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Is Jordan Switching Sides?
by Stephen Lendman
On Friday, Sputnik News, RT International, the Jordan Times and Reuters said Russian and Jordanian officials agreed to establish a “special working mechanism” to share information on counterterrorism operations in Syria.
“Under an agreement between His Majesty King Abdullah II and Russia’s President Vladimir Putin, the militaries of the two countries have agreed to coordinate their actions, including military aircraft missions over the Syrian territory,” Sergey Lavrov explained. He urged other nations to join their coalition against a common enemy.
Lavrov in Vienna
by Stephen Lendman
On Friday, Lavrov met with his US, Turkish and Saudi Arabian counterparts - mainly discussing ways to resolve Syria’s long-running conflict, waged by Washington for regime change, Obama fully responsible for genocidal slaughter and mass displacement.
Media reports falsely suggested the four ministers agreed on Assad’s resignation. “Rumors have begun to circulate that we are discussing or will be discussing that President Assad must go after some time. This is not true," Lavrov stressed.
“Of course, there will be speculation. (It) appeared before this meeting even took place. I heard that the rumors are being spread already that it has been agreed on in some place or another that in some period of time Assad will step down. This is not the case.”
Syrian War Pits Syria, Russia, Iran; versus U.S., Saudis, Qatar, Turkey, ISIS
Eric Zuesse
U.S. aim is a failed Syrian state, so Russia will lose an ally. Thus, on October 13th, Brandon Turbeville headlined, As Russia Bombs ISIS, US Bombs Syrian Civilian Power Stations.”" The U.S. aims to destroy Syria; Russia wants to salvage Syria. So: while Russia bombs ISIS and other jihadists, U.S. bombs Syria’s infrastructure. A nation without the infrastructure to hold it together is a failed state — America’s goal.
The U.S. doesn’t announce this as its goal. Instead, the U.S. says simply, that Syria’s President, Bashar al-“Assad must go,” or, “the time has come for President Assad to step aside” so that there will be “a new government, without Bashar Assad.” This is like George W. Bush’s constant demands for “regime change in Iraq.” Who gave the U.S. the right to replace nations’ leaders and still claim that doing this doesn’t constitute an international crime, of aggression, if not of aggressive invasion — the war-crime for which Nazis were hung at Nuremberg?
US Imperial Strategy in Disarray
by Stephen Lendman
Russia’s intervention changed the dynamic in Syria and the region with potential global implications. Washington is reeling, stumped about what to do next.
Kerry’s Friday power play meeting with his Russian, Turkish and Saudi counterparts in Vienna changed nothing. Nor will other discussions he plans. Russia and Washington agree to disagree. Putin’s arm won’t be twisted.
At Syria’s request, he’s waging real war on ISIS with devastating effectiveness - polar opposite Obama’s war on Syrian infrastructure targets, supporting ISIS and other terrorists, using them as regional foot soldiers with plans to employ them in Russia, Central Asia and China.
Police State Public Education in America
by Stephen Lendman
Democracy requires an educated citizenry. America's founders believed it was insurance against loss of liberty.
Jefferson said “(e)very government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves, therefore, are its only safe depositories. And to render them safe, their minds must be improved…”
Public education is vital because it serves the public interest - giving meaning to “we the people.” Father of American education Horace Mann called “(t)he common school...the greatest discovery ever made by man.” He meant public, not privatized, prioritizing profits over teaching. He believed all students should be educated equally and responsibly.
In America today, they’re intimidated, persecuted and controlled, not taught the way young people were when I grew up in inner city Boston from kindergarten in 1939 to my 1952 high school graduation.
Then college and graduate school when both were extremely affordable, extraordinarily cheap by today’s standards. America’s student loan racket didn’t exist - debt-entrapping millions of students repressively, some facing a lifetime of debt bondage.
