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Political Grinches Stealing Christmas From Palestinian and Syrian Refugees
Franklin P. Lamb
Church of Notre Dame, Damascus.
Church officials in Damascus advanced the hour of last night’s traditional Christmas Eve midnight service to 6 pm because few Damascenes’ venture out past sunset these days. The reasons include ubiquitous checkpoints, security fears and the fact that there are few taxis and no buses around. Plus most shops and cafes close early and the thuds and whining of artillery and bomb blasts from this ancient city’s suburbs tend to sound more menacing at night.
But that does not mean that Notre Dame and other churches in Damascus were not over-flowing with Christians and Muslims for Christmas Eve service, which has become an ecumenical event in this secular country where Syrian and Palestinian refugees of both faiths attended from Yarmouk camp and elsewhere. One Palestinian friend, who had been turned away at the Lebanese border at Maznaa just three days earlier, explained that his family was celebrating ” both the birth of Jesus Christ and the birth of the state of Palestine” referencing last month’s 130 to 8 UN General Assembly vote.
Four More Years of War
by Stephen Lendman
Expect Obama to prioritize advancing America's imperium. He did aggressive in term one. New wars are planned. Current ones won't end. Proxy ones continue. So does increasing America's global military footprint.
Fiscal cliff hype is about greater force-fed austerity to free up more funds for America's war machine. Waging them isn't cheap. Profiteers depend on wasteful spending to boost bottom line performance.
It pays to have friends in high places. They assure all the billions wanted. Social America is being sacrificed to provide them.
The Religious and Social Crises and Political Consequences
James Petras
Introduction
The opening long decade of the 21st century (2000-2012) has been a period of repeated and profound economic and social crises, of serial and prolonged wars and declining living standards for the vast majority of Americans. How have people responded to this crisis? No large scale, long term, socio-political movements have emerged to challenge the bi-partisan dominent classes. For a brief moment the “Occupy Wall Street” movement provided a platform to denounce the 1% super-rich but then faded into memory.
Questions arose whether in the midst of prolonged hardship people would turn to religion for solace, escape into spiritual pietism. The question this essay addresses is whether religion has become the ‘opium of the people’ as Karl Marx suggested or whether religious beliefs and institutions are themselves in crisis, losing their spiritual attraction in the face of their inability to resolve the everyday material needs of a growing army of impoverished, low paid, unemployed and contingent workers and a downwardly mobile middle class. In other words are major religions growing and prospering in our time of permanent economic crise and perpetual wars or are they on the downslope part and parcel of the decline of the US Empire?
Drone missiles, guns, and mass murder—American style
By Larry Pinkney
“There s no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people.”—Howard Zinn
The horrific December 14, 2012, massacre of innocent victims in Newtown, Connecticut, now joins a litany of horrible massacres—including the Columbine massacre (Colorado) on April 20, 1999, the Virginia Tech massacre (Virginia) on April 16, 2007, the Geneva County massacre (Alabama) on March 10, 2009, the Fort Hood massacre (Texas) on November 5, 2009, and the Aurora massacre (Colorado) on July 20, 2012. In other words, in the past twelve years there have been at least six very publicized massacres in this nation, four of which have occurred since the year 2009 alone.
Why is massive violence increasingly so prevalent within this nation, and does it have a connection to the sustained and enormous violence carried out by the U.S. government against ordinary people and sovereign countries in other parts of the world?
There is indeed a connection—a very real and dangerous connection.
Institutionalizing Indefinite Detention
by Stephen Lendman
Since taking office, Obama authorized numerous police state measures. They follow earlier ones under George Bush. They're heading America for full-blown tyranny. It's already a hair's breadth away. It could arrive any time full force. It's been wrapped in the American flag all along. Most people don't know how seriously their rights are compromised. Thousands of political prisoners in America's gulag hell testify about police state harshness. Much worse ahead looms.
On March 7, 2011, Obama's Executive Order 13567 authorized indefinite detentions and military commission trials. Doing so violated America's Fifth Amendment. It states:
"No person….shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law…."
Operation Rampage Killing
By Melanie Lamport
ABC News, December 14, 2012 Connecticut gun rampage: 28 dead, including 20 schoolchildren.
