So New York Times columnist Tom Friedman and former Times executive editor Bill Keller are both saying that the massive NSA spying program on all Americans’ communications is a needed thing because if they don’t do it, then maybe there could be another major terrorist strike on the US, and democracy would be erased in the US.

It's the Ownership

If you're like me you've read several books that list inspiring examples of worker owned businesses and co-ops, suggesting that expanding on such models might begin to right the wrongs of an incredibly unequal society that is growing even more unequal by the day.

The best such collection I've found is in a new book by Gar Alperovitz called What Then Must We Do? This book also offers a powerful argument that radical change is needed, albeit an argument with some possible flaws. First the inspiring examples:

Workers own and run factories in Cleveland, Atlanta, Washington DC, Amarillo, and many other cities. Labor unions that once opposed worker ownership, including the Steelworkers and several others, now create worker-owned companies. Forty percent of Americans are members of cooperatives, including credit unions. People moved hundreds of millions of dollars, if not billions, from large banks to credit unions and small banks in 2011 and 2012. (That should continue!) Then there are community development corporations and land trusts, alive and thriving. There are even corporations redesigned, and labeled B Corps, chartered under new laws in 12 states to allow them to legally pursue the social good as well as profits.

Employee stock ownership plans make U.S. workers owners of their businesses in great numbers -- three million more than are members of unions in the private sector. Federal tax incentives (don't tell Congress!) encourage business owners to sell to their employees. Worker-owned firms are becoming more common. They are also more profitable than other similar companies.

It occurs to me that we need a Union-Label type operation to label and catalog the products of worker-owned companies so that we can put our support there.

Local governments are investing in local businesses and land development. A quarter of U.S. electricity comes from publicly owned co-ops. These power companies are more efficient and tend to be greener. The model is being followed by public broadband service. Proposals that meet the textbook definition of socialism are alive and growing in red and blue states alike, and at the local and state levels.

This matters because the national government in the United States is so thoroughly corrupted. I'm not sure Alperovitz ever directly answers the question of how a national plutocracy will be prevented from halting local and state progress on the ownership question, as it has halted local and state progress on other matters. If the trend toward democratizing ownership is happening under the radar, how can it possibly be kept there while succeeding on the necessary scale? If this approach to economic justice is somehow more inherently "American" than other more foreign ideas, how exactly does that protect it? Weren't family farms and free elections and the Fourth Amendment deemed very American at one point too? Alperovitz recommends a state-by-state approach to single-payer healthcare, but the refusal of California legislators to enact it has come at the bidding of those in Washington. None of which is to suggest that Alperovitz is wrong to promote this strategy -- just that it may be very difficult, and some other strategies may help too.

Alperovitz frames his discussion within an understanding of serious systemic failure. Persistent long-term trends toward income and wealth inequality, monopolized corporate power, mass incarceration, and environmental devastation churn ahead in the face of elections, activism, lobbying, and reform legislation, not to mention flip-flopping between Republican and Democratic so-called "leadership." Alperovitz paints these as even longer term trends than we often suppose by dismissing the gains of the middle of the 20th century as an aberration produced by the Great Depression and World War II, and as gains that could not have come without a large labor movement -- something he now deems virtually impossible.

Most activist groups, Alperovitz points out, react to cuts in public services by demanding no cuts. This is purely defensive. Alperovitz acknowledges that some also advocate for progressive taxation, but deems this "obviously inadequate" although the obviousness of its inadequacy is not apparent to me, except in the sense that (just like the worker-ownership model) it hasn't succeeded yet on a major scale. Yes, the plutocrats buy the elections. The system is rigged against tax reform. But the goal of advancing the taxation (and elimination) of billionaires as power is gradually obtained seems critical.

Alperovitz seems at times to buy into the notion that there just isn't enough money around, even if the billionaires were to be taxed at 90 percent. But this is wrong, of course. The nation is rolling in money, and the money is piled up in the hands of several hundred people.

It's somewhere else as well, somewhere Alperovitz doesn't propose to look for it. President Obama's proposed budget for 2014 devotes 57% of discretionary spending to an illegal, immoral, counterproductive, and economically destructive operation known as war and preparation for war. While Alperovitz suggests that World War III could save the U.S. economy (were a new world war possible, which he says it isn't), economists say military spending as it exists does less for the economy than other public spending and even less than tax cuts for working people; that is to say, it is worse than nothing.

