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On the U.S. Killing of Two Children in Syria


The U.S. military admitted on Thursday to killing two girls in Syria.

If a target of U.S. aggression can be alleged to have killed children, especially with the wrong kind of weapon, that is used as grounds for war. War is supposed to be the cure for that.

This was the case in 2013 with the White House's false claims to knowledge that the Syrian government had killed children with chemical weapons. President Obama told us to watch videos of dead children and either support a bombing campaign against Syria or support killing children.

But that's a Catch-22, because it's telling you to either support killing children or support killing children.

Being Pro-Voice

The abortion debates is the last place I would have looked for inspiration in methods of handling the major political and social problems of the world. Politically I've always thought of abortion -- the topic of abortion, that is -- as part of a fraud. A so-called democracy is limited to two political parties, both of which serve corporate monopolies, both of which invest primarily in war preparations, both of which cavalierly sacrifice the future habitability of the planet as well as the immediate survival of numerous species, both of which advance income inequality, both of which strip away our civil liberties -- and yet, the two of which are depicted as diametrically opposed, supposedly offering us a world of difference at the polling place. And how is this done? Easy, one of them is pro- and the other anti- abortion! I can't count how many people have listed everything they oppose about a presidential candidate and then begged me to vote for that same candidate in order to determine the abortion issue in the U.S. Supreme Court.

Disney flick takes a slow, cryptic look into the future

Photo of woman from movie

If you watch the trailers for Tomorrowland—or if you just consider the fact that it’s a Disney film named after a Disney theme-park attraction—you have a pretty good idea what to expect: It’s going to offer an optimistic view of a future in which technology is used to cure the world’s ills.

Surprisingly, it’s not like that at all. Even more surprisingly, it might have been more satisfying if it had been.

There’s a part near the beginning when it briefly lives up to expectations. A young boy named Frank Walker (Thomas Robinson) visits the 1964 New York World’s Fair to show off the flawed jet pack he built from an old vacuum cleaner.

There he meets a girl named Athena (Raffey Cassidy) who gives him a strange pin that turns out to be the key to a magic kingdom of sorts. It allows him access to a hidden world filled with gleaming structures and giant robots. One of the robots even fixes his jet pack, allowing him to soar above the exotic landscape.

After seeing this glorious scene, you might be fooled into thinking this Disney-fied view of the future is what the story is about.

Nakba and the question of ‘Palestinian strategy’

"What is the Palestinian strategy?" is a question that I have been asked all too often, including on 15 May, the day that millions of Palestinians around the world commemorated the 67th anniversary of the Nakba, the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians by Zionist militias in 1947-48.

 

The question itself doesn’t require much elaboration, as in, "What is the Palestinian strategy to combat Israeli military occupation, siege violence, apartheid and racial discrimination?" The painful reality is well known to many, although few take on the moral responsibility to confront it.

 

And the posing of the question is telling in itself. It wouldn’t be asked if there was a strategy in place, being implemented, and regularly revisited and modified. The question is a testament to all the failures of past strategies, and the political disintegration of any credible Palestinian leadership, currently represented by Mahmoud Abbas and his circle of wealthy businessmen and "politicians".

 

Growing Number of Ohio Counties Asserting Right to Local Self-Government through County Charters

Last week, Portage and Fulton Counties joined Medina, Athens, and Meigs Counties to petition for County Charters through direct initiative. County residents are faced with shale gas drilling and fracking wastewater and liquid natural gas (LNG) pipelines, and are determined to protect themselves through a vote by the people for community rights to preserve clean air, water, and soil, and assert their right to local self-government. They join a growing movement across the state for community rights. Portage County residents have been alarmed for years at the volume of frack wastewater deposited into fourteen active injection wells, and learned more wells have been permitted. Athens and Meigs Counties also face unprecedented quantities of wastewater to be injected in their communities.

Waco Brawl

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