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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 …

Military aggression is wrong. War does not solve problems. It is a problem that creates more problems.

Currently, the Congress and Senate are discussing the question of using force. They are authorizing aggression because anything that is outside the UN Security Council is aggression. If it were a question of self-defense, it would not be aggression, but Syria has not attacked the United States.

US intervention does not bring peace or justice, nor will it restart the democratic revolution taking place in Syria before the civil war broke out. Indeed, it can be reasonably argued that it …

Ben Swann Reality Check takes a look at HHS navigators and the massive amounts of private and personal information they will collect and store in the Federal Data Hub under Obamacare. Plus the question: does private information even exist anymore?

http://youtu.be/dKMWow_Sk04

Suppose several armored vehicles belonging to a branch of the Palestinian Authority raided an Israeli border village at the eve of a new round of peace negotiations. One can picture PA President Mahmoud Abbas defending the killings, stating that the attack was made in the cause of protecting the security of the Palestinian public. Would the Israeli delegation return to the talks with handshakes and smiles?

The answer is an obvious no. Yet the Palestinian delegation did return to real recently renewed peace talks after Israeli forces’ raided a refugee camp in north Jerusalem on August 26, killing three. This was …

With the school year starting for many this week, it’s another year of academia for professors across the United States – and another year of “frackademia” for an increasingly large swath of “frackademics” under federal law.

“Frackademia” is best defined as flawed but seemingly legitimate science and economic studies on the controversial oil and gas horizontal drilling process known as hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”), but done with industry funding and/or industry-tied academics (“frackademics”).

While the “frackademia” phenomenon has received much media coverage, a critical piece missing from the discussion is the role played by Section 999 of the Energy Policy Act of …

“United Nations, 911 emergency operator, this is Ms. Athena, how can I assist you?”

“This is Barack Obama, President of the United States, and I would like to report the presence of a suspicious, and probably dangerous, person in my neighborhood.”

“What is happening, exactly, Mr. President?”

“Well, it’s one of those bad actors, again. Something horrible has happened and I’m sure this guy is the one responsible. You know what I’m talking about.”

“Mr. President, I most certainly do not know what you are talking about. Are you in danger at the present time?”

“Me? At present? Well, taking everything into account, no, I …

 They carried all they could bear, and then some, including a silent awe for the terrible power of the things they carried.    ? Tim O’Brien, The Things They Carried

“What was the last best memory you have of your father?” There were eight of us, encircling him, when he asked me to recall that moment I knew my father to be at his most vulnerable point for me, his most unadorned human self. For Robert Bly, he was asking me when I first saw myself as strong (or stronger than my old man).

Bly was tired, the wild man in his …

thugs, bad science, fast-tracking economic hit men, family farms at stake — New World Disorder — Trans Pacific Partnership Cartel 

Below, a patchwork, all related to fast-tracking the transnational capitalists, who are one for all, and all for one world disorder. We have the war drums of the Obama, Kerry, Democrats kind. Yet, the war in Syria now and the one that Obama-Military Industrial Complex (and, yes, that includes all the millions of middle class Americans making money off IT, junk hardware, military weaponry, services, plain old marketing of war and the war trade) wants across the Middle East is still …

The title (referring to Assad) is the question George Galloway MP asked in the House of Commons when he shredded Prime Minister David Cameron.  In a first for a modern Prime Minister on an issue of military intervention, Cameron lost the vote, and therefore the British will not be participating in any military action against Syria.  It leaves the U.S. without its staunchest ally and almost alone because Germany has already decided to forego the military option.

Mr. Obama has decided to buttress his decision with Congressional authorization — presumably to share in the blame if things go wrong, which is …