Alperovitz seems unaware that roughly half of military spending is outside the Pentagon, in Homeland Security, in the CIA, in the State Department, in the Energy Department, etc. So he uses the Pentagon budget alone to argue that military spending is low as a percentage of GDP. This does not of course make it low in terms of actual dollars or as a percentage of global military spending or as a percentage of public spending in the United States. Alperovitz believes there's little money for spending on human needs, but seems not to notice where 57% of discretionary spending is going.

While Alperovitz raises the topic of healthcare because it takes up, he says, 20 percent of GDP, the war machine that swallows 8 or 9 percent of GDP from U.S. government purchases alone (U.S. companies also dominating international weapons sales) gets no consideration. Leo Tolstoy, from whom the book's title is borrowed, would have noticed the existence of the military industrial complex. He would have considered the possibility of economic conversion. Connecticut created a commission this month to pursue conversion from war to peace manufacturing. I suspect Alperovitz would like that model if he took a look at it.

So, here's where I come down. We should be pursuing everything Alperovitz recommends, and then some. We should create worker ownership, tax the rich, cut the military, invest in our society, and act strategically at the local, state, and national levels. We should take very seriously long-term structural failures and stop imagining that another election will fix anything by itself. And we should, as Alperovitz wisely recommends, be preparing the ground for the best possible activism when a moment of greater possibilities arrives, or when we have succeeded in creating it.

An appeal from Afghanistan to whistle-blow on war

From Dr. Hakim and the Afghan Peace Volunteers

Recognition that 95 million human beings were killed in World War I and II has helped the people of the world understand that the method of war is not cost-effective. An awakened world hoped the United Nations could, as determined in the UN Charter, eventually ‘save succeeding generations from the scourge of war’.

The scourge of war in Afghanistan continues, with the United Nations reporting that more than 3,000 Afghan civilians have been killed and wounded in the first five months of this year, a fifth of whom were Afghan children. So, ordinary people should seize opportunities to tell the truth about war.

The 75,000 Afghan War Logs, which Bradley Manning gave Wikileaks to ‘help document the true cost of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan’, can help all of us evaluate whether the Afghan war is cost-effective. Bradley Manning had also handed Wikileaks a video of the Farah/Granai massacre which occurred in May of 2009, in which 86 to 147 Afghan civilians, mostly women and children, were killed in an airstrike. We can read about the Farah/Granai massacre here and here .

The Afghan Peace Volunteers ask for the Farah/Granai massacre video to be released.

These records report the truths about war, and reveal an obsession among those few people in power to use war in achieving their goals. Bradley Manning said, “In attempting to conduct counter-terrorism or CT and counter-insurgency COIN operations we became obsessed with capturing and killing human targets on lists…”

How many more documents revealing loss of innocent life are needed to determine that war should be banned, that it should not even be a last resort of ‘defence’?

All weapons, not only nuclear weapons, should be banned. A safe life and secure work environment without weapons is very possible even in Afghanistan. Consider, for instance, that the Emergency Surgical Centres in Afghanistan operate all their health facilities without armed protection and that Dr. Ramazon Bashardost, the third-placed candidate in Afghanistan’s 2009 Presidential elections, has no armed bodyguards.

We human beings are capable of living together without war. Billions of human beings all over the world live daily without killing one another, even when dealing with the most troubled or difficult of family members.

We are capable of an impossible love.

We can establish global norms of resolving all our problems through understanding and dialogue, and exclude war from the negotiation table. To do so, we should exclude from the UN charter the use of war as a last resort. We should disband the UN ‘Security’ Council.

Of course, accomplishing these actions hinges on us, on climate change citizens, Arab Spring citizens, Occupy citizens and the ‘awakening’ citizens of every country to free ourselves from the unequal dominance of corporate governments with their laws and weapons of self-interest.

They won’t free Bradley Manning. We need to free Bradley Manning.

They won’t support Edward Snowden. We need to support Edward Snowden.

They won’t free us. We need to free ourselves.

In Bradley Manning’s internal and better world, he is free! He testified, “I felt I had accomplished something that allowed me to have a clear conscience based upon what I had seen and read about and knew were happening in both Iraq and Afghanistan every day.”

Please take some time to listen to these ‘everyday’ tragedies in Afghanistan.

