It is almost always bad news when armies are in power. In Egypt, the army has been the deciding force since 1952. The recent destitution by the Egyptian army of President Mohamed Morsi was not a coup d’état. One cannot commit a coup d’état against oneself. What happened was simply that the army changed the way it was governing Egypt.
Supporters of an impending U.S. strike on Syria claim that it is necessary to punish the Assad regime for using chemical weapons on its citizens and to prevent it from further employing them. The situation, says Washington, calls for “humanitarian intervention.”
Source: The Progresive
U.S. hunger striker and activist Andrés Thomas Conteris will be force-fed in front of the White House today. The force-feeding is being done in public to draw attention to the force-feedings happening daily to prisoners in Guantánamo Bay.
Dozens of prisoners at Guantánamo Bay began a new hunger strike began last February due to deteriorating conditions. They are subjected to force-feedings in which tubes are sent through the nose to the stomach.
(The Miami Herald has a great graphic about the Gitmo hunger strike, listing daily details. For example, 31 men were tube fed on September 5.)
As the US intensifies its push for military intervention in Syria, virtually the only narrative available swings from the brutal regime of Bashar al-Assad to the role of Islamist elements within the resistance. But the network of unarmed, democratic resistance to Assad's regime is rich and varied, representing a vast web of local political initiatives, arts-based coalitions, human rights organizations, nonviolence groups and more.
Source: Yes Magazine
Many of the legal and diplomatic processes that led to peace in other times of conflict haven’t even been tried yet in Syria.
The Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s approval of military force in Syria makes military strikes against that country more likely. But key questions remain unanswered. Will military strikes help ordinary Syrians or harm them? Will more violence deter the use of chemical weapons and other war crimes in Syria and elsewhere, or exacerbate the problem? Have all other possibilities been exhausted, or are there peaceful solutions that haven’t been tried?
The following remarks were delivered on September 1, 2013 at the founding convention of UNIFOR, a new mega union created by the Canadian Autoworkers and the Canadian Energy and Paper Workers Union, and provided to Common Dreams by the author for publication.
I’m so very happy and honoured to be able to share this historic day with you.
The energy in this room — and the hope the founding of this new union has inspired across the country – is contagious.
It feels like this could be the beginning of the fight back we have all been waiting for, the one that will chase Harper from power and restore the power of working people in Canada.
Copyright Toward Freedom 2019