Kevyn Orr, the emergency manager put in charge of resolving the city’s finances, has already indicated that “painful sacrifices must be shared.”

Bondholders are insisting that they must be paid in full, or at least should be granted highest priority in repayment. Otherwise, they argue, cities across the country will be forced to pay much higher interest rates when they borrow money, since municipal bonds will be judged less secure. And they point to the “full faith and credit pledge” that underlies the issuance of bonds and is supposed to make them more secure.

But, according to The New York Times, many of the city’s retirees are already in poverty, which is becoming the new norm for retirees among the 99% across the country. And as the president of one of the affected unions correctly pointed out: “This is on their [bondholders] balance sheets. But this is our lives.”

As inequalities in wealth continue to create an ever-widening chasm between the rich and the rest of us, the concept of “shared sacrifice” is becoming increasingly ludicrous. On the one hand, people are struggling to put food on the table and hold on to their houses after working hard all their lives. On the other hand, bondholders want a handsome return on their investment without doing any work at all.

It is the duty of unions to protect their members. The AFL-CIO should immediately make its highest priority the defense of the retired city workers of Detroit, bringing all its resources to the city in order to mobilize massive numbers of people in the streets so as to galvanize public support around the retired city workers. The unions should insist that taxes be raised on the rich in order to resolve the city’s finances and protect the city’s workers. Such a gesture would bring tremendous prestige to the unions and reignite interest in a labor movement that has been on a downhill trajectory for decades.

In fact, on June 22, the NAACP and United Auto Workers (UAW) are planning a Freedom Walk to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s original Freedom Walk in Detroit, where he gave his initial version of the “I Have a Dream” speech. The AFL-CIO should throw all its support into this demonstration and encourage that the focus of the demonstration be the plight of the retired city workers. And by bringing the court of public opinion to bear on the struggle in Detroit, it can possibly influence the outcome.

In addition to the June 22 demonstration, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), among others, has called for a march on Washington on August 24 to commemorate Dr. Martin Luther King’s speech. The AFL-CIO has endorsed this event. It should take advantage of the occasion and again mobilize massive numbers of working people in order to demand an end to the austerity measures that have been imposed on working people across the country — not just workers in Detroit — ranging from cuts to social services, cuts to pensions, cuts to jobs, cuts to education, salary cuts, and now threats to cut Social Security and Medicare. And it should demand that the federal government initiate a massive jobs program financed by raising taxes on the rich.

By going all-out to support the workers in Detroit, the AFL-CIO could succeed in protecting these workers and at the same time help itself, because it is also in dire straits and in need of a rescue as workers across the country have been urging and waiting for it to act.

Obama has officially started down a path that inevitably leads to full-scale war. At this point the Obama administration thinks it has already invested too much military, financial, and diplomatic capital into the Syrian conflict to turn back, and each step forward brings the U.S. closer to a direct military intervention.

Much like Obama’s spying program, few Americans knew that the United States was already involved, neck deep, with the mass killings occurring in Syria. For example, Obama has been directly arming the Syrian rebels for well over a year. The New York Times broke the story that the Obama administration has — through the CIA — been illegally trafficking thousands of tons of guns to the rebels from the dictatorships of Saudi Arabia and Qatar. If not for these Obama-trafficked guns, thousands of deaths would have been prevented and the Syrian conflict over.

But even after the gun trafficking story broke, the mainstream media largely ignored it, and continued “reporting” that the U.S. has only been supplying the Syrian rebels with “non-lethal aid,” a meaningless term in a war setting, since all military aid directly assists in the business of killing.

The U.S. media also buried the truth behind the ridiculous chemical weapons claims by the Obama administration, which, like Bush’s WMDs, are based on absolutely no evidence. Having learned nothing from Iraq, the U.S. media again shamelessly regurgitates the “facts” as spoon-fed to them by the government, no questions asked. In reality, however, a number of independent chemical weapons experts have publicly spoken out against Obama’s accusations.

The U.S. media also refuses to ask: on what authority does the United States have to determine the usage of chemical weapons in other countries? This is the job of the UN. What has the UN said on the matter?

Top UN rights investigator Carla del Ponte said:

“According to the testimonies we have gathered, the [Syrian] rebels have used chemical weapons, making use of sarin gas.”

Again, the “rebels” have used chemical weapons, not the Syrian government, according to the UN representative. Many analysts have pointed out the obvious fact that the Syrian government would have zero military or political motive to use chemical weapons, especially when they have access to much more effective conventional weapons. Obama’s Bush-like lies are too familiar to the American public, who overwhelmingly do not support military intervention in Syria, or giving direct military aide to the Syrian rebels.

What has the UN said on giving military aid to the rebels?

UN chief Ban Ki-moon has called the Obama’s decision “a bad idea” and “not helpful.” This is because pouring arms into any country where there is a conflict only increases the bloodshed and risks turning the conflict into a broader catastrophe.

But like Bush, Obama is ignoring the UN, and there’s a logic to his madness. Obama has invested too much of his foreign policy credibility in Syria. His administration has been the backbone of the Syrian rebels from the beginning, having handpicked a group of rich Syrian exiles and molded them into Obama’s “officially recognized” government of Syria, while pressuring other nations to also recognize these nobodies as the “legitimate Syrian government.” Assad’s iron grip on power is a humiliation to these diplomatic efforts of Obama, and has thus weakened the prestige and power of U.S. foreign policy abroad.

More importantly, Obama’s anti-Syria diplomacy required that diplomatic relations between Syria and its neighbors — like Jordan, Lebanon, and Turkey — be destroyed. These nations have peacefully co-existed for decades with Syria, but have now agreed — under immense U.S. pressure — to sever diplomatic relations while helping destroy the Syrian government by funneling guns and foreign fighters into the country, further destabilizing a region not yet recovered from the Iraq war. Obama’s Syria policy has turned an already-fragile region into a smoldering tinderbox.

