considering history superfluous. If an event …

Introduction by Gilad Atzmon

A few weeks ago some of us were rather amused to see Max Blumenthal, in conversation with Paul Jay (The Real News Network), deliver the usual anti-Zionist Zionist (AZZ) spiel. After the program many Palestinian solidarity and anti-war commentators were outraged and demanded that Jay provide me with a right to reply. So Jay approached me, asked to clarify a few issues and promised to come back to me shortly with an answer. I didn’t hold my breath because since the incident I had learned a little about Jay’s political affiliations and motivations.

Yesterday, he …