Portside

What's needed in Syria is not military intervention, but a global peace offensive.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his friends in the Republican Party here in the USA want a war with Iran. There really is no other conclusion.

Washington has an eagerness to extricate itself militarily from more than a decade of war in the Greater Middle East and “pivot” its strategic focus and resources more toward the Asia/Pacific and its highly complex relationships with China and key U.S. allies there.

Turkey’s Regional Politics – Old Wine, New Bottle – actually the bottle isn’t that new...After the Egyptian military coup, a number of reports surfaced on Turkey's indignation on the turn over the events there. Yeni Shafak the newspaper close to the Turkish prime minister published a scathing article against the leaders of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Jordan, UAE as well as Palestinian Mahmud Abbas calling them the "the axis of evil" in the Middle East.

Ripped from the headlines! America is exceptional! So the president said at the U.N. two days ago and two weeks ago in his address to the nation on the Syrian crisis. Tho show how exceptional we are is a list of eight exceptional(ly dumb) American achievements of the twenty-first century -- all ripped from the headlines, all Ripley's Believe It or Not material, none made up, none conceivable for any other nation on the planet.

Reader Comments - U.S. Support Military Rule in Honduras; the New New Left; Stephen Colbert and Vladimir Putin; Income Inequality; Still more - GMO labeling; Occupy Wall Street and NYPD police tactics; Announcements - Welcome to Hebron - Bay Area-Sept 25; Lopsided Crisis: Ongoing Impact of the Great Recession - New York-Sept 27; Immigration Reform Concert & March - Oct 8- Washington, DC; Jobs with Justice-San Francisco - Bridging Solidarity and Power Together -Oct. 10

The symposium contributions were written before a large-scale poison gas attack with many casualties in the rebel-controlled Ghouta suburbs of Damascus on August 21, 2013. Likewise, they were all written before Washington's deployment of military forces to the region and its virtual announcement that military action is forthcoming. We strongly oppose military intervention by the United States and its allies.

Bradley Manning, acting on what he felt was true patriotism leaked documents revealing the killing of journalists in Iraq; corruption in Tunisia that led to the first of the Arab Spring revolts; the use of drones, and the secret drone war; US spying on UN diplomats; and John Kerry's pressing of Israel to return to pre-1967 borders. Yes, Bradley Manning has changed the world we live in.

A broad coalition of South African organizations, including COSATU, has called for mass demonstrations against President Obama's visit to Johannesburg. Coalition is in opposition to the University of Johannesburg plan to award Obama with an honorary doctorate for his contributions to the international community. Among the coalition demands are freedom for Bradley Manning, support for the Cuban Five, and the closing of Guantanamo.

The deepening violence of the Syrian civil war is also in some measure a consequence of Libya: Qaddafi's disbanded army and unguarded weapons moved southward in Africa, but they also moved eastward to Asia. The state terror of the most "surgical" air war leaves in its wake many thousands of stateless terrorists.