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Liberal Luminaries in Senate Are Swing Votes on Bombing Syria

Many senators began this week still uncommitted on whether they’ll vote for attacking Syria. Among the fence-sitters are enough “progressives” to swing the Senate’s decision one way or the other.

That decision is coming soon -- maybe as early as Wednesday -- and the Obama White House is now pulling out all the stops to counter public opinion, which remains overwhelmingly against a war resolution. The administration hopes to win big in the Senate and carry momentum into the House, where the bomb-Syria agenda faces a steeper climb.

Some Democratic senators who’ve cultivated progressive reputations nationwide -- Barbara Boxer of California, Dick Durbin of Illinois and Al Franken of Minnesota -- haven’t hesitated to dive into Obama’s war tank. Boxer, Durbin and Franken quickly signed on as carnage bottom-feeders, pledging their adamant support for the U.S. government to attack yet another country.

Other Democrats, like Chris Murphy of Connecticut and Tom Udall of New Mexico, have made clear their intention to vote “no” when the war-on-Syria measure reaches the Senate floor.

Zombies, vampires and rage in post-apocalyptic America

Having taught Popular Culture for more than 20 years, one of the more frequently asked questions is “Why are Americans obsessed with zombies, vampires and other post-apocalyptic creatures?”

While there’s no one answer, I believe the best explanation is that these evil beings are a metaphor for corporate America. Remember the words uttered in George C. Romero’s legendary Dawn of the Dead (1978): “When there’s no more room in hell, the dead shall walk the Earth.”

We live in a society that has given similar rights to “natural born citizens” and unnatural entities through so-called “corporate personhood.”

The concept of corporate personhood evolved from corporations having the ability to engage in certain legal actions, such as entering into contracts, suing or being sued – into much more dangerous territory. Our tale of horror begins in the bizarre 1886 case of Santa Clara County vs. Southern Pacific Railroad, one of the key early cases in establishing the concept of corporate personhood that gave rights to soulless, legal fictions.

Syria is an epic victory for the SuperPower of Peace

The United States is not now bombing Syria.

Let’s savor that again: for the moment at least, the United States is not now bombing Syria.

That alone qualifies as an epic, unprecedented victory for the SuperPower of Peace, the global movement to end war, win social justice and somehow salvage our ecological survival.

Will it mark a permanent turning point?

That a treaty has been signed to rid the Assad regime of its chemical weapons is icing on the cake, however thin it proves to be. We don’t know if it will work. We don’t know if the restraint from bombing will hold.

But in a world that bristles with atomic weapons, where the rich get ever richer at the expense of the rest of us, and where stricken Japanese reactors along with 400 more worldwide threaten the survival of our global ecology, we must count any victory for peace---even if potentially fleeting---as a huge one. Let’s do some history.

Communists & Catholics clash in Vietnam

BANGKOK, Thailand -- Communist Vietnam's police clashed with hundreds of Catholics who were demanding two parishioners be released from prison, resulting in what was described as "one of the bloodiest religious crackdowns in recent years."

Government-controlled "television reported that about 300 people mobbed the Nghi Phuong village people's committee building," near Vinh city in Nghe An province on September 4, according to Washington-based, U.S. federally-funded Radio Free Asia (RFA).

http://www.rfa.org/english/news/vietnam/church-09042013193713.html

Protesters "attacking" police with stones, injured one police officer and provoked the crackdown, Nghe An TV reported.

Police also fired into the air to disperse the crowd.

"They [police] fired 15 shots in front of the My Yen church. They beat some parishioners with electric batons," one protester told RFA's Vietnamese Service.

"Some parishioners had to be hospitalized. They also arrested nine to 10 people."

Having it both ways

As the crisis in Syria continues to evolve day by day according to the whims of foreign diplomats and leaders, President Obama’s foreign policy has been under special scrutiny. Concerning the Syrian dilemma, Barack Obama has relayed a message to the American people and the global community at large that is rife with confusion and contradiction. But, amidst that confusion rests one coherent signal: the President is insisting on having it both ways in Syria.