Please take some time to read and watch the thoughts of the Afghan Peace Volunteers below. Rather than chant the dirges of death, we want to sing out life-giving messages.

Then, without any trace of force, join us in asking for release of the ‘Farah/Granai massacre’ video.

Afghan Peace Volunteers thank Bradley

From Afghanistan, the Afghan Peace Volunteers thank Bradley Manning

Abdul Ali

I wish to share the pain of those killed in the Farah massacre, so I request Wikileaks to release the video. Thank you, Bradley, for your courage and sense of human responsibility in passing on this video. I support you!

Faiz Ahmad

As a human being and an Afghan citizen, I want to know the truth so that such violent tragedies will never be repeated again. It will show us how much we need the way of non-violence.

Abdulhai

We need to learn that killing, whether by the Taliban or the US/NATO forces, is not acceptable and cannot solve any problem. At this time, Bradley Manning needs us, and we need one another.

Raz Mohammad

It should be clear to the people how, for profit and power, groups like the Taliban and the US/NATO forces, kill without accountability. We want the voices of the people, like that of Bradley Manning, to be heard. We especially want the voices of children to be heard, including the voices of children who have been killed. We want their voices to haunt us. We should give a prize of conscience to Bradley Manning.

Basir Bita

The transparency and conscience that Bradley Manning and Wikileaks seek is so desperately needed in Afghanistan, in the context of governments and power-mongers openly and secretly betraying the people every day.

Barath Khan

We ask for the video of the Farah strike to be published so that the world will know how governments and all warring groups involved in the Afghan conflict have strategies and policies which go against the people, which kill the people. We want the governments and warring groups to be ashamed of their actions. Why should the world or any court of justice condemn and punish those who reveal truths?

Ghulam Hussein

Bradley has delivered truths which the world needs. We are against violence and killing by the Taliban and other Afghan war groups. We are also against violence and killing by the Afghan and U.S./NATO governments. Human beings were not born to abuse, betray or kill one another, but to learn to live together. We were not born to live selfishly, but to live for one another. If human beings want, we can live without war.

The Afghan Peace Volunteers in the video: “Thank you Bradley Manning”

Our sleeping conscience, awake!

Truth is not subject to the baton of the courts.

We are the Afghan Peace Volunteers.

According to the 19^th Article of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which states the right to freedom of expression, we want Bradley Manning to be free!

Truth is like the sun that cannot always be hidden by the clouds.

Thank you Bradley Manning!

Login or register to post comments
Read more

Stopping Indefinite Detention: Guantanamo & Bagram

A multi-media presentation with an ongoing slide show of art against torture.

Eleven years since the building of the US prison at Guantánamo, and nine years after disclosures of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib, US policy has settled into de facto indefinite detention of thousands. Included in the Democratic Party talking points of 2008 was a call to close Guantánamo; in 2012 they did not discuss it. Meanwhile, the largest body of prisoners held without the right to habeas corpus is in the US prison at Bagram, Afghanistan. The majority of prisoners at Guantánamo began a hunger strike in Feburary 2013 as a desperate call for public attention, as conditions for them have worsened under Obama.

U.S. 'backed plan to launch chemical weapon attack on Syria and blame it on Assad's regime'

Leaked emails from defense contractor refers to chemical weapons saying 'the idea is approved by Washington'
Obama issued warning to Syrian president Bashar al-Assad last month that use of chemical warfare was 'totally unacceptable'

By Louise Boyle

Daily Mail, January 29

Leaked emails have allegedly proved that the White House gave the green light to a chemical weapons attack in Syria that could be blamed on Assad's regime and in turn, spur international military action in the devastated country.

A report released on Monday contains an email exchange between two senior officials at British-based contractor Britam Defence where a scheme 'approved by Washington' is outlined explaining that Qatar would fund rebel forces in Syria to use chemical weapons.

Barack Obama made it clear to Syrian president Bashar al-Assad last month that the U.S. would not tolerate Syria using chemical weapons against its own people.

Scroll down for video

War games: An explosion in the Syrian city of Homs last month. It has been now been suggested that the U.S. backed the use of chemical weapons to spur international military intervention

According to Infowars.com, the December 25 email was sent from Britam's Business Development Director David Goulding to company founder Philip Doughty.

