Only when Mark Carney, Christine Lagarde and Prince Charles start talking about the abolition of privately created debt-based money should we even begin to take them seriously. Of course such an affront to the obscenely wealthy would have seen even Prince Charles ejected from the Mansion House soiree.
The Presidential Election in Syria takes place next Tuesday, June 3. With a revised 2012 Constitution, Syria is no longer a one party state and there are multiple candidates for office. Running against Bashar al Asad are former communist and legislator Maher al Hajjar and business person Hassan al Nouri.
When Americans forget the stark realities of war, we do a disservice to our veterans, as well as victims whose lives were lost in U.S. military campaigns.
On Memorial Day we are called upon to remember those who died fighting America’s wars. But we are also asked to forget. We applaud politely as veterans march in parades. Ribbons and medals, flags and fancy uniforms flood our senses, and everyone is content with the atmosphere of honor, pride, and patriotism.
And, here’s the corker: No one gives a rip. Face it: No one gives a flying fuck about Iraq. The American people lost interest long ago, the politicians can’t be bothered, and the UN is too afraid of the US to lift a finger to help. They’d rather stamp their feet and scold Putin over Crimea than utter a peep about the genocide in Iraq. That’s the state of things today, right? No accountability for the men who started the war, and no justice for the victims.
A million people were killed so a few rich fuckers could get even richer. That’s a hell of a legacy.
US armed forces are now involved in 49 out of 54 African states, along with the former colonial powers of France and Britain, in what’s becoming a new carve-up of the continent: a scramble for resources and influence in the face of China’s growing economic role, underpinned with an escalating military presence that spreads terror as it grows. That will bring its own backlash, as did the war in Libya.
Gaddafi did not order the shooting that started the false revolution in Libya. Now after the destruction of Libya, Jalil admits to the world on Libyan Channel One that the protestors that were killed in Benghazi that caused the UN and NATO to attack Libya were killed by a group of spies and mercenaries who were not Libyan. He admits that he knew the truth at the time but it was done to take down the Libyan government and break the state. He admits that he was briefed in advance that this was going to happen and that the people of Libya did not recognize the dead protestors because they wore civilian clothes and there was no one who came to their funerals as they had no relatives or friends in Libya.
Just because Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch don’t recognize the U.N. Charter or the Kellogg Briand Pact is not a reason for us not to. Laws don’t work that way. Laws remain law until they are repealed. These laws have not been. If a memo can make a murder part of a war and therefore legal, we are obliged to ask: What makes the war legal?
In the 21st century Americans’ worst enemies are not al Qaeda, Iran, Russia, and China. America’s worst enemies are our own presidents who have declared repeatedly that the orchestrated “war on terror” gives them the right to set aside the civil liberties guaranteed to every citizen by the US Constitution. Presidential disrespect for the US Constitution is so extreme that Obama has nominated David Barron to the US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit. Barron is the Justice (sic) Department official who wrote the memos fabricating a legal justification for the Office of President to murder US citizens without due process of law.
Mujica has refused to live at the Presidential Palace or have a motorcade. He lives in a one-bedroom house on his wife’s farm and drives a 1987 Volkswagen. “There have been years when I would have been happy just to have a mattress,” said Mujica, referring to his time in prison. He donates over 90 percent of his $12,000/month salary to charity so he makes the same as the average citizen in Uruguay. When called “the poorest president in the world,” Mujica says he is not poor. “A poor person is not someone who has little but one who needs infinitely more, and more and more. I don’t live in poverty, I live in simplicity. There’s very little that I need to live.”
In short, to be a successful corporate journalist with high public visibility, two of the most important attributes are to direct one’s scepticism in the required direction – towards state ‘enemies’ – and to overlook or play down Western crimes. But perhaps the most important asset is the ability to believe sincerely in the essential ideological framework that drives Western government policies and public pronouncements: that ‘we’ are committed to making the world a better place.
The liberation of Homs, the third largest city of the Syrian Arab Republic, is not just an event among others in the war waged by NATO and the GCC on Syria. For Thierry Meyssan, the agreement reached between the Republic and its attackers suggests a quick exit from the war. It will probably be accompanied by a redistribution of regional roles.
This is a common and disastrous theme in contemporary society. As long as we are willing to perceive, or deem ourselves responsible for, only one small part of our world, the suffering of the world as a whole can be overlooked, or declared beyond our job spec: ‘I’m an oil executive, it’s not my job to protect the climate.’ ‘I’m an arms manufacturer, it’s not my job to prevent people killing each other.’ ‘I’m a science writer, it’s not my job to comment on my government’s war crimes.’