Putin Straight Talk
by Stephen Lendman
He’s refreshingly forthright and straightforward - saying what he means and meaning what he says. Compare him with Obama:
● a serial liar with no credibility, disgracing the office he holds, heading a neocon-infested administration, waging war on humanity at home and abroad;
● a war criminal belonging in prison;
● nominally heading a police state apparatus, spying on everyone without just cause;
● operating the world’s largest gulag, a global enterprise filled with political prisoners;
serving monied interests exclusively at the expense of ordinary people, suffering from forced-fed austerity;
● systematically destroying America’s social contract; thirdworldizing the nation, leaving tens of millions impoverished, unemployed or underemployed, food insecure, with growing numbers homeless;
● responsible for making America the world’s leading pariah state, universally reviled for good reason.
On October 22, Putin addressed the Valdai International Discussion Club’s (VIC) 12th annual meeting. The conference’s theme was “Societies Between War and Peace: Overcoming the Logic of Conflict in Tomorrow’s World.” Experts from 30 countries participated from October 19 - 22.
State Terror or Capitalist Terror, Military Coup or Capitalist Coup
James Petras
Introduction
Democratic critics of military seizures of power commonly refer to them as military coups. They adopt a very narrow and misleading conception of what is taking place.
Likewise, human rights activists and progressive analysts who conceptualize the reign of violence which follows, a ‘coup’ as state terror fail to take account of the systemic forces – the capitalist social order and class relations – which determine the classes which wield state power. They ignore the specific classes and groups which are targeted and which classes direct and benefit from terror.
Israel Assaults, Kidnaps and Kills Palestinian Journalists
by Stephen Lendman
Israel wants information about its war on Palestine suppressed - terrorizing an entire population, new killings reported daily since October 1 alone, thousands wounded or otherwise harmed, hundreds kidnapped and imprisoned, brutalized in confinement - supported by Arab-hating propaganda.
The Jerusalem Post disgracefully claimed “(c)ontinued attacks leave Israelis fighting for their lives.” The Times of Israel headlined a Palestinian allegedly saying “I want to stab a Jew.”
Haaretz and other Israeli media feature daily claims about alleged, mostly fabricated, stabbings of Jews by Palestinians - at the same time virtually ignoring Netanyahu’s killing machine. Mass murder and extreme brutality against defenseless Arabs go unreported.
Israel’s Reign of Terror Continues Unabated
by Stephen Lendman
Three weeks of state-sponsored violence left 53 Palestinians murdered (including 11 children), over 2,000 injured by live fire, rubber-coated steel bullets or security force beatings, 5,500 needing treatment for toxic tear gas inhalation, and nearly 900 arrested.
Detainees undergo grueling interrogations, violent beatings and other forms of torture and abuse.
Numerous Palestinian homes are being violently entered daily pre-dawn - occupants terrorized, children traumatized, possessions ransacked, damaged and stolen, family members arrested on phony charges or none at all.
No Shame for U.S. 2003 Invasion of Iraq? The Meaning of This.
Eric Zuesse
Germany was ashamed of having invaded Poland under a false pretext, etc.; but the U.S. is not ashamed of having secretly overthrown Iran’s democracy in 1953 and of having installed dictatorship there; nor of having invaded Iraq and created Iraq’s civil war in 2003, etc. (there are many such examples). America’s failure to prosecute George W. Bush and Dick Cheney for the invasion of Iraq is the most stunning evasion of basic democratic accountability, and raises the question of whether all that’s necessary in order to be a ‘democratic’ dictator in the United States isto lie enough to fool enough people long enough, so as to be able to make it to one’s grave with no criminal record, even if one has, in fact, raped the country that one had led, not to mention destroyed the lives of victims of that country, such victims as the citizens of Iraq.
The soldiers in the American invasion of Iraq aren’t to blame for their invasion — they believed their leaders’ lies, just as did the rest of the U.S. population (and polls show that most Republicans in America still do — e.g., see this and this — they still believe the lies).
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