It reads: 'Phil... We’ve got a new offer. It’s about Syria again. Qataris propose an attractive deal and swear that the idea is approved by Washington.

'We’ll have to deliver a CW to Homs, a Soviet origin g-shell from Libya similar to those that Assad should have.

'They want us to deploy our Ukrainian personnel that should speak Russian and make a video record.

'Frankly, I don’t think it’s a good idea but the sums proposed are enormous. Your opinion?

'Kind regards, David.'

Britam Defence had not yet returned a request for comment to MailOnline.

Login or register to post comments
Read more

Lawless NSA Global Spying

Lawless NSA Global Spying

by Stephen Lendman

NSA is one of 16 known US spy agencies. Perhaps others operate secretly. Black budgets conceal what's spent. Amounts are enormous. They're unconscionable.

Used responsibly, they'd relieve hunger, shelter the homeless, heal the sick, and educate young people hungry for knowledge.

Syria and Iran: In America's Crosshairs

Syria and Iran: In America's Crosshairs

by Stephen Lendman

Obama's on a fast track toward tyranny. He's heading for greater intervention against Syria. Ravaging the country entirely is planned. At issue is establishing another pro-Western vassal state.

Drones for Christ

by David Swanson | July 2013

How Jerry Falwell's Liberty U.—the world's largest Christian university—became an evangelist for drone warfare.

http://sojo.net/magazine/2013/07/drones-christ

LIBERTY UNIVERSITY in Lynchburg, Va., was founded by televangelist Jerry Falwell. Its publications carry the slogan “Training Champions for Christ since 1971.” Some of those champions are now being trained to pilot armed drones, and others to pilot more traditional aircraft, in U.S. wars. For Christ.

Liberty bills itself as “one of America’s top military-friendly schools.” It trains chaplains for the various branches of the military. And it trains pilots in its School of Aeronautics (SOA)—pilots who go up in planes and drone pilots who sit behind desks wearing pilot suits. The SOA, with more than 600 students, is not seen on campus, as it has recently moved to a building adjacent to Lynchburg Regional Airport.

Liberty’s campus looks new and attractive, large enough for some 12,000 students, swarming with blue campus buses, and heavy on sports facilities for the Liberty Flames. A campus bookstore prominently displays Resilient Warriors, a book by Associate Vice President for Military Outreach Maj. Gen. (Ret.) Robert F. Dees. There’s new construction everywhere you look: a $50 million library, a baseball stadium, new dorms, a tiny year-round artificial ski slope on the top of a hill. In fact, Liberty is sitting on more than $1 billion in net assets.

The major source of Liberty’s money is online education. There are some 60,000 Liberty students you don’t see on campus, because they study via the internet. They also make Liberty the largest university in Virginia, the fourth largest online university anywhere, and the largest Christian university in the world.

More than 23,000 online students are in the military—twice as many as students who live on campus. Liberty offers extra financial support to veterans and those on active duty, allowing them to be credited for knowledge learned in the military and to study online from a war zone.

Liberty has been turning out “Christ-centered aviators” for a decade. In fall 2011, Liberty added a concentration in Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS, aka drones), making it one of the first handful of schools to do this. Now at least 14 universities and colleges in the U.S. have permits from the Federal Aviation Administration to fly drones, and many institutions, including community colleges, offer drone training.

If one chooses to concentrate studies on piloting drones, the load will include a half dozen courses on “intelligence.” Liberty students can also pick up a minor in strategic intelligence and take courses in terrorism and counterterrorism. (Liberty’s school of government brags that Newt Gingrich helped develop its course on “American exceptionalism.”)

TSA screener slut-shames 15-year-old girl, by Sommer Gentry

Mark Fraunfelder’s 15-year-old daughter was at LAX yesterday, trying to board a flight with a group of other students on a trip to visit some colleges. Unfortunately, the U.S. government had decided ahead of time to hire tens of thousands of strangers to intimidate and abuse her (and others) as they blocked the girl’s safe passage to her airplane.

Read the rest at TSA News.

Lisa Simeone's blog
Login or register to post comments

Video of Directed Energy Weapons Show in Congress

1 comment

Corporate America Loves Jason Furman

Corporate America Loves Jason Furman

by Stephen Lendman

Key Obama officials comprise a virtual rogues gallery of scoundrels. On June 10, he nominated Jason Furman to replace Alan Krueger. He'll serve as White House Council of Economic Advisors chairman.