If Obama were to suddenly tell his anti-Syria coalition that he’s realized his efforts at regime change have failed and that he would instead pursue a peaceful solution, his allies and Middle East lackeys would be less willing in the future to prostitute themselves for the foreign policy of the United States; and the U.S. would thus find it more difficult in the future to pursue “regime change” politics abroad. If Obama doesn’t back up his “Assad must go” demand, the U.S. will be unable to make such threats in the future; and U.S. foreign policy is heavily dependent on this type of political bullying.

Furthermore, Obama’s anti-Syria puppet coalition is taking tremendous political risks when it shamelessly follows in Obama’s footsteps, since the U.S. is terribly unpopular throughout the Arab world. This unpopularity is further proof that the “official” Syrian opposition that is asking for U.S. intervention has zero credibility in Syria, since very few Syrians would like to invite the U.S. military to “liberate” their country, especially after the “successful” liberations of Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya.

Obama, too, is worried about domestic politics in his own country over Syria. He knows that Americans are sick of Middle East wars, while the American public is also worried that arming the Syrian rebels would mean giving guns to the very same people that America is supposedly fighting a “war on terror” against.

In response to this concern Obama has said that the U.S. will only give arms to “moderate” rebels. A European Union diplomat mockingly responded:

“It would be the first conflict where we pretend we could create peace by delivering arms… If you pretend to know where the weapons will end up, then it would be the first war in history where this is possible. We have seen it in Bosnia, Afghanistan and Iraq. Weapons don’t disappear; they pop up where they are needed.”

In Syria U.S. weapons will thus end up in the hands of the extremists doing the majority of the fighting. These are the people who will be in power if Syria’s government falls, unless a full U.S. invasion and Iraq-style occupation occurs. It’s difficult to decide which outcome would be worse for the Syrian people.

It’s now obvious that President Obama is escalating the Syrian conflict because his prized rebels have been beaten on the battlefield. Obama has thus chosen the military tactic of brinksmanship, a risky strategy that involves intentionally escalating a conflict in the hopes that either your opponent gives in to your demands (regime change), or your opponent gives you an excuse to invade.

Here’s how former U.S. General Wesley Clark explains Obama’s brinkmanship tactic in a New York Times op-ed, which is worth quoting at length:

“President Obama’s decision to supply small arms and ammunition to the rebels is a step, possibly just the first, toward direct American intervention. It raises risks for all parties, and especially for Mr. Assad, who knows that he cannot prevail, even with Russian and Iranian military aid, if the United States becomes fully engaged. We used a similar strategy against the Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic in Kosovo in 1999, where I commanded American forces, and showed that NATO had the resolve to escalate.

“The risk of going beyond lethal aid to establishing a no-fly zone to keep Mr. Assad’s planes grounded or safe zones to protect refugees — options under consideration in Washington — is that we would find it hard to pull back if our side began losing. Given the rebels’ major recent setbacks, can we rule out using air power or sending in ground troops?

“Yet the sum total of risks — higher oil prices, a widening war — also provide Syria (and its patrons, Iran and Russia) a motive to negotiate.” [emphasis added]

Clark’s innocent sounding “no-fly zone” is in fact a clever euphemism for all-out war, since no-fly zones require you destroy the enemy’s air force, surface to air missiles, and other infrastructure.

In Libya Obama swiftly turned a no-fly zone into a full-scale invasion and regime change, in violation of international law. A no-fly zone in Syria would also immediately turn into an invasion and “regime change,” with the possibility that the U.S. or Israel would exploit the “fog of war” to attack Iran.

All of this madness could be stopped immediately if Obama publicly announced that the Syrian rebels have lost the war — since they have — and will be cut off politically, financially, and militarily by the U.S. if they do not immediately proceed to negotiations with the Syrian government.  But this peaceful approach will instead be ignored in favor of untold thousands more dead, millions more made refugees, and a broader regional fracturing of Middle East civilization.

The peace talks are dead because the U.S.-backed rebels are boycotting the negotiations, ruining any hope for peace, while threatening to turn an already tragic disaster into a Yugoslavia-style catastrophe…or worse.

The U.S. backed rebels are not participating in the talks because they have nothing to gain from them, and everything to lose.

In war, the purpose of peace negotiations is to copy the situation on the battlefield and paste it to a treaty: the army winning the war enters negotiations from a dominant position, since its position is enforceable on the ground.

The U.S.-backed rebels would be entering peace talks broken and beaten, having been debilitated on the battlefield. The Syrian army has had a string of victories, pushing the rebels back to the border areas where they are protected by U.S. allies Turkey, Jordan, and northern Lebanon. Peace talks would merely expose this reality and end the war on terms dictated by the Syrian government.

A rebel leader was quoted in The New York Times revealing this motive for the rebel’s abandonment of peace talks:

“What can we [rebels] ask for when we go very weak to Geneva [for peace talks]?… The Russians and the Iranians and the representatives of the [Syrian] regime will say: ‘You don’t have any power. We are controlling everything. What you are coming to ask for?’”

This is the reality as it exists in Syria, and realistic peace talks would recognize the situation in Syria and end the conflict immediately.

But first the rebel’s supporters — the United States and its lackeys Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar — must acknowledge this reality and demand that the rebels forge ahead with peace talks, on threat of being cut off politically, financially, and militarily.

If this happens, war is over.

But if the war ended tomorrow, Syrian President Bashar Assad, would still be in power, and President Obama has said repeatedly, “Assad must go.” Obama would be further humiliated by his Syria policy if he had to again recognize Assad as president after spending a year recognizing a group of rich Syrian exiles as “the legitimate government of Syria” and after his administration repeatedly announced that the Assad regime had ended over a year ago.

More importantly, if Assad stayed in power, U.S. foreign policy would appear weak internationally, which is one main reason that the U.S. political establishment wants to go “all in” for regime change in Syria: super powers must back up their threats, since otherwise other nations might choose to challenge the United States.

This is the real reason peace talks will not be held. The U.S. and its European allies want regime change in Syria, and they are prepared to allow many more people to die to make it so. This was made clear by the Obama administration. The New York Times reports:

“[Syrian] President Bashar al-Assad’s gains on the battlefield have called the United States’ strategy on Syria into question, prompting the Obama administration to again consider military options, including arming the rebels and conducting airstrikes to protect civilians and the Syrian opposition, administration officials said on Monday.”

