What was the the reasoning behind the Israeli attacks on Syria?Was this agreed with Obama or did Netanyahu exceed his remit. Full text at link.

Over the weekend of May 4-5 Israel launched air raids against targets in Syria. Yassamine Mather and Moshé Machover, two members of the Hands Off the People of Iran steering committee, discuss the issues raised by this latest development

YM: The two Israeli air raids into Syrian territory have to be looked at in the context of the current Syrian civil war and realignment of regional powers. However, there is an Iranian dimension to all this. According to some Iranian military strategists, “Syria is the 35th province [of Iran] and a strategic province for us. If the enemy attacks us and wants to appropriate either Syria or Khuzestan [in southern Iran], the priority is that we keep Syria.”1

According to ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s most senior foreign policy adviser, Ali Akbar Velayati, “Syria has a very basic and key role in the region of promoting firm policies of resistance … for this reason an attack on Syria would be considered an attack on Iran and Iran’s allies.”2

Until May 4-5, there could have been no doubt that, in the event of a military attack by US or Israeli forces, Iran’s first line of defence would be a retaliation against Israel using Hezbollah, who in turn would rely on Syrian military support. The Israeli bombings have clearly changed the situation and weakened Iran’s position considerably. What do you think? Am I right or is this a very Iran-centric analysis? read full story / add a comment

83 year old Nun faces 20 years in prison for trespassing on National Security Complex. Full story at link.

An 83-year-old Roman Catholic nun and two other activists are on trial in Tennessee this week for what the New York Times called the biggest security breach in the history of the nation’s atomic complex.

Court proceedings began Tuesday in Knoxville, TN for Sister Megan Rice and two other members of the Transform Now Plowshares, an anti-nuke protest group that is charged with crimes related to the July 28, 2012 break-in of the Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, Tennessee.

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Yes, the attempt to blame Stria for the use of Chemical Weapons just won't stick. It looks as if the "rebels" were responsible. Col. Lawrence Wilkerson – the former chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell under President George W. Bush – said yesterday that the Syrian chemical weapons could be a “Israeli false flag operation”.

Vid and full story at link.

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In his Ceasefire review, Dan Glazebrook examines Maximilian Forte's withering indictment of liberal humanitarianism and its collusion in imperialist designs on Africa, as seen in NATO's Libya campaign of 2011. read full story / add a comment

Today, for a brief moment, America knows how awful it feels to live in one of the states they have invaded or that they have helped reduce to sectarian nightmares with imported jihadist mercenaries, CIA advisors, funds and weaponry, such as Iraq, Syria or Libya, where explosions like this occur every other day read full story / add a comment

For those of you following events in Syria, WSWS has an interesting analysis of how the "petty bourgeois" left has given it's support to a CIA backed coup by right wing religious fundamentalists in Syria. Worth a read. read full story / add a comment

A few days ago I mentioned the great challenges humanity is currently facing. Intelligent life emerged on our planet approximately 200,000 years ago, although new discoveries demonstrate something else.

This is not to confuse intelligent life with the existence of life which, from its elemental forms in our solar system, emerged millions of years ago.

A virtually infinite number of life forms exist. In the sophisticated work of the world’s most eminent scientists the idea has already been conceived of reproducing the sounds which followed the Big Bang, the great explosion which took place more than 13.7 billion years ago.

This introduction would be too extensive if it was not to explain the gravity of an event as unbelievable and absurd as the situation created in the Korean Peninsula, within a geographic area containing close to five billion of the seven billion persons currently inhabiting the planet. read full story / add a comment

Eddie Ford doesn't like Kim or the bizarre North Korean regime but he looks behind the headlines to examine how the US is stirring things up. Full story at url.

Over the last week there has been a considerable escalation of tensions between North and South Korea. To some degree, of course, this is ‘business as usual’ rhetoric, eg, Pyongyang on March 31 declared that it was in a “state of war” with Seoul (actually that has been the case since the 1953 armistice). But there is more going on than heightened rhetoric - though so far, thankfully, not a single missile has been fired.