He was Clinton's Special Assistant to the President for Economic Policy at the National Economic Council. He began advising Obama in 2008.

British Eavesdropping: How Awkward at High Tea

UK Grapples with Spying Disclosure

June 17, 2013

Editor Note: British authorities are scrambling to justify how they – while hosting a global economic summit in 2009 – spied on their guests with help from America’s National Security Agency. Some UK media outlets seem a little spooked themselves in getting commentary on the incident.

By Ray McGovern

How inconvenient for Great Britain. Just as world leaders of the G-8 countries gather for a meeting in Northern Ireland, The Guardian front-pages the news that the last time they got together in territory controlled by the UK, the British subjected them to the kind of intrusive eavesdropping that most folks still think is reserved for “suspected terrorists” or “foreign enemies.”

Taking about the national security state: Dave Lindorff on RT's 'Crosstalk' Program

David Brooks, Tom Friedman, Bill Keller Wish Snowden Had Just Followed Orders

By Norman Solomon

Edward Snowden’s disclosures, the New York Times reported on Sunday, “have renewed a longstanding concern: that young Internet aficionados whose skills the agencies need for counterterrorism and cyberdefense sometimes bring an anti-authority spirit that does not fit the security bureaucracy.”

Agencies like the NSA and CIA -- and private contractors like Booz Allen -- can’t be sure that all employees will obey the rules without interference from their own idealism. This is a basic dilemma for the warfare/surveillance state, which must hire and retain a huge pool of young talent to service the digital innards of a growing Big Brother.

Login or register to post comments
Read more

Charlottesville to Be a Stop on Coast-to-Coast Bike Ride for Peace Led by Cindy Sheehan

Inline image 1 An open-to-the-public pot-luck dinner will be held at 6 pm, followed by remarks from Cindy at 7, at Random Row Books in Charlottesville on June 25^th.

Sign up here: https://www.facebook.com/events/170687569764624

WHAT: Gold Star Mother and "peace mom" Cindy Sheehan will lead a Tour de Peace bike ride across the United States from the grave of her son Casey in Vacaville, Calif., to Washington, D.C., following the mother road, historic Route 66 to Chicago, and other roads from there on to D.C. Bicyclers will join in for all or part of the tour, which will include public events organized by local groups along the way.
Complete route: http://tourdepeace.org/the-route.html

WHEN: The tour began on April 4, 2013, nine years after Casey Sheehan was killed in Iraq, and 45 years after Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was killed in Memphis. It will conclude on July 3, 2013, with a ride from Arlington National Cemetery to the White House.

WHY: This August will mark 8 years since Cindy Sheehan began a widely reported protest at then-President George W. Bush's "ranch" in Crawford, Texas, demanding to know what the "noble cause" was for which Bush claimed Americans were dying in Iraq. Neither Bush nor President Obama has yet offered a justification for a global war now in its 12^th year. The Tour de Peace will carry with it these demands:

To end wars,
To end immunity for U.S. war crimes,
To end suppression of our civil rights,
To end the use of fossil fuels,
To end persecution of whistleblowers,
To end partisan apathy and inaction.

Watch the trailer: http://youtu.be/2uBctq4dzss

Login or register to post comments
Read more

Occupy Gezi Through Eyes of OWS

BY CARL GIBSON
http://www.occupy.com/article/occupy-gezi-through-eyes-occupy-wall-street-organizer

As the Occupy Gezi movement picks up steam In Turkey, mothers of protesters have formed a human chain around the protests blocking police from attacking their sons and daughters. Justin Wedes, one of the earliest organizers and participants of Occupy Wall Street at Zuccotti Park, was in Istanbul last week taking part in the protests. Justin is an administrator of the @OccupyWallStNYC twitter account and was one of the first activists arrested by the NYPD at the Liberty Square occupation in 2011. I spoke with him about his experience in Istanbul.

CARL GIBSON: So what was the scene when you got off the plane and left the airport? Describe what you saw when you made it to the square.

JUSTIN WEDES: When I got to downtown Istanbul, the police were retreating from Gezi Park. They had been attacking the protesters for 2 or 3 days with tear gas and water cannons, but the protesters held fast. As police were leaving, the park and the square were being flooded with more people. The park itself was very festive and joyous after the police left. It was hard to tell who was partying and who was protesting. It was a beautiful, autonomous zone.