The above quote mentions “conducting airstrikes to protect civilians.” This is the infamous language of the UN resolution that allowed U.S.-NATO to intervene in Libya; but Obama immediately overstepped “protecting civilians” and quickly jumped into “regime change,” a gross violation of international law and a Bush-like war crime.

The UN — though especially China and Russia — have learned from the Libya example and will doubtfully ever again approve of a “protect civilian” UN resolution. If the U.S. intervenes in Syria, it will do so with a Bush-style “coalition of the willing,” i.e. U.S. allies.

Obama’s dream of having a post-Assad Syria is further complicated by the fact that Assad is apparently more popular than he has ever been.

Many Syrians that didn’t previously support Assad now do, having concluded that Assad in power is better than their country being obliterated in an Iraq-style invasion, or being dominated by Islamic extremists, as the majority of the Syrian rebel groups are.

Further helping Assad’s popularity is that Israel has bombed Syria recently on multiple occasions, while Syrians watch the unpopular United States funnel weapons to the rebels. As a result, Assad can now successfully portray himself as a defender of Syria’s sovereignty against foreign aggression.

But, Obama will not be deterred. After it became clear that the rebels were losing the war, the U.S. and its European allies removed the remaining legal barriers to further arming the rebels, while the religious leaders of Saudi Arabia and Qatar — both U.S. allies — assisted in the war effort by calling for Jihad against the Syrian government (the same week the leader of al-Qaeda did).

Behind this frenzy of rebel support lies the sick logic that, in order for successful peace negotiations to take place, the rebels need to be in a stronger battlefield position. Arm the rebels to the teeth for peace!

In response to this twisted logic, Oxfam International — a disaster relief coalition — responded by saying:

“Sending arms to the Syrian opposition won’t create a level playing field. Instead, it risks further fueling an arms free-for-all where the victims are the civilians of Syria. Our experience from other conflict zones tells us that this crisis will only drag on for far longer if more and more arms are poured into the country.”

Ultimately, the Syrian rebels would have already been defeated — and thousands of lives spared — if they had not been receiving support from the U.S. and other countries. The U.S.-backed rebels have said that a pre-condition for peace is “Assad must go;” but this demand does not coincide with the reality on the ground: the rebels are in no position to demand this, and the U.S. is using this unrealistic demand to artificially lengthen an already-bloody war.

Obama can either use his immense influence to end this bloody conflict by withdrawing support to the rebels, or he can extend the conflict and further tear to shreds the social fabric of the Middle East, while risking a multi-nation war that history will denounce as an easily-preventable holocaust.

Such a war would be completely artificial, and is being manufactured for geo-political reasons. When the most influential Sunni figures in Saudi Arabia and Qatar — both U.S. allies — recently called for Jihad against the Syrian government and Hezbollah, their obvious intensions were to boost the foreign policy of Saudi Arabia and its closest ally, the United States, by destroying Iran’s key ally in the region.

Will Sunni Muslims in Syria — who are the majority — suddenly begin attacking their Shia countrymen and the Syrian government? Unlikely. A compilation of data from humanitarian workers in and around Syria compiled by NATO suggests that:

…70 percent of Syrians support the Assad regime. Another 20 percent were deemed neutral and the remaining 10 percent expressed support for the rebels.”

The pro-Assad 70 percent is mostly Sunni. This data flies in the face of the constant barrage of western media distortion about what’s happening in Syria. Previous polling compiled last year by Qatar had similar results, and was likewise ignored by the western media.

The above article quoted a source familiar with the data:

The Sunnis have no love for Assad, but the great majority of the community is withdrawing from the revolt… what is left is the foreign fighters who are sponsored by Qatar and Saudi Arabia. They are seen by the Sunnis as far worse than Assad.

Syrian Sunnis are likely disgusted by the behavior of the foreign extremists, which include a laundry list of war crimes, ethnic cleansing, as well as the terrorist bombing of a Sunni Mosque that killed the top Sunni cleric in Syria — along with 41 worshipers and 84 others injured. The Sunni cleric was killed because he was pro-Assad.

The recent calls for Jihad by the Saudi and Qatari Sunni leaders are likely in response to the Syrian government scoring major victories against the rebels. The rebels are now badly losing the war, in large part because they’ve completely lost their base of community support.

There are other key rebel supporters now taking urgent action to bolster the flagging rebel war effort. The leader of al-Qaeda, for example, made a recent plea for Sunnis to support the rebels against the Syrian government, while U.S. politician John McCain journeyed into Syria to meet with rebels — later identified as terrorists — to further commit the U.S. to the rebel side.

Meanwhile, The New York Times confirmed that the CIA had increased its already-massive arms trafficking program into Syria, while the European union agreed to drop the Syrian arms embargo, so that even more arms could be funneled to the rebels.

And to top it off, France now says it has proof that the Syrian government used chemical weapons against the rebels — a UN representative has suggested that just the opposite is the case — while the rebels are desperately trying to incite war between Syria and Israel by attacking the Syrian government on the border of the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.

Also relevant is that the pro-Jihad religious leaders of Qatar and Saudi Arabia are taking a giant gamble in their recent anti-Hezbollah proclamations, and risk triggering political instability to these already-shaky regimes, which are hugely dependent on the religious leaders for support.

Hezbollah is still revered throughout the Muslim world for its military defeat of Israel in 2006; and most Muslims will likely be uninterested in waging Jihad in Muslim majority Syria. Also, attacking the Syrian government and Hezbollah would mean allying with Israel and the United States, not an ideal situation for most jihadists.

It’s very possible that the Syrian tinderbox could drag the surrounding Middle Eastern countries into a massive regional war, with Russia and the United States easily within the gravitational pull.

The Syrian conflict could end very quickly if President Obama rejected U.S. support for the rebels and demanded his U.S. allies in the region do the same. Obama should acknowledge the situation in Syria as it exists, and respect the wishes of the Syrian people, who do not want their country destroyed.

Instead, the U.S. is considering arming the rebels even more.

