Today, Ireland is under a different sort of tyranny, one imposed by the banks and the troika—the EU, ECB and IMF. The oppressors have demanded austerity and more austerity, forcing the public to pick up the tab for bills incurred by profligate private bankers.
Palestine is an isolated prison. Besieged Gaza is the world’s largest open-air one. An entire population is being suffocated out of existence.
Since 1948, Palestinians endured virtually every form of indignity, degradation and crime against humanity. They face daily abuses too great to ignore.
Israeli viciousness is unrelenting. Its HRC presentation mocked reality. It made painful listening. In text form, it ran 25 pages. It includes one lie and distortion after another. It bears no relation to truth.
Prior to the current outbreak announced this week, affecting, so far, a reported twenty two children: “The last virologically-confirmed indigenous case was reported on 29 March 1995, although a virologically-confirmed case was also reported in November 1999. Genetic sequencing confirmed its relation to a virus strain circulating in India and it was considered an importation. No polio cases have been confirmed in the Syrian Arab Republic since then”, stated the WHO
Syria was simply dissimilar to all the other countries where the people had taken to streets to demand a regime change: Syria was not a U.S. puppet regime!
Egypt, Tunisia, Bahrain and Yemen where the core of the “Arab Spring” had taken shape and come to existence were all countries which were in some ways politically allied with the United States and ruled by quisling politicians ready to sacrifice the rights and interests of their own people at the expense of the satisfaction of their American lords.
While Saudi Arabia has adopted the Qatari plan to overthrow the Syrian secular regime, Riyadh seems unable to adapt to the sudden withdrawal of the U.S. Not only did the Saudis reject the Russian-American accord but they pursue the war and announce retaliation to “punish” the United States. For Thierry Meyssan, this stubborness is equivalent to collective suicide by the family of Saud.
Around 7,000 Venezuelan Twitter accounts were deleted yesterday, including those of an elected state governor, three cabinet ministers, a radio station, a revolutionary daily newspaper, and the official accounts of ministries and other institutions. They all appear to have been pro-government accounts, and none of them of the opposition.
The people of Syria are a diverse people, a courageous and generous people with a proud history of tolerance. Over many centuries, their country has welcomed millions of disparate people seeking refuge just as the United States has done.
I visited Syria in May 2013. Despite the on-going violence, I found it to be a land of hope. I met tribal and religious leaders, political dissidents and grieving parents and widows. In Syria, there are millions of ordinary folk risking their lives for a peaceful, reconciled and united Syria they can all love.
Keynesian stimulus policy works when the jobs from which people have been laid off still exist. By boosting aggregate demand for goods and services, the stimulus puts people back to work. But if the jobs have been moved offshore and the factories closed, the jobs no longer exist. No stimulus policy can put the unemployed into jobs that no longer exist.
“If the dollar does indeed lose its role as leading international currency, the cost to the United States would probably extend beyond the simple loss of seigniorage, narrowly defined. We would lose the privilege of playing banker to the world, accepting short-term deposits at low interest rates in return for long-term investments at high average rates of return. When combined with other political developments, it might even spell the end of economic and political hegemony.”
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. In Russell Brand’s case, of course, they paid to laugh. But the fighting has now begun in earnest.
Note that it hasn’t come primarily from the direction one might have expected. The ever-dignified Tory MP Michael Fabricant labels him a ‘twat’ (a badge of honour, surely?), but apart from that, politicians have been pretty quiet. It is mostly journalists, commentators and assorted pundits who really have the knives out for Brand.
Cheney was a “big supporter” of waterboarding and other unlawful interrogation techniques during his vice presidency, in which thousands of people were tortured, kidnapped and assasinated based on his instruction.
Last year, the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Tribunal convicted Cheney, as well as former U.S. President George W. Bush and six other Bush administration officials in absentia of war crimes including torture and cruelty.
Aung San Suu Kyi is the international face of Burma and a global icon of courage, endurance and moral authority. But as Guy Horton reports from Burma, she is now actively colluding with the Burmese military’s violent campaigns against minority ethnic and religious groups.