Despite the jeering and deriding that now accompanies any mention of the name George W. Bush, the fact remains that the former president had a sound, singular, stated foreign policy. Whether one agrees or disagrees with Mr. Bush, it is indisputable that his rhetoric of aggressive, preemptive action matched his operations as commander-in-chief. When President Bush delivered his remarks that portrayed the Saddam Hussein regime as one unable to coexist with the United States, Mr. Bush carried out those words with the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Like it or not, his words matched his actions.

The Institute for Policy Studies mourns the loss of filmmaker and author Saul Landau

In his more than 40 years at the Institute for Policy Studies, Saul Landau produced more than 40 films and TV programs, 14 books, and thousands of newspaper and magazine articles and reviews. Among his numerous accolades, Saul received an Emmy and a George Polk Award for “Paul Jacobs and the Nuclear Gang,” a film he directed with Jack Willis about the cover-up of health hazards related to 1950s atomic bomb testing.

Beyond his extensive body of work, Saul will be remembered for his steely nerve and caustic wit. “He stood up to dictators, right-wing Cuban assassins, pompous politicians, and critics from both the left and the right,” said IPS Director John Cavanagh. “When he believed in something, nobody could make him back down. Those who tried would typically find themselves on the receiving end of a withering but humorous insult.”

A serious question for Democrats on Syria

The fake cowboy and the fake liberal are real buddiesLeaders of the Democratic Party and their media side kicks are giving President Barack Obama a free ride on his proposal to attack Syria. Along with the Republican leadership, they’re ignoring the strong opposition to any attack by citizens in both parties and independents.

The president’s proposed military strike targets a government that has neither attacked nor threatened to attack us or our allies. Obama did so without any intent to get congressional approval and before any evidence was made public. He and the Secretary of State announced the attack without regard to clear international law which bars the unprovoked attacks on sovereign nations.

We are told, Trust me. I’ve made the decision.

Does this remind you of anyone? The president is Barack Obama but the words sound just like those of former President George W. Bush before the 2003 Iraq invasion.

The Repetition Compulsion for War -- and How It Might Fail This Time

No matter how many times we’ve seen it before, the frenzy for launching a military attack on another country is -- to the extent we’re not numb -- profoundly upsetting. Tanked up with talking points in Washington, top officials drive policy while intoxicated with what Martin Luther King Jr. called “the madness of militarism,” and most media coverage becomes similarly unhinged. That’s where we are now.

But new variables have opened up possibilities for disrupting the repetitive plunge to war. Syria is in the crosshairs of U.S. firepower, but cracks in the political machinery of the warfare state are widening here at home. For advocates of militarism and empire by any other name, the specter of democratic constraint looms as an ominous threat.

Into the Capitol Hill arena, the Obama White House sent Secretary of State John Kerry to speak in a best-and-brightest dialect of neocon tongues. The congressional hierarchies of both parties -- Nancy Pelosi, Steny Hoyer, John Boehner, Eric Cantor -- are on the same page for an attack on Syria. And meanwhile, the U.S. mass media have been cranking up the usual adrenalin-pumped hype for war.

Assad must go: A push from the Left

Facing a war weary public at home and an irresolute international community, President Obama has decided to take his case for action against Bashar al-Assad to Congress. In an ironic turn of events, the do-nothing Congress had a momentous decision at its doorstep that will impact countless lives in Syria and the region.

For more than two years President Assad of Syria has led the slaughter of his own population without remorse. Approximately 100,000 people have been killed by the regime and over one million children alone have been forced to flee the state. These numbers by themselves are staggering and deserve due attention. When a leader of any state commits these kinds of atrocities against his own people it becomes a moral imperative to intervene. Further, this imperative should strike us at our core not as merely citizens of America, but as members of the human race.

This war too is a lie

Some smart people thought, and perhaps some still think, that the 2003-2011 war on Iraq was unique in that it was promoted with the use of blatant lies. When I'd researched dozens of other wars and failed to find one that wasn't based on a foundation of similar lies, I wrote a book about the most common war lie varieties. I called it War Is A Lie.

That book has sold more than any of my others, and I like to think it's contributed some teeny bit to the remarkable and very welcome skepticism that is greeting the U.S. government's current claims about Syria. The fact is that, were the White House telling the truth about the need for an attack on Syria, it would be a first in history. Every other case for war has always been dishonest.

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