U.S. Senator John McCain revealed the unofficial U.S. government policy for Syria when he said that he would tolerate an extremist takeover of Syria if it weakened Iran.

At this point an extremist takeover of Syria will cost tens of thousands of more lives, millions more refugees, while exploding the region into a multi-country orgy of violence.

The media will blame such genocide on Islamic sectarian violence, and ignore the obvious political motives.

Hopefully, the social movement in Turkey will force the Turkish government out of the western-controlled anti-Syrian alliance, while empowering other Middle Eastern countries to do the same.

_______________

Photo note:  The images in the title show the Shrine of Hujr ibn Adi Al Kindi (died 660 CE) companion of Muhammad, before and after the May 2, 2013 destruction of the shrine and disinterment of his body, allegedly by Wahhabi Sunni militants.

When I heard that Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke told Congress last week that it was too soon for the Fed to end its extraordinary stimulus programs, I did a double take.

“What stimulus programs?” I thought. Where are the jobs programs? Where are the “extraordinary” social services that will enable those still suffering from the effects of the Great Recession to buy more and stimulate the economy?

What escaped my attention for a moment was the fact that these words were uttered by an official steeped in the jargon of high finance and political policy — where words like “stimulus” are treated to Orwellian twists, their meaning transformed into something very different from what most people understand them to mean.

Bernanke’s “Stimulus”

What Bernanke meant by “stimulus” was not programs that economically strengthen the 99%. He was referring to policies that keep interest rates low, including what is known as Quantitative Easing (QE).

QE is the Fed’s practice of printing money out of nothing in order to purchase mortgage-backed securities. When the program started, the monthly amount printed was $40 billion. As incredible as this amount sounds — especially while the government plans to cut needed public programs such as Social Security and Medicare to “balance the budget” — today that amount has more than doubled to $85 billion printed a month.

Combined with these measures, the Federal Reserve is keeping interest rates ultra-low in order to encourage businesses to borrow money and expand their operations. The Fed’s alleged desired outcome is to encourage banks to make more loans to the private sector, thereby encouraging economic growth and job creation.

To reach this goal, however, these policies have to be set out on the right path. Currently, they are not.

On the contrary, today’s policies are guided by supply side, trickle down theories which essentially claim that the problem with the economy is that the rich aren’t rich enough. If the economy is still weak, it is because not enough money has been thrown at the 1% and, therefore, more must be made available for their benefit.

A crucial detail missing in this scheme is that the wealthy already have more than enough money. Banks have $1.5 trillion in reserves, and companies have $2 trillion stashed away. They are not investing in job creating ventures because consumers don’t have the money to buy their products, and there is no profit to be made from commodities that sit on the shelf.

Consequently, Bernanke’s policies are, at best, as effective as pouring water on an over-saturated sponge and expecting it to get absorbed.

What have been the results of Bernanke’s “stimulus”? There has been a weak upturn in job creation, falling far short of what is needed to return to the employment rate prior to the crash of 2008. In addition, the stimulus has been too weak to counter the accumulating impacts, including layoffs, of sequestration as it starts to gather steam. What’s more, it is a very dubious proposition that this slight and temporary job upturn has anything to do with Bernanke’s extraordinary measures at all.

Considering the trillions of dollars that have been printed by the Fed so far, these outcomes do more to discredit QE than encourage its continuation — that is, unless you are a member of the big business elite whom Bernanke aims to please above all. The Stock Market has been climbing since these programs were started.

By re-inflating the Stock Market, the Fed has created a recovery for those few at the top of the economy while everyone else continues to suffer from the effects of the Great Recession. This is because the top 5 percent owns 60 percent of the nation’s individually held financial assets, 82 percent of individually held stocks, and more than 90 percent of individually held bonds. These are the financial tools whose prices are driven up by the Fed’s “stimulus.”

Quantitative Easing is a primary driver of income inequality. It is, in the words of Reason Foundation economist Anthony Randazzo, “…fundamentally a regressive redistribution program” where wealth stays at the top rather than trickling down to the rest of the economy.

It is no wonder, consequently, that the Dow spiked 125 points minutes after Bernanke announced his intention to continue QE. The Fed’s stimulus policies amount to one of the most expensive forms of corporate welfare in history.

Answers?

The truth is the corporate political leadership of this country has no credible answers for reversing the economic crisis, because they continue to sustain their backers’ power and the profits that created this mess. Their logic: better to continue to fatten their pockets at the expense of all than to pursue policies which address the nation’s fundamental economic problems and demand that the rich and corporations pay their fair share.

Because QE prints money out of nothing, it encourages both inflation and the creation of massive bubbles in the economy similar to those that led to the current economic crisis. For Bernanke and his supporters, the risks posed by these policies are necessary dangers that must be faced to satisfy the appetites of Wall Street and big business. “Stimulus” for these dominating special interests has, in practice, meant continued high unemployment, declining wages and worker rights, as well as greater economic instability in the future for everyone else.

There are measures that can be taken to begin to reverse the course of America’s broken economy. A massive federal jobs program to create full employment and raise wages is the stimulus that is needed, and the money is out there to do it. Currently deductions, credits and other tax breaks flow disproportionately to the highest income Americans. If we closed these, there would be nearly $1.1 trillion of revenue available.

In addition, not just corporate but bank tax rates should be sharply increased to pay for the economic mess that those financial institutions created. Putting those funds towards job creation, education and establishing universal healthcare would lift up the well-being and standard of living for all working class communities.

Putting such measures at center stage of the political dialogue requires more than good arguments. Fixing an economy is not like repairing a car engine where the problem can be diagnosed and quickly gotten to work on. It involves a contest of power between competing interests, that is, a struggle between the forces aligned with Labor and those allied with the corporations and banks.

We need real stimulus, not the insane schemes of the Fed. To get what we need, unity must be forged in the streets, building a social force independent of both major parties that will not compromise our needs to the interests of Wall Street.

Equally odd is that Obama’s strongest military ally on the ground in Syria — the best equipped and effective fighting force against the Syrian Government — is Jabhat al-Nusra, a group that has affiliated itself with al-Qaeda, and aims to turn Syria into an extremist Islamic state that enforces a fundamentalist version of Sharia law.