CG: I’ve heard some people say that this is more similar to Tahrir Square than it is to Zuccotti Park. Having been one of the original members of Occupy Wall Street from day one, what’s your response to that?

Login or register to post comments
Read more

Hassan Rohani: Iran's President-Elect

Hassan Rohani: Iran's President-Elect

by Stephen Lendman

It's official. Iran's Interior Minister Mostafa Mohammad-Najjar announced it. Rohani won 50.7% of 36.7 million votes cast.

Six candidates competed. Principlist Mohammad-Baqer Qalibaf finished second. He received one-third of Rohani's total.

Netanyahu Falsely Says Iran Plans Another Holocaust

Netanyahu Falsely Says Iran Plans Another Holocaust

by Stephen Lendman

He said it before Iran's June 14 election. He hasn't changed his mind. More on that below.

Netanyahu reflects Israeli fascism. He's hardline, unstable, unscrupulous and dangerous. He prioritizes conflict and instability.

A Cure for War – With Limitations.

by Erin Niemela

Earlier this week I wrote an editorial proposing a 28th constitutional amendment to abolish war. The NSA scandal, I argue, is tied to the more pervasive problem of violent foreign (and domestic) policy, and we’ll continue to see government abuses so long as war and inter-state military violence are the acceptable choices for conflict management. David Swanson, author of the brilliant history, “When the World Outlawed War,” thoughtfully responded to my plea by urging us to recall and reignite the Kellogg-Briand Pact of 1928, an existing international pact renouncing war signed and ratified by the US president and Senate.

I agree with Mr. Swanson that any efforts to end war should point to existing law, and we agree that abolishing war is possible and necessary. However, the Kellogg-Briand Pact is not without its limitations, and a fresh, people-driven constitutional amendment could both address those limitations and offer current, culturally relevant and legally dispositive reinforcement.

Just wondering... Is Naomi Wolf Working for the NSA?

By Dave Lindorff

I hate to do this, but I feel obligated to share, as the story unfolds, my creeping concern that the writer Naomi Wolf is not whom she purports to be, and that her motive in writing an article on her public Facebook page speculating about whether National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden might actually be still working for the NSA, could be to support the government’s effort to destroy him.

The Colin Powell Monument in NY

Login or register to post comments

The Chemical Weapons Hoax

The Chemical Weapons Hoax

by Stephen Lendman

Greater US intervention in Syria looms. Manufactured threats facilitate doing so. Replacing Assad with puppet leadership is planned. Independent governments aren't tolerated. More on that below.

Fact: Washington bears full responsibility for Middle East/North Africa/Central Asian wars. Resource control is prioritized. So is imperial dominance to Russian and Chinese borders.

One-Sided Anti-Syrian Human Rights Council Resolution

One-Sided Anti-Syrian Human Rights Council Resolution

by Stephen Lendman

HRC mocks human rights, It systematically spurns them. It's a de facto US imperial tool. It defiles its own mandate. It does so lawlessly. It does it unapologetically.

HRC was established to strengthen "the promotion and protection of human rights around the globe and for addressing situations of human rights violations and make recommendations on them."

Syria News June 16

Russia questions Syrian chemical weapons evidence as it doesn't meet criteria for reliability, says Assad has no need to use them - Yahoo! News

Chemical weapons experts still skeptical about U.S. claim that Syria used sarin - McClatchy

U.S. missiles, jets to stay in Jordan as Syria crisis rages - Yahoo! News

The Syrian War: Israel and U.S. Coordinating How to Target Assad’s Arsenal - TIME.com

Kerry: Syria's use of chemical weapons jeopardizes political solution - Haaretz Daily Newspaper

G8 Summit: David Cameron pushes for no-fly zone over Syria - The Independent

Mursi cuts Egypt's Syria ties, backs no-fly zone - Yahoo! News

Russia says illegal to impose Syria no-fly zone from Jordan - Yahoo! News

VIDEO: Zbigniew Brzezinski on Syria: US is engaging in "mass propaganda", "Who's fighting for democracy?" - YouTube

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Syrian rebel commander urges West to provide heavy weapons and a no-fly zone, says he could defeat Assad's army within six months - chicagotribune.com

