Mahler's Prodigal Son

In a wide-ranging interview on Democracy Now , Noam Chomsky covers 9/11, Syria, the Middle East and Israel.   Direct and to the point.... "If I could interrupt for a minute to ask you about your reflections on this anniversary of the September 11th, 2001, attacks here in the United States? Your reflections on this anniversary, and also how it relates to Syria and the Middle East, and what needs to be done now? NOAM CHOMSKY: I will respond to that, though I—my own view is that we should be concentrating on the first 9/11, the one in Chile, which was a much worse attack, by any dimension. But the one here was very significant. It was a major terrorist act, thousands of people killed. It’s the first time since the War of 1812 that U.S. territory had been attacked. The United States has had remarkable security, and this, therefore, was—aside from the horrible atrocity—a very significant, historical event. And it changed attitudes and policies in the United States quite conside...

Hard to believe, but here is an Attorney General (of the State of Florida) showing her values.....and lack of decency and humanity. From CommonDreams : "This happened: Florida's GOP attorney general Pam Bondi, a key backer of the state's recently passed, so-called Timely Justice Act - which allows the state to hurry up and kill prisoners on Death Row before they have time to file any more of those irritating, time-consuming, potentially life-saving appeals they're inexplicably so fond of - asked her buddy Rick Scott to postpone the execution of convicted murderer Marshall Lee Gore because it conflicted with her kickoff re-election campaign fundraiser. So he did. Later, it occurred to Bondi that maybe this wasn't such a good idea, so she made a statement where she said oops and boasted about how as a prosecutor, "I personally put two people on death row and, as Attorney General, have already participated in eight executions since I took office, a role I ta...

The indignation of Obama about the Assad regime's use of chemical weapons (or so it is asserted without any proof provided) is fulsome and without any qualification .   But, as George Monbiot asks in a piece " Obama's rogue state tramples over every law it demands others uphold " in The Guardian , which country is really the rouge? "Obama warned last week that Syria's use of poisoned gas "threatens to unravel the international norm against chemical weapons embraced by 189 nations". Unravelling the international norm is the US president's job. In 1997 the US agreed to decommission the 31,000 tonnes of sarin, VX, mustard gas and other agents it possessed within 10 years. In 2007 it requested the maximum extension of the deadline permitted by the Chemical Weapons Convention – five years. Again it failed to keep its promise, and in 2012 it claimed they would be gone by 2021. Russia yesterday urged Syria to place its chemical weapons under inter...

Whilst the US ponders whether to attack the Assad regime in Syria because they used chemical weaponry recently - or so it is alleged with proof of that to still emerge - the US can hardly speak without a forked tongue.   From Information Clearing House . "The Vietnam War ended nearly 40 years ago, but the casualties continue as birth defects plague the country. There are claims that thousands of children continue to be born with horrific facial deformities due to the 20 million gallons of Agent Orange chemical sprayed by the United States. The Vietnamese call the disfigured youngsters 'the children of Agent Orange'. Da Nang in central Vietnam is thought to have the highest level of congenital deformity in the world. Inside Out's Mark Jordan joins a team of top London plastic surgeons on their unpaid mission to help these children through the charity Facing the World."

The stark realities of the war in Syria as reflected in the photographs (38 of them - here ) in this piece from The Atlantic .   No less than 6 million people displaced by the war.  Truly staggering numbers. "While the West debates airstrikes on Damascus and the Syrian government battles a wide array of rebel forces, the Syrian people are enduring what the World Health Organization now calls the worst ongoing humanitarian crisis on earth. Four million Syrians are internally displaced; with homes either destroyed or unsafe, they have moved to temporary housing within Syria's borders. Another two million have now fled the country, pouring into neighboring countries at a rate of nearly 6,000 every day. Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey, Iraq, and Egypt are taking in the vast majority of these refugees, working with the United Nations, Red Crescent, and many other charitable groups to provide shelter, security, food, and water. The resources are being stretched thin, after years of ...

The outrage at the Syrian regime both possessing, and then employing, chemical weapons, is justified, but perhaps, once again, hypocritical and a display of double-standards when one reflects on the fairly clear evidence that Israel (neighbour to Syria) also possesses chemical weapons.   FP reports. "Syria's reported use of chemical weapons is threatening to turn the civil war there into a wider conflict. But the Bashar al-Assad government may not be the only one in the region with a nerve gas stockpile. A newly discovered CIA document indicates that Israel likely built up a chemical arsenal of its own. It is almost universally believed in intelligence circles here in Washington that Israel possesses a stockpile of several hundred fission nuclear weapons, and perhaps even some high-yield thermonuclear weapons. Analysts believe the Israeli government built the nuclear stockpile in the 1960s and 1970s as a hedge against the remote possibility that the armies of its Arab neig...

As Obama hits the airwaves to plead his cause for some sort of attack on Syria and an address to Americans on TV, it is not an unimportant question to ask what do the Arabs in the region think.   FP steps up to the plate to in a piece " Trench Warfare ". "The extremely low level of domestic popular support for military action in Syria has loomed large as the Obama administration builds its case for war. Americans, for the most part, oppose getting involved in another quagmire in the Middle East which most -- wisely -- fear will be the end result of even a "limited" action. What about Arabs, though? Do they, at least, want the United States to take on this burden and enter the Syrian fray? It would be easy to be talked into the idea that this time they do -- if you primarily talked to Saudi and Emirati royals. But Washington would do well to reflect upon the risks of relying so heavily upon the counter-revolutionary, anti-democratic autocrats of Saudi Arabia...