It’s difficult to know exactly how al-Nursa received its guns, but one can make an educated guess. For example, The New York Times explained in detail how the CIA has been in a massive arms trafficking operation that has already funneled thousands of tons of guns from Saudi Arabia and Qatar to Syria:

The C.I.A. role in facilitating the [weapons] shipments… gave the United States a degree of influence over the process [of weapon distribution]…American officials have confirmed that senior White House officials were regularly briefed on the [weapons] shipments.

Where are the guns winding up in this massive arms trafficking operation? An important question to ask is: which rebels in Syria have guns and which ones don’t.

The Guardian reports:

The [secular] Free Syrian Army’s shortage of weapons and other resources compared with [jihadist] Jabhat al-Nusra is a recurrent theme… ‘If you join al-Nusra, there is always a gun for you but many of the FSA brigades can’t even provide bullets for their fighters,’…3,000 FSA [Free Syrian Army] men have joined al-Nusra in the last few months, mainly because of a lack of weapons and ammunition…Al-Nusra fighters rarely withdraw for shortage of ammunition…

While it’s difficult to know if CIA trafficked guns are going directly or indirectly to al-Nursa, it’s extremely likely that these guns are going directly into the hands of ideological cousins of al-Nursa, since the Syrian rebels are completely dominated by Islamic extremists.

For example, when the Economist magazine was outlining the most important fighting groups in Syria, “Who’s Who in the Syrian Battlefield,” they noted with regret that the only important non-Islamist group was in the Kurdish areas, which is virtually an autonomous zone. As far as the secular U.S.-backed fighting group, The Supreme Military Command, the Economist conceded it “has little control on the ground.” Keep in mind that the Economist is very much in favor of a U.S.-NATO military intervention in Syria.

The New York Times also confirmed the complete dominance of extremists on the rebel side:

Nowhere in rebel-controlled Syria is there a secular fighting force to speak of.

Thus, the minority of secular rebel fighters are not leading the civil war and will not be in power if Assad falls. Instead, honest Syrian revolutionaries will instantly fall victim to the extremists, who will immediately proceed to a mopping-up mission of their former allies.

It’s now clear that Obama’s foreign policy in Syria is actively encouraging terrorism. Many rebel-controlled areas in Syria are now new safe havens for terrorists, and there have been hundreds of terrorist bombing attacks against the Syrian government, many of which have targeted civilian areas.

While the U.S. is pouring arms into the jihadist-controlled areas, they have also downplayed the atrocities committed by these rebels, which are well documented on Youtube and include a multitude of war crimes that include beheadings, group execution of prisoners, ethnic cleansing, and the recent episode where a famous rebel commander was videotaped mutilating a dead Syrian solider and eating his heart.

By minimizing this barbarism the Obama administration ensures that it will continue, since the extremists are empowered by U.S. support and are shielded in the U.S. media and protected from international political pressures.

One question the U.S. media never thinks of asking is: Where did all these Islamic extremists come from and why? The Sunni Islamic opposition inside Syria has long been religiously moderate, implying that many of the extremists are foreigners.

The ideological source of this extremism came from Saudi Arabian religious figures and their allies, who use Islam as a political tool to target nations “unfriendly” to Saudi Arabia and the United States. The most glaring example of this in regard to Syria was the Fatwa (official interpretation/statement) issued by 107 Islamic scholars that denounced the Syrian government and encouraged Muslims to fight against it. The statement essentially encouraged jihad, though the word wasn’t mentioned explicitly.

The statement includes:

It is a duty for all Muslims to support the revolutionaries in Syria [against the government] “so that they can successfully complete their revolution and attain their rights and their freedom.

The hypocrisy of such a statement is almost too glaring: the many Saudi figures who signed the document that want “freedom” in Syria are not demanding freedom in Saudi Arabia, by far the country with the least amount of freedoms in the world.

With Saudi Arabia and Qatar providing guns to the Syrian rebels — with help from the CIA — the Saudi religious figures attached to the regime give religious/political support by misleading devout Muslims to flock to Syria to attack a country of Muslims, thus creating the giant sectarian divisions we now see throughout the Islamic world.

The vast majority of this Islamic sectarian warfare is exported by Saudi Arabia, which funds radical Islamic schools all over the Middle East that attract the downtrodden of these countries by providing basic social services that the host country is too poor — or unwilling — to provide. There is an informative chapter on this dynamic in Vijay Prashad’s excellent book, A People’s History of the Third World.

Now the debate among U.S.-NATO countries is whether to give more sophisticated weaponry to the extremist-dominated rebels in Syria. The Obama Administration is pressuring the European Union to drop its arms embargo on Syria so that a new torrent of weapons can flood the country (apparently the CIA operations haven’t yet completely drenched Syria with guns).

In response to the “drop the embargo” discussion, Oxfam intelligently responded by saying:

Sending arms to the Syrian opposition won’t create a level playing field. Instead, it risks further fueling an arms free-for-all where the victims are the civilians of Syria. Our experience from other conflict zones tells us that this crisis will only drag on for far longer if more and more arms are poured into the country.

One EU diplomat gave a scathing rebuke to the Obama Administration’s claim that it could ensure that new weapons wouldn’t wind up in “the wrong hands” in Syria:

It would be the first conflict where we pretend we could create peace by delivering arms,” the diplomat said. “If you pretend to know where the weapons will end up, then it would be the first war in history where this is possible. We have seen it in Bosnia, Afghanistan and Iraq. Weapons don’t disappear; they pop up where they are needed.

In Syria the weapons are needed by those doing the brunt of the fighting. Again, the al-Nursa jihad group is widely acknowledged to be the most effective fighting force against the Syrian government–the guns thus flow to them.