An emotional President Obama said the nation has "endured too many of these tragedies in the past few years and we're going to have to come together and take meaningful action to prevent more tragedies like this, regardless of the politics."
As a country, we have been through this too many times. Whether it's an elementary school in Newtown, or a shopping mall in Oregon, or a temple in Wisconsin, or a movie theater in Aurora or a street corner in Chicago -- these neighborhoods are our neighborhoods, and these children are our children.
Obama did not mention the rampage killing in the Arizona Safeway parking lot last year.
Operation Safe - Way
November 7, 2012. The man who killed six people and wounded 13 others in the Gabriel Gifford’s Arizona shooting rampage was sentenced to seven consecutive life terms, followed by 140 years in prison.
The official story of Jared Lee Loughner’s killing rampage last year is so unbelievable that you have to wonder if it was an Alien Entertainment production about the most unrealistic assassination that humans on Earth would believe.
Think about it. Was Loughner insane when he went on a suicide mission at Gabby’s Meet and Greet, or was he sane when he told a judge he would rather spend 140 years in prison than take the chance a jury would find him not guilty, by reason of insanity?
The Loughner/Giffords debacle was either "Operation Safeway," a full scale Department of Homeland Security planned drill, a staged MK-Ultra “false-flag” event, or the latest episode of Assassination TV for aliens living on the planet Mars.
Syrian rebels threaten Christian towns
Rebels have threatened to storm two predominantly Christian towns in central Syria, saying regime forces are using them to attack nearby areas, an activist group said Saturday. It says such an attack could force thousands of Christians from their homes. (Image: White House Web Page, headlines added)
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported that one rebel group has issued an ultimatum to the towns of Mahrada and Sqailbiyeh in the province of Hama.
Rami Abdul-Rahman, who heads the Observatory, said some Christians and Alawis have also left Hama province in the past several days to escape violence. He said some of them found shelter in the coastal city of Tartus.
BDS Breakthrough
by Stephen Lendman
The Global BDS (Boycott/Divestment/Sanctions) movement is one of the most important initiatives challenging Israeli lawlessness, occupation harshness, apartheid, and viciousness. In July 2005, a coalition of 171 Palestinian Civil Society organizations created it to continue until Israel complies with international law and universal human rights principles. At issue is long denied justice for occupied Palestinians, Israeli Arabs, and Palestinian diaspora refugees. Important victories came earlier.
On December 20, a historic one occurred. The ruling South African National Congress (ANC) voted to support BDS. It's "unapologetic in its view that the Palestinians are the victims and the oppressed in the conflict with Israel."
The Climate Deal Sham: Only Sharing can Break the Deadlock
by Adam Parsons
The recent climate talks in Doha were held as if in an alternative reality to distressing developments across the world. But there still remains hope and optimism because there is no possibility of preventing runaway climate change without global sharing and justice.
17th December 2012 - Published by Share The World's Resources
The latest round of climate negotiations in Doha once again demonstrated the sheer lack of cooperation, goodwill and willingness - or ability - of the world's governments to share responsibility for tackling climate change. Since the epochal failure to reach a global deal at Copenhagen in 2009, less and less attention is paid by the media and the general public to these byzantine and shadowy UN climate talks. After three years of further wrangling by governments with little to show, it required serious scrutiny from ordinary citizens to determine what was actually being agreed upon at COP18. Was it merely an agreement to make an agreement in 2015? An agreement based on emissions cuts and pledges for funding that will remain inadequate and far too late to deal with the climate chaos that is already upon us? And one that won't come into effect, in any case, until 2020?
Obama/Boehner Two-Step
by Stephen Lendman
Previous articles explained fiscal cliff duplicity in detail. At issue is destroying America's social contract. Both parties agreed early in Obama's first term. They plan killing it incrementally by a 1,000 cuts.
Class war rages. Private wealth and power are pitted against essential public needs. Property rights, individualism, and free-market mumbo jumbo hammer ordinary people mercilessly. Neoliberal harshness reflects it.
Warren Buffet once said, "There's class warfare, all right, but it's my class, the rich class, that's winning."
Obama, Boehner and complicit congressional leaders agree. Plans are to give corporations and America's privileged class more. Unprecedented wealth extremes will widen.
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