Getting U.S. weapons to Syria rebels will take weeks - latimes.com

Syrian troops capture Damascus suburb near airport, days after attack on the facility - Fox News

Al-Qaeda in Iraq rejects Zawahiri ruling on Nusra - AFP

Nusra Militants Kill Young Man Accused of Theft by Amputating Hand, Foot in Syria's Aleppo - abna.ir

Moscow blasts UNHRC's 'Hezbollah-focused' resolution on Syria - RT Russian politics

Russia says 50 groups in U.S. raise funds for North Caucasus extremists, Some of them are in Syria - Money Jihad

Russian Laurov stresses Syria Kurds should attend in Geneva 2 - Kurdpress News Aganecy

VIDEO: Kurdish YPG forces in Afrin against the FSA - LiveLeak.com

-------------------------------------------------------------------

Saudi Arabia funding fuels jihadist terror, Oil earnings spent on spreading a violent and intolerant variety of Islam - Vancouver Sun thru Money Jihad

Qatar: State Sponsor of International Terrorism - Oriental Review thru Money Jihad

Saudi Arabian Shares Drop Most in Two Years on Syria Escalation - Bloomberg

Saudi king flies home early as Syria war intensifies - zeenews

Moderate cleric Rowhani declared new Iran president, says "This is a victory of intelligence, of moderation, of progress... over extremism" - AFP

Turkish riot police storm Istanbul park to end protests after Erdogan ultimatum - Reuters

Mother of Turkish protester killed in Ankara: 'Erdogan must resign' - Telegraph

To contact Bartolo email peaceloversingle@gmail.com

bartolo's blog
Login or register to post comments
Read more

Sister of 911 Victim Goes to Yemen to Oppose the Creation of More Victims

By Terry Rockefeller

I am in Yemen with the Codepink delegation. Here are some reactions:

A 9/11 Family Member Meets the Families of Yemeni Guantanamo Detainees

“You don’t solve mistakes, with more mistakes! As a government, the U.S. must follow the law. Be legal!” pleads the brother-in-law of Hayeel Aziz Al-Mithali.

Hayeel went from Yemen to Pakistan when he was 17 to study the Qu’ran. Captured following the 9/11 attacks, Hayeel has spent the last 12 years in Guantanamo. The U.S. had made no charges against him, yet Hayeel still faces indefinite detention. And so he has joined the hunger strike.

Login or register to post comments
Read more

Obama Ups the Stake in Syria

Obama Ups the Stakes in Syria

by Stephen Lendman

Obama lied. He's a serial liar. He claims Syria used chemical weapons. His so-called red line was crossed. No verifiable evidence provides proof. Clear facts prove he lied.

Syria's Foreign Ministry called Obama's accusations "a caravan of lies" and "fabrications."

NSA Chief Lies to Congress

NSA Chief Lies to Congress

by Stephen Lendman

General Keith Alexander is NSA director. He's US Cyber Command head. He's in charge of lawlessly spying. He directs illegal hacking.

He does both globally. He's a serial lawbreaker. He violates fundamental constitutional law. He testified before Congress. More on that below.

The Pope and the Kill List

In 1984 -- the year not the book, but it was fitting -- and five years before she died, Barbara Tuchman published a book called The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam. In one part of the book she looked at the destructive work of a series of a half-dozen popes, work destructive of the papacy, work that brought into being the protestant secession from the Catholic church. This was offered as an example of folly, of rulers acting against the interest of their own institution. It was also an example of what we so casually label "the imperial presidency." That is, in these popes we watched the mad and cumulative concentration of power and normalization of abuses that Tuchman almost certainly was aware she was living through again -- along with the debasement of an institution previously imagined to embody certain principles and integrity.

Does history repeat itself?

Is the Pope Catholic?

Sixtus IV, Pope from 1471 to 1484 / Richard Nixon, President 1969-1974

"Sixtus introduced the period of unabashed, unconcealed, relentless pursuit of personal gain and power politics. . . . Antagonism slowly gathered around Sixtus. . . . [H]e exhibited the worst qualities of the Renaissance prince in his feuds and machinations, conducting wars on Venice and Ferrara. . . . The most scandalous of his dealings was involvement in and possible instigation of the Pazzi plot to murder the Medici brothers. . . . The internal health of the Church did not interest Sixtus."