Obama has taken the saying, “the enemy of my enemy is my friend,” to irrational heights, and in so doing is helping to produce a new generation of Islamic extremists that will help fuel the U.S.-led never-ending “war on terror.” The real intention of the War on Terror is not to stop terrorists, but to target nation states that are opposed to U.S. foreign policy: Iraq and Libya — like Syria — were both secular countries at the time of their being invaded; Afghanistan was invaded even though the vast majority of those involved in the 9-11 attacks were from Saudi Arabia. There was no terrorist problem in Iraq before the U.S. invaded, just like there was no terrorist problem in Syria before the U.S.-backed rebels came onto the scene, other than the typical terrorism inflicted by these regimes on their own people. But the U.S. government is hardly innocent of inflicting terrorism on its own citizens either.

It’s blatantly obvious to most Americans that Syria and Iran are at the top of Obama’s war list, a much higher priority than any terrorist group. This is why Obama is tolerating the terrorist groups inside Syira; they are being used as tools against his real target, Syria and then Iran.

The Syrian people must be left to themselves to decide their future. The United States is utterly incapable of “helping” countries by using military means, as the fractured nations of Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya painfully prove. The global anti-war movement must demand Hands Off Syria!

In Support of the SCLC and King Center call for a March and Rally in Washington, DC on August 24, 2013 and in Support of the July 2 Northern California Demonstration to Demand a Massive Federally Funded Jobs-Creation Program and No Cuts to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid

Whereas, President Obama announced his support for cuts to Social Security by switching to a chained CPI inflation index that will reduce cost-of-living adjustments; and

Whereas, President Obama announced his support for cuts to Medicare; and

Whereas, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and The King Center have called for a march and rally in Washington, DC on August 24, 2013 to commemorate the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, where Dr. Martin Luther King gave his “I Have a Dream speech; and

Whereas, SCLC President Dr. Vivian has declared, “We must tell the President and Congress that 50 years later, the struggle continues and poverty continues unabated;” and

Whereas, the percentage of people working is at its lowest since 1979; and

Whereas, sequestration, involving $85 billion in federal spending cuts, has already started to depress the economy by reducing the number of new jobs, and the AFL-CIO has already called for its “wholesale repeal;” and

Whereas, the AFL-CIO has been among the loudest critics of proposed cuts to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid as a means of deficit reduction; and

Whereas, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka has announced, “The President should drop these misguided cuts in benefits and focus instead on building support in Congress for investing in jobs;” and

Whereas, Trumka has insisted, “the real challenge our nation faces is a jobs crisis;” and

Whereas, the AFL-CIO has endorsed the commemoration of the SCLC and The King Center demonstration; and

Whereas, 93 percent of all new created income goes to the wealthiest 1 percent while the income of working people has been dropping; and according to AFL-CIO Director of Policy Damon Silvers, “In a time of rampant income inequality and stagnant wages, a blow to retirement security is the last thing we need;” and

Whereas, the demand for jobs and for no cuts to Social Security and Medicare has the overwhelming support of working people and consequently has the potential to galvanize the greatest number of people;

Therefore Be It Resolved, that the San Francisco Labor Council go on record in support of the August 24 demonstration in Washington, D.C., and the demands of a massive federally funded jobs creation program to be paid for by taxing the rich, no cuts to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, the repeal of sequestration, and the rejection of austerity; and

Therefore Be It Further Resolved, that the San Francisco Labor Council supports the proposal raised  by the Campaign for a Healthy California, California Alliance for Retired Americans (CARA), CNA and others for a Northern California demonstration on July 2, the 48th anniversary of Medicare in support of these demands; and

Therefore Be It Further Resolved, that the San Francisco Labor Council help build and mobilize for these demonstrations and call on the AFL-CIO, Change to Win, and the National Education Association, and all other independent unions and allies of labor to build and mobilize for these demonstrations; and

Therefore Be It Finally Resolved, that the San Francisco Labor Council send this resolution to all the above labor organizations.

With Obama’s blessing Israel fighter jets recently attacked Syria on three separate occasions; in one massive air strike on a military installation in Damascus 42 Syrian soldiers were killed. Soon after Obama finally agreed to a peace conference with Russia, which had been asking for such talks for months.

Obama is entering these talks from a weakened position. The Syrian government is winning the war against the U.S.-backed rebels, and success on the ground is the trump card of any peace talks. Obama and the rebels are in zero position to be demanding anything in Syria at the moment.

It’s possible that Obama wants to avoid further humiliation in his Syria meddling by a last minute face-saving “peace” deal. It’s equally likely, however, that these peace talks are a clever diplomatic ruse, with war being the real intention. It’s not uncommon for peace talks to break down and be used as a justification for an intensification of war, since “peace was attempted but failed.”

And Obama has plenty of reasons to pursue more war. He would look incredibly weak and foolish if Syria’s president were to stay in power after Obama’s administration had already announced that Assad’s regime was over and hand picked an alternative government of Syrian exiles that the U.S. — and other U.S. allies — were treating as the “legitimate government of Syria.”

Here’s how the BBC referred to Obama’s Syrian puppet government:

… the Syrian opposition’s political leadership — which wanders around international capitals attending conferences and making grand speeches — is not leading anyone. It barely has control of the delegates in the room with it, let alone the fighters in the field.

If an unlikely peace deal is reached, these Syrian exiles — who only a tiny minority of the rebel fighters actually listen to — will be the ones to sign off on the deal.

Many politicians in the U.S. are still clamoring for war in Syria, based on the unproven accusation that the Syrian government used chemical weapons against the rebels. But the UN so far has only indicated that the exact opposite is true: there is significant evidence the U.S.-backed rebels used chemical weapons against the Syrian government. (See UN accuses Syrian rebels of chemical weapons use)

Of course this fact only made the back pages of the U.S. mainstream media, if it appeared at all. Similarly bad news about the U.S.-backed rebels committing large scale ethnic/religious cleansing and numerous human rights violations didn’t manage to make it on the front pages either. And the numerous terrorist bombings by the U.S.-backed rebels that have indiscriminately killed civilians have likewise been largely ignored by U.S. politicians and the media.

(See New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Guardian)

The U.S. position is weakened further by the fact that the majority of the rebel fighters are Islamic extremists, who are fighting for jihad and sharia law, not democracy. The Guardian reported recently:

Syria’s main armed opposition group, the Free Syrian Army (FSA), is losing fighters and capabilities to Jabhat al-Nusra, an Islamist organization with links to al-Qaida that is emerging as the best-equipped, financed and motivated force fighting Bashar al-Assad’s [Syrian] regime.

