Michael Collins

(Washington, DC 10/6) The United States and European Union are setting the stage for a Syrian invasion. (Image)

Turkey is the fall guy.

The Turkish parliament provided Prime Minister Recep Erdoğan with a broad authorization "to make the necessary arrangements for sending the Turkish Armed Forces to foreign countries" Hurriyet, October 4, 2012. The vote was on party lines with the dominant AKP party forming a majority. Muharrem İnce of the CHP opposition party said: "This motion has no limits. You can wage a world war with [it]."

The warning about the road to war may be near reality. McClatchy Newspapers just reported the following:

ISTANBUL -- One day after winning blanket authority to send forces into Syria, Turkey’s prime minister warned Friday that his country is "not far from war" and said that it would be a “deadly mistake” for the Syrian government to test Turkey’s will. McClatchy Newspapers, October 6, 2012

Read more »

By Michael Collins

Obama administration support for Syrian rebels is based on a United Nations authorized report from November 2011. In that document, Syria is accused of committing "crimes against humanity." The report's co-author is a board member at a Washington, D.C. based think tank that just happens to have the former chairman of ExxonMobil, a consultant for the Saudi Binladin Group, and a former CIA executive on its board of directors.

Much of the U.S. and European press on the so-called civil war originates from a tiny organization in the United Kingdom called the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (the Observatory). The one man operation is run by a longtime opponent of Syrian Bashar Hafez al-Assad.

For the most part, this is how we know what we know about Syria.

Read more »

Larry Pinkney

“Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.” -Frederick Douglass

“Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience...Our problem is that people are obedient while the jails are full of petty thieves...[and] the grand thieves are running the country. That’s our problem.” -Howard Zinn

BC Question: What will it take to bring Obama home? As the corporate/military U.S. Empire, headed by the nominally black Barack Obama, with the complicity of his Democrat[ic] and Republican party political pimps, rumbles along, crushing the economic needs, human rights, and aspirations of everyday Black, White, Brown, Red, and Yellow people in this nation and around the world, conditions for just plain ordinary people are worsening and deteriorating at lightning speed. Only the avaricious, blood-sucking, bloated rich are financially benefiting from the increasing misery of the masses of ordinary people.

Read more »

AIG's Joe Cassano - An American Tragedy

By Numerian Posted by Michael Collins

What’s a capitalist to do when he loses $500 billion and almost single-handedly destroys the global economy? In Japan you would bow deeply in public and express the deepest possible remorse and shame, that is if you already had not committed seppuku. In America, where the Ayn Rand ethos of objectivism reigns supreme, you weasel your way out of any explanation or regret, while riding off in the sunset with your undeserved fortune.

Joe Cassano, former CEO of AIG Financial Products, could have chosen the Ronald Reagan Alzheimers defense: “I have forgotten everything that happened.” That was the route taken by AIG Chief Risk Officer Robert Lewis, when he along with Cassano appeared yesterday before the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission. Lewis, unlike Reagan, had to act like he actually had Alzheimers to make this defense plausible.

Read more »