Now, I am no admirer of the North Korean regime. It is a brutal and very odd Stalinist dictatorship, which quite literally deifies its leaders - whether the current tyrant, the Great Successor, Kim Jong-un, or his grandfather and Great Leader, Kim Il-sung, the “eternal president” who died in 1994 and presumably still guides the nation, albeit in his new, other-worldly form. To think that such a repressive system could be a workers’ state of any kind, deformed or otherwise, is a grotesque abnegation of genuine socialist politics. read full story / add a comment

A lot of hype in the MSM lately about North Korea. These two clips from the RT show "breaking the set" with commentators from answercoalition.org give some much needed context and background from which to interpret the current media spin. Instead of a seemingly irrational belligerent nihilism, the North Korean statements in context, become more like a rational defensive response to a systematic aggressor bent on harming and undermining their country and it's tendency to socialism. You may find some of the facts that emerge about North Korea rather surprising. read full story / add a comment

RT have been running stories following developments regarding the discovery of a new SARS like coronavirus which has a mortality rate of 50% and is transmissable between humans. Is this the one that kills off most of the great unwashed and lets the elites roam free to spend their ill gotten loot in a fascist marshal law paradise? read full story / add a comment

VID (5 mins) London Catholic Worker-Guantanamo Hunger Strike solidarity on Stations of the Cross to Downing St.
Music: John McClean
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fm6QvfSfdPY read full story / add a comment

From 'traitor' to Hero - whistleblower Bradley Manning is nominated for Nobel Peace Prize read full story / add a comment

CONTENTS

1. CAUSES FOR CONCERN: STOP EXTRADITION TO THE USA! GUANTANAMO HUNGER STRIKE
2. PEACE IN THE NORTH
3. 10 YEARS SINCE IRAQ AND ANOTHER MILITARY INTERVENTION ON THE OFFING
4. I AM BRADLEY MANNING
5. MAKE WAR NOT LOVE
6. RTE – NOTHING BUT THE SAME OLD STORY
7. CHINA – THE BOGEYMAN
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The camp régime must enter into talks with the prisoners and provide guarantees that religion will not be used against the internees as an instrument of torture.
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The top US commander in Europe told a Senate hearing Tuesday that the US military and NATO are drawing up plans for direct military intervention in Syria.

Adm. James Stavridis, head of the Pentagon’s European Command, speaking at a hearing by the Senate Armed Service Committee, said that the US military is “looking at a variety of options” and is “prepared if called upon to be engaged.” read full story / add a comment

The Irish Anti-War Movement will hold its Annual General Meeting (AGM) on Saturday 20th April 2013 in The Club Parnell Square Dublin starting at 2pm. For details of who can attend and submit resolutions at the AGM see below. A full agenda will be available soon.

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10 years after the start of one of the most contested wars in modern history, dissident island radio (London) assembled a panel of seasoned anti-war activists who have been active in opposing the Iraq war.
http://tinyurl.com/c9pog98 read full story / add a comment

Today marks the tenth anniversary of the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq. Ten years ago, the world watched the “shock and awe” bombing campaign light up the nighttime sky of Baghdad with billowing clouds of flame and smoke.

This campaign and the bloody ten years of occupation that followed had a devastating impact on what was once among the most advanced societies in the Middle East. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians were killed and millions were made homeless.

The American military’s conduct of the war produced crimes of staggering dimensions. This included the turning of Fallujah, a city of 350,000 people, into a free-fire zone, the bombarding of its occupants with white phosphorus shells, banned by international law, and the summary execution of wounded prisoners. Ten years later, the rates of child cancer and birth defects in Fallujah are similar to those in Hiroshima following the US atomic bombing. read full story / add a comment

As a dozen car bombs exploded in Shia districts around Baghdad today, another 50 people are dead and many more injured, on the tenth anniversary of the US-UK invasion of Iraq. Britain's international legacy of hate continues, as yet another result of its poisonous, divide and conquer policies around the world it invaded, with the exception of just 10 countries. Sunni factions linked to al-Qaeda, continue attacks on Shias. A wing of al-Qaeda, has vowed to regain ground lost to the invading US/UK armies.A decade after US and British invaded, Iraq still struggles with fostered sectarian feuding among Shia, Sunni and Kurdish tribes..The cabinet has postponed elections in two provinces, Anbar and Nineve for six months because of violence there, further proof of absurdity of the invasion. read full story / add a comment

Manning Statement Audio Leaked in Opposition to 'Extreme Secrecy in Our Courts'
First time the public has heard Manning's voice since his initial arrest in early 2010
- Jacob Chamberlain, staff writer
LEAKED AUDIO - http://tinyurl.com/cobahuv read full story / add a comment