The New York Times adds:

Nowhere in rebel-controlled Syria is there a secular fighting force to speak of.

But even with all these barriers to the U.S. dictating its terms on the Syrian government, Obama has a trump card of his own: the U.S. and the Israeli military.

It’s possible that the Israeli airstrikes on Syria were used as a bargaining chip with the proposed peace conference in Russia. If Obama threatened to bomb Syria into the Stone Age, there is plenty of evidence —Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya — to back up this threat.

Following through with this kind of threat is actually considered intelligent foreign policy to many politicians in the U.S., since a country not aligned with the U.S. will have been weakened and fragmented as an opposing force, lowering the final barrier to war with Iran.

U.S. foreign policy is now completely dependent on using the threat of annihilation. As U.S. economic power has declined in relation to China and other countries, the economic carrot has been tossed aside in favor of the military stick. Plenty of U.S. foreign policy “experts” are demanding that Obama unsheathe the stick again, less this foundation of U.S. foreign policy be proven to be just talk and no action.

This is the essence of U.S. involvement in Syria, which is risking regional war that may include Lebanon, Turkey, Iraq, Israel, Iran, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia with the potential to drag in the bigger powers connected to these nations, the U.S. and Europe on one hand and Russia and China on the other.

The fate of the already-suffering Middle East is hanging in the balance.

Between sequestration, with its damaging impact on workers and the entire economy, and the billions of dollars in cuts to Social Security, Medicare and other necessary social programs that President Obama is pushing, it is evident that the economic policies of both major parties are not intended to promote a recovery for working people. You cannot lift up a nation’s economy while slashing away at its consumers’ pocketbooks. In order to justify their defiance of this elementary law, both Republicans and Democrats start talking the language of “austerity,” that is the notion that economic policy must be guided by reducing budgetary deficits first and foremost, and that workers exclusively must be made to pay the cost.

Policies associated with austerity include the cutting of public programs, privatizing existing government assets, mass layoffs of public workers and wage freezes for those who remain, union busting in the public sector and the revising of labor laws to further enhance the power of employers at the expense of employees.

Enforcing these policies during a recession prevents a recovery. Economic theory predicts this and history demonstrates it. Why, then, would the politicians promote austerity? Because these policies do assure that the 1% will be left off the hook from paying their fair share of taxes that subsidize the social safety net and have vast pools of public capital opened up for their private investment.

Why worry about the overall economy when the real power brokers from the corporations and banks are making out just fine with austerity? And those ends are to expand, intensify, and thereby assure the economic and political domination of the 1% by impoverishing everyone else and eliminating programs that benefit the vast majority.

As long as Wall Street is enjoying the “recovery,” no one else gets to. Wall Street has used its vast wealth to lobby politicians for policies that are in its interests. In order for working people to climb out of the recession, they will have to organize in order to create their own power base.

Local Struggles

As already noted, austerity is being enforced on a national scale. Below the radar of news headlines, for the most part, the policies of austerity are also spreading on a local level as well with an even more devastating immediate impact. Along with this, there has been a growing grassroots opposition to austerity starting locally.

This is most visibly the case in Chicago where Mayor Rahm Emanuel plans to sacrifice 54 public schools on the alter of austerity and Obama’s “Race to the Top.” Thirty thousand students from primarily low-income Black and Latino neighborhoods will be affected. Rising to confront Mayor Emanuel’s threats has been a grassroots opposition that was built from previous battles linking the Chicago Teachers’ Union’s interests with those of the working class communities at large. This was most evident at a large rally against the school closures on March 27th.

In Detroit the movers behind austerity have taken their most politically extreme measures yet, putting the city ahead of the curve for what is likely to develop across the country. Michigan Governor Rick Synder has appointed Kevyn Orr, of Jones Day Law firm, as Detroit’s Emergency Financial Manager. Orr has the power to dismiss elected officials, tear up union contracts, privatize public assets and impose new taxes without a vote. He will use this power to enforce austerity.

Though Orr has yet to unveil his plans, there have already been numerous protests and rallies. When Orr gets around to revealing what he is developing, it is likely that the numbers will increase.

At the end of April hundreds came out to a rally outside the San Jose City Hall to protest proposed cuts to neighborhood services and Mayor Chuck Reed’s threat to declare a fiscal emergency.

On April 11^th, a public budget hearing, meant for the Portland, Oregon City Council to sell the necessity of $21.5 million in cuts, attracted over 400 Portland residents, overwhelming city staff. Many spoke to the need to prevent these cuts and instead raise revenue from the corporations rather than handing out taxpayer paid subsidies to them. This received overwhelming support from the attendees.

At an Oakland City Council budget talk, a packed Chamber booed and jeered a presentation on Oakland’s fiscal future, chanting “enough is enough!” The City Council is projecting a deficit ranging from $19 million to $26 million. Considering that there has already been a 20 percent reduction in the city’s full-time work force and that the city’s three major non-public safety unions are negotiating new contracts, there was no mood to accept the City Council’s austerity story.

In Newark, Illinois, around one thousand high school students walked out of class to protest deep cuts to the district’s budget. Newark Superintendent Cami Anderson claims the district faces a $57 million deficit. Newark’s high school students, correctly, refuse to accept that they must sacrifice their education in order to fill this hole.

Growing Potential

This list over protests in the last two months is not complete. It does display some patterns, however. It shows how education, public workers and the communities they serve are the primary targets of austerity. That means a lot of people are taking hits.

The list also demonstrates how people become empowered when these constituencies work together in solidarity. Austerity promoters prefer to pit communities and/or unions against each other in a scramble to grab what remains of a shrinking budget pie. The events reported above show that a different reaction is possible that will strengthen people’s ability to powerfully confront their local governments.

Finally, these developments show it is necessary to go beyond the budget claims of the city government. Budget deficits are the product of allowing big business tax loopholes, obscenely low tax rates, and subsidies paid for by taxpayers. Those expected to bear the burden of cuts are not responsible for this.