Innocent VII, Pope from 1484 to 1492 / Jimmy Carter, President 1977-1981

"Amiable, indecisive, subject to stronger-minded associates, Sixtus' successor was a contrast to him in every way except in equally damaging the pontificate, in this case by omission and weakness of character."

Alexander VI, Pope from 1492 to 1503 / Ronald Reagan, President 1981-1989

"[T]hough cultivated and even charming, he was thoroughly cynical and utterly amoral. . . . To celebrate the final expulsion of the Moors from Spain, in 1492, the year of his election, he staged not a Te Deum of thanksgiving but a bullfight in the Piazza of St. Peter's with five bulls killed. . . . So many had been Alexander's offenses that his contemporaries' judgments tend to be extreme, but Burchard, his Master of Ceremonies, was neither antagonist nor apologist. The impression from his toneless diary of Alexander's Papacy is of continuous violence, murders in churches, bodies in the Tiber, fighting of factions, burnings and lootings, arrests, tortures and executions, combined with scandal, frivolities and continuous ceremony. . . . Certain revisionists have taken a fancy to the Borgia Pope and worked hard to rehabilitate him by intricate arguments . . . . The revision fails to account for one thing: the hatred, disgust and fear that Alexander had engendered."

Pius III, Pope from 1503 to 1503 / Bush Sr, President 1989-1993

He also happened.

Julius II, Pope from 1503 to 1513 / Bill Clinton, President 1993-2001

"Years of belligerence, conquests, losses, and violent disputes engaged him. . . . Art and war absorbed papal interest and resources to the neglect of internal reform. . . . In reference books he can be found designated as 'true founder of the Papal State'. . . . That the cost had been to bathe his country in blood and violence and that all the temporal gains could not prevent the authority of the Church from cracking at the core within ten years are not reckoned in these estimates."

Leo X, Pope from 1513 to 1521 / George W. Bush, President 2001-2009

"'God has given us the Papacy -- Let us enjoy it.' . . . the new Pope was a hedonist . . . with as little concern for cost as if the source of funds were some self-filling magic cornucopia. The popes' wars also earned Erasmus' scorn . . . . 'As if the Church had any enemies more pestilential than impious pontiffs. . . . The monarchy of the Pope at Rome, as it is now, is a pestilence to Christendom.' . . . Machiavelli found proof of decadence in the fact that 'the nearer people are to the Church of Rome, which is the head of our religion, the less religious they are.' . . . The abuse that precipitated the ultimate break was the commercialization of indulgences. . . . [T]he Pope was unaware of the issues and incapable of understanding the protest that had been developing for the century and a half. . . . Leo hardly noticed the fracas in Germany except as a heresy to be suppressed like any other. . . . Leo left the Papacy and the Church in the 'lowest possible repute.' . . . . A lampoon suggested that if the Pope had lived longer, he would have sold Rome too, and then Christ, and then himself."

Clement VII, Pope from 1523 to 1534 / Barack Obama, President since 2009

"The new Clement's reign proved to be a pyramid of catastrophes. Protestantism continued its advance. . . . Supreme office, like sudden disaster, often reveals the man, and revealed Clement as less adequate than expected. Knowledgeable and effective as a subordinate, Guicciardini writes, he fell victim when in charge to timidity, perplexity, and habitual irresolution. . . . By 1527, hardly a part of Italy had escaped violence to life and land, plunder, destruction, misery, and famines. Clement's misjudgments having prepared the way, Rome itself was now to be engulfed by war."

"The folly of the popes was not pursuit of counter-productive policy so much as rejection of any steady or coherent policy either political or religious that would have improved their situation or arrested the rising discontent. Disregard of the movements and sentiments developing around them was the primary folly. . . . When private interest is placed before public interests, and private ambition, greed, and the bewitchment of exercising power determine policy, the public interest necessarily loses, never more conspicuously than under the continuing madness from Sixtus to Clement. The succession from Pope to Pope multiplied the harm. Each of the six handed on his conception of the Papacy unchanged. . . . St. Peter's See was the ultimate pork barrel. Their three outstanding attitudes -- obliviousness to the growing disaffection of constituents, primacy of self-aggrandizement, illusion of invulnerable status -- are persistent aspects of folly. While in the case of the Renaissance popes, these were bred in and exaggerated by the surrounding culture, all are independent of time and recurrent in governorship."