In a time of high unemployment it is necessary to stimulate the economy by creating jobs. This stimulus should be paid for by the 1%.

Those uniting against austerity cuts could also demand what they are for, that is, a budget that will put jobs, education and neighborhoods first rather than corporate profit. To effectively do so the unions and community groups fighting austerity can work together to build their own budget assembly to counter the city government’s “we are broke” excuses and popularize an alternative.

These local struggles and many more are a confirmation that austerity in the U.S. will be met with a fight. Though they are disconnected in terms of their organizing, they are a response to a national problem. This wave of local grass roots organizing shows that the potential exists to galvanize a national movement against austerity.

On August 24, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and the King Center have called for an event commemorating the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech. This rally has also been endorsed by the AFL-CIO. If built as a massive mobilization of unions and community allies, this could be an enormous opportunity to take a powerful stand against proposed government cuts to Social Security and Medicare as well as for demanding a federal jobs program, for expanding education and social services by demanding the 1% pay their fair share of taxes.

1. “March 27 Rally to Save Our Schools Recap” http://www.ctunet.com/blog/march-27-rally-to-save-our-schools-recap

2.  ”Detroit Citizens Prepare to Fight Their Corporate Master” http://www.occupy.com/article/detroit-citizens-prepare-fight-their-corporate-master

3. “Rally Unites Residents and City Workers to Protest Layoffs and Cuts to Services” http://www.neighborwebsj.com/rally-unites-residents-and-city-workers-to-protest-layoffs-and-cuts-to-services/

4. “Opposition Grows Fierce to Austerity Cuts in Portland” http://www.occupy.com/article/opposition-grows-fierce-austerity-cuts-portland

5. “Union protest overwhelms early Oakland City Council budget talks” http://oaklandnorth.net/2013/04/03/union-protest-overwhelms-early-oakland-city-council-budget-talks/

6. “Newark students protest budget cuts with walkout, rally” http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2013/04/newark_students_protest_budget.html

Recently The Onion began publishing articles that framed the Syrian conflict according to the very biased views of U.S. politicians and mainstream media. Suddenly The Onion’s objectivity and satire was reduced to regurgitating the war mongering that the website had previously mocked.

For example, a recent satirical Onion article was entitled: “‘Help Has To Be On The Way Now,’ Thinks Syrian Man Currently Being Gassed.”

The article quotes a fictitious Syrian named “Amir” who is a victim of a chemical weapons attack by the Syrian government. Amir begs for foreign intervention to help save him from the Syrian government.

The article begins:

As Syrian military aircraft rained chlorine gas on his community Tuesday, local man Amir Najjar, 36, reportedly assured himself that military and humanitarian aid from foreign governments must certainly be racing toward the country at this very moment to protect him and other helpless civilians.

Given the current international debate about the use of chemical weapons in Syria — and the potential for this debate to result in a military invasion — the Onion’s article is profoundly irresponsible. The article assumes that the U.S. intelligence agency (CIA) is correct when it stated that the Syrian government used chemical weapons against the U.S.-backed rebels. And it incorrectly insinuates that the U.S. government is reluctant to intervene in Syria. Just the opposite is the case. The U.S. government is searching for the most flimsy, completely uncorroborated conjectures to justify an invasion.

But the same CIA also said that Iraq had “weapons of mass destruction,” which was a fabricated lie. Millions of lives are at stake in Syria, and the situation is uncertain. Blindly echoing these statements of the U.S. government against Syria only serves to re-enforce these yet-proven accusations, the consequence of which could be the loss of millions of lives.

This isn’t to say that The Onion doesn’t have a right to satirize the Syrian conflict. But the current situation in Syria is critical, and a U.S.-backed invasion a very real possibility. The Onion hasn’t shown appropriate caution as to how its assertions may affect impressionable readers on a subject that is still very much in flux. One need only imagine if the Onion published articles before the Iraq War calling for U.S. intervention against Saddam’s alleged Weapons of Mass Destruction. The Syria situation is no different.

To be clear, there has been zero evidence presented that supports accusations that the Syrian government has used chemical weapons against the U.S.-backed rebels, let alone civilians. Middle Eastern journalist Robert Fisk wrote an excellent article about this, while President Obama was forced to acknowledge as much the same day The Onion article was published.

With its Syria articles The Onion has thrown its influence firmly into the pro-war camp. This is significant because The Onion remains — like Jon Stewart’s Daily Show — a very real source of political influence; the website has written articles with a sharp political perspective to intentionally cultivate this image.

For example, when President Obama recently visited Israel, The Onion wrote a number of excellent articles about the trip that exposed Obama’s unabashed support of Israel while offering zero realistic solutions to the Israel-Palestine conflict.

The Onion has likewise written a number of great articles about the U.S. economy that millions of people can relate to — articles that again expose the lies that U.S. politicians are telling people about the economy. (This writer has posted several Onion articles on Facebook with the intention of raising political awareness.)

The point is that The Onion’s readers enjoy the articles, in part, because they trust the writers to base their satire on a foundation of accurate political analysis. Many readers would be less enthusiastic about The Onion if they concluded that some of their articles were mimicking U.S. war propaganda.

Worse still, The Onion’s article suggests that U.S. military intervention would be a “good” thing, presumably based on the previous “successful” U.S. invasions that destroyed and fragmented the nations of Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya.

The article again quotes the fictional ‘Amir’:

The United States and many other nations publicly stated that the use of chemical weapons was a line that [Syrian] President [Bashar] al-Assad could not cross and would draw a swift and overwhelming response, so I have 100 percent confidence they [U.S.-NATO] are on their way to save us right now.

After the examples of Iraq and Libya, few Middle Eastern people — even opponents of Syrian’s government — would have any reason to believe that a U.S. military invasion would “save” them.

Ultimately, The Onion has zero responsibility to practice responsible journalism, but it does have a duty to its readers — who trust the website’s liberal political perspective — not to re-enforce war propaganda that could result in yet another U.S. military adventure.

Hopefully, The Onion corrects its mistakes about Syria before it acquires the sad honor of being the first fake news website